Interaction Design - Year 2
Oh my goodness. I blinked, and summer was over.
This week marks my return to classes in Interaction Design at DCU. I can’t wait for it. I already checked, and the topics for this semester look promising: from Research with Interactive Technologies to... wait for it 🥁... Python. Yes, Python! 😅 I'm excited!
Meanwhile, in my spare time, my project, Funky Monkey, is still in progress, although at a very slow pace. Between my work at Squarespace and the demands of family life, time has been scarce. To get things moving, I decided to try out Lovable to help with the party booking page. The idea is to speed up the process, and I was suggested to integrate it with other AI tools, like Stitch.
I wanted to take this back-to-school opportunity to share some projects from last year that I'm proud of (and that were a ton of work!!!).
1. UX Research Plan for a Real Estate Site
I created a UX research plan for a real estate company that wanted to understand how users find and rent rooms. The plan included competitor benchmarking in Ireland, analysing company KPIs, and gathering insights through surveys and interviews. My deliverables were a proto-persona and a customer journey map. I built a low-fidelity prototype and tested it with classmates. I had 12 minutes to present everything in a video! 😁
2. Persuasive Design: Engaging the "TikTok Refugees"
Here, I examined how knowledge of persuasive design and trust-building can enhance engagement on social media apps. I decided to analyse RedNote and how the platform could attract the wave of "TikTok refugees". It was really cool to realise how the platform uses design knowledge like visual rewards, the effectiveness of short videos for behaviour influence, stimulating content creation, and network engagement to persuade the users and keep them engaged. While conducting this project, I realised how a certain language learning app is also very persuasive!
3. Designing for Remote-Based Teams
The brief was to analyse how design could benefit remote teams. I couldn’t imagine only one issue for a remote team and start from that, so I conducted an in-depth interview with an ESG manager at a multinational company to understand her team's practical challenges and opportunities. The results were super interesting and brought unexpected outcomes that expanded my analysis. The team faced problems with trust, micromanagement, privacy concerns, and limited collaboration tools, but was also already seeing efficiency boosted by AI. Again, it was all synthesised into a recorded 15-minute presentation. It’d be interesting to explore solutions for this team, like a centralised channel of communication and deeper integration with AI tools to facilitate staff performance.
So, if you ask me what my main hope for this new academic year is, my answer is simple: “I hope that DCU doesn't make me record so many videos staring at the walls of my house!” 🤞