Reflective journal

A reflective journal to document my thoughts throughout my study in MA, User Experience Design at Falmouth University.

Development Practice S1

Period: September 2021 – present

This module focus on practice and reflection. In this module, I will focus on becoming a reflective practitioner. It will empower me to move forward as the creative and technical landscape changes and discover and pioneer new opportunities.

Week 1: Orientation

by Didier Ma | 25 September, 2021 | Development Practice S1 | 0 Comments

It's been a while since I left my last formal study. I studied information technology and got my first job as a web designer/programmer – and that began my journey to experience design. Finding creative solutions using technologies that could help both businesses and...

Week 2: Creativity

by Didier Ma | 6 October, 2021 | Development Practice S1 | 0 Comments

People often think of designers as the unlimited source of innovations and creativity. The truth is that it’s wrong. It’s often required different methods and collaboration to foster ideas. I believe that great designers use different tools to effectively ideate and...

Week 3: Rapid Ideation

by Didier Ma | 9 October, 2021 | Development Practice S1 | 0 Comments

I love prototyping, and I love rapid ideation. These are the best design tools to validate designers' ideas and solutions without the additional overhead to engineer the real thing. In my opinion, rapid ideation can help bring concepts to reality in a very low-cost...

Week 4: Time and Project Management

by Didier Ma | 16 October, 2021 | Development Practice S1 | 0 Comments

This week revealed the theme of the first rapid ideation session. It consisted of a surrealist Dixit card and a news article of our choice. The surrealist Dixit card is a little child-like person holding a sword in front of a giant blue dragon, appearing fire and...

Week 5: Reflection

by Didier Ma | 23 October, 2021 | Development Practice S1 | 0 Comments

This week, we focused on critical reflection and deliberate practice. I have been in design for many years now. I gained a lot of knowledge through my journey from day one. After all these years, I have always known that design was my passion – I like solving...

Week 6: Reading Week

by Didier Ma | 27 October, 2021 | Development Practice S1 | 0 Comments

It had been six weeks into the course, and I struggled to find the time and the right rhythm. This week gave me much-needed time to catch up and reflect on improving my project and time management. Last week, I set one of my goals to spend an additional hour every day...

Week 7: Version Control

by Didier Ma | 5 November, 2021 | Development Practice S1 | 0 Comments

This week's topic was Version Control and why it is essential for development. While reading this week's material, mostly around developers, it got me thinking, how about designers? The evolution of design tools For Version Control, Git is a popular choice among...

Week 8: Research

by Didier Ma | 15 November, 2021 | Development Practice S1 | 0 Comments

This week's topic was about how we approach research ethics and care for our participants. We also learned how we ranked the risk level based on the Falmouth University Integrity and Ethics policy. The articles and the references provided in this week's bibliography...

Week 9: Communities of Practice

by Didier Ma | 17 November, 2021 | Development Practice S1 | 0 Comments

In week 7's journal entry, I shared the evolution of design tools and workflow, which I have experienced throughout my journey to a UX designer. After watching the presentation by Professor Heidi Ellis[1], I wanted to research some open-source projects related to UX...

Week 10: Agile Practice

by Didier Ma | 5 December, 2021 | Development Practice S1 | 0 Comments

When I started at jobsDB.com back in 2012, it was a young product team. As an Art Director, my first project was to introduce a new brand and design system requiring the dev team to change every page on the website. That was a painful process. The visual design team...