We are pleased to announce our Ask-me-Anything (AMA) session with 'Kene Udeze(@udezekene) UX Lead at CcHUB!
This is your opportunity to ask questions about his work on product design for startups, User Experience, USABLE, Human Centered Design (HCD), how to build a career in UX design, his passion for cooking (Kene is a fantastic Chef), or anything else you’d like to ask.
You can start asking your questions right away in this thread and your questions will be answered on Tuesday, 20th of December, 2016 by 10.00 AM
Also, don’t forget to invite a classmate or a fellow student who would like to learn about coding and design.
Hi,kene, am an amateur software developer though i do not plan to speicalize in UX or HCD,I know how important they are in product development.So,i would love to know about them,could you recommend a good resource(s) I could use.Thanks
Hello, I’m David. I’m a back-end developer for both Android(firebase) & Web platforms(MEAN stack). Although for web I have good experience with Html, css, sass & bootstrap.
I want to ask how I can make the journey from being a back-end developer to being a design-minded developer. Courses I can take, books to read and blogs to follow.
My main aim is product design http://davidpopoola.com
Short Advice: Read a lot and of course get a lot of practice.
Advice as a Nigerian: The thing about being a UX designer is that you need practice beyond the reading. And by practice I don’t mean code because that is front-end design; HUGE difference.
Sadly in this space a lot of people still confuse both. If you want to be a UX designer, get out your pen, paper and talk to people. Talking to people about the problem you are looking to solve will expose you to their own reality and by you becoming aware of that reality it’ll help you design better solutions.
You may be wondering: I don’t have a project or startup? That is the easy part. There are lots of digital products in Nigeria that need UX overhaul, start with them. The process could go like:
Find a startup
Understand their product and users,
Talk to people within that user demography and find out why that startup’s product isn’t working for them
Create an ACTIONABLE report and BLOG about it (Alternatively you can share same with the startup).
The more you do these and talk about it, the more confident you get with your work & your title: Kickass UX Designer.
PS: This post has really good articles to get you started.
It isn’t responsive because when we designed it in 2012, responsiveness wasn’t exactly mainstream and over the years, we’ve tried a couple of times to retro fit the current system but it just left us with a lot of “ko le werk” outcomes.
So for a kind of you-heard-it-hear-first gist; we’re working on something totally new that captures our evolution over the last 5 years and I can’t wait to share it with the community.
Hi Chris. Thanks for your question; I do appreciate the fact you want to learn more about UX to help you be a better product developer.
Here are a couple of links I think you can look at (cc @Analorgue)
Hack Design I think anyone looking to design digital products need to have a look at this resource. It’s brilliantly curated; I HIGHLY recommend it.
[Udacity’s Product Design Course] Curated by GOOGLE I think you should take this course. Hint: I’m taking the course right now.
52 Weeks of UX While I wasn’t diligent enought to follow the course for 52 weeks I still think it’s a great resource.
Medium is a great place to discover UX & Design resources
Follow a couple of UX & design people on twitter, they occasionally share good resources - @lukew (one of my favourite people on twitter), @ideo, @jared, @joulee, @facebookdesign, @cliveua, @namzo, @uxkish and follow @uxlagos_ & attend our monthly meetups to meet other local designers.
Hi David,
I think to make that switch you just need to read a lot of design articles and engage in more conversations about design. I’ve shared a couple of resources you can use in my other responses.
Hi,kene so am currently working on a project and i believe most of the users would be using lite browsers(eg uc mini,opera mini). In this kind of situations how do you handle the user experience since you have a constraint on the options to use.
Hi Chris,
Knowing your constraints before starting out a project is important. If I were to approach this, I would:
Map out the key features of the platform
Ask the question: How do I implement these features without javascript
Then take a mobile first approach (you should use that in every project). It means I’ll design for mobile first before scaling the design to bigger screens that have a wider real estate (space). Taking the mobile first approach helps you focus on designing/showing the KEY elements on the project.
Also; Get rid of font-icons as it has limited support on some low-end browsers.
Thank you @udezekene for answering all our questions; we appreciate you for being an engaging guest on today’s AMA and trust that your responses will go a long way in shaping our UX career path.
Quick aside: I am still surprised that nobody asked how many yards of husband material you are worth because…Chef Kene
Sorry for my late response…work and life have been acting up lately…is this AMA session still active ?
I like the fAct that you are bridging the gap between what is being taught in school and the reality of the really world…can I still asked some questions ?
I still think it’s a great resource.
& attend our monthly meetups to meet other local designers.