A Continual Journey

I gained an interest in design in September 2019 and this started with the HNG internship program. From the moment I joined the program till when I left the program (due to personal reasons), I thought design was a mashup of shapes and a blend of colours but it showed me otherwise. For my first four (4) months in my design journey, I would design whatever came to mind then share with design mentors I had in my corner and get the same feedback, “What is the story behind your design? What thought process did you put into this? Why did you select this colour? Did you interview users and get feedback from them?” and lots more. Within those months, I designed because I liked a particular colour and a particular font seemed awesome without considering what the users would like. Those questions always sent me back to the drawing board thinking that my design thinking process was wrong.

To know the right steps to take, I joined the Interaction Design Foundation (IDF) on December 25 2019. Within that program, I have learned a lot more than just pulling squares and circles. I learned that there is a goal behind design, it speaks to users. I have also learned that designers need to document their process steps and there are Design Thinking Processes which entail:

• Empathizing with users
• Defining user’s needs, their problems and insights
• Ideate by challenging and creating ideas for innovative solutions
• Prototyping to start creating solutions and
• Testing the solutions

Design is focused on the Product, Users and the Design Process.

My aim of joining the WeJapa Internship is to gain more insight into Design and share what I have learned in the past 11 months to everyone that is still learning.