Categories
Product Design

Creating a Mobile App

My journey designing a Mobile App has certainly been an interesting one. From the ideation stage to design through low-fidelitywireframes, to higher fidelity work using platforms such as Adobe XD or Figma, until the final result is reached.

I have made many discoveries since I first started designing and developing digital products. And after completing this project, I have to say that my approach to design has changed a lot. For instance, at the beginning I would see projects as a clearly defined set of steps to follow from beginning to end. However, I have found that design and development are more often than not, way more complicated than that. After learning about Agile Project Management and collaborating with my peers, it’s become clear to me how necessary it is to have multiple iterations. throughout the development process.

After finishing this greyscale wireframe on Adobe XD, I did some usability testing on my app, and made corrections to it accordingly. I truly believe that it is fundamental to include this step in your process, because after working on a project for so long, it is necessary to gain some outside perspective of it. That way, you notice the things that seemed to be obvious to you might not be so obvious for the user.

Additionally, this experience has allowed me to experiment a lot with generating a colour palette and logo design for a brand.

Selected Colour Palette for
Pippin Orchards App.
Pippin Orchards
Logo Design on
Adobe Illustrator

Below, you can find the finished prototype of my app.

Finished Prototype of Pippin Orchards App.

If you asked me, “what is the most important thing to keep in mind when designing an app?” I would have to say that it is fundamental to know your target audience well, and understand that they’re ultimately who your product is for. Keeping this in mind, we can make more effective decisions by focusing on the purpose of the app through the lens of a user’s wants and needs, and stray away from personal biases that might not apply to all cases.

But most importantly, don’t make your user think!

Categories
Graphic Design

Reinventing Old Projects

Back when I was in my senior year of High School, I wrote this short story titled “The Angel’s Lullaby.” It was for my Writer’s Craft course, one of my favourites back in the day. It was also my most ambitious work to that date.

The story follows the journey of Rose, a teenage girl who has recently lost her grandmother and is trying to reconnect with her through a magical music box she left behind before her departure. Rose will have to face a series of challenges and lessons before being able to reach her goal of reaching her beloved grandma once again. It’s a story about grief, healing, family bonds, and growth.

I was quite proud of it when I first wrote it, and when the chance came up for me to design my own book cover, this story immediately came to mind.

“The Angel’s Lullaby” | Book Cover Design

In my design I chose to incorporate key elements of the story and play with the words in the title. For instance, I used cursive letters that seem playful yet refined, adding a halo on top of the “A” in “Angel’s” to emphasize that word and transmit some of the narrative. I chose a sky to maintain a celestial theme, but chose for it to be a night sky, as it references the “Lullaby” part of the title.

In terms of my symbols, I used stars (big and small, in different shades of yellow) for both, my front and back covers, and played with the sizes of the stars, so that I could include texts for my positive reviews inside of them. Additionally, one of my favourite creative choices that I made with this cover design was making the text in the back cover the shape of a crescent moon. Finally, for the branding, I used a music note as a logo, to subtly create a play on the musical aspect of the title.

Overall, it was a fun experience revisiting some of my old work and thinking about how I could reinvent it and turn it into something completely different while preserving the essence of the original concept. It is quite rewarding to see your own growth through your work.

Categories
Programming

Object-Oriented Programming

My experience with Object-Oriented Programming has been interesting. I don’t know too many people’s whose first programming language is C#, and while it has a challenge learning this new language from scratch, it has most definitely been the most rewarding thing to learn this semester, too.

I feel like I have learned a lot about how to approach problems in my programming course. Many people have made it very clear to me that programming is not meant to be easy, yet I’ve also learnt not to make it harder than it has to be.

It is okay to reference different sources until you understand how to do things, and it is okay to ask other people about their approach to a problem in order to gain a deeper understanding. After all, once you’re working in a shared environment, it will be fundamental for you to be able to listen and communicate your ideas appropriately, plus being able to execute them in collaboration with a team.

It is also a good reminder to think about the fact that most big projects aren’t completed by just one person, and tasks are assigned according to each person’s specialties.

I think we all have concepts that are easier or harder to grasp, and for me understanding the theory behind the code that I am writing is fundamental and one of the easier parts of the work, whereas some of my team-mates are the complete opposite, where they prefer hands-on learning first, then learning the meaning or even, not at all.

That is something I find fascinating about platforms like Github. Being able to share and collaborate with other people, is a great experience when learning a new language. It provides an opportunity to learn from their reasoning and approach to a problem, through clear examples.

That being said, feel free to check out my work over there!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is github-logo.png
Categories
Web Development

Creating a Responsive Website

As developers, it is fundamental to account for different case scenarios. Now more than ever, people are accessing our websites from a wide variety of devices and it is no longer safe to assume that everyone is looking at your carefully crafted work on a desktop computer.

Therefore, now more than ever, it is necessary to design websites accordingly for all screen sizes. Because, let’s face it. More often than not, people’s first impression of your product will be the mobile version, as it is the one they can easily acess on the go.

Yakoun River Web Development | Home (Desktop)
Yakoun River Web Development | Home
(Mobile)
Yakoun River Web Development | Home
(Mobile)

It was then, when I learned about the mobile-first approach to web development. The idea is that you’re designing your smallest screen-size (Mobile) first, and working your way up from there, in order for it be completed and functional from the beginning, instead of becoming a semi-working after-thought.

About Page (Desktop)
About Page (Mobile)
Services Page (Mobile)
Services Page (Desktop)

As we try to create more accessible and easy-to-use websites, the need for a mobile-first approach increases. After all, not everyone has access to a computer at all times. Thus, why the mobile view tends to be seen more as of late, and why it is so important to make a positive first impression. Because we all know that if a site is hard to work through the first time we use it, it is very unlikely that we will use it again.

Get Quote Page (Desktop)
Get Quote Page (Mobile)

After developing the Yakoun River Web Development website I also learned the importance of considering mobile users, with the use of elements such as forms. If you think about it, a poor mobile execution would make the entire “Get Quote” page unusable.

In conclusion, a mobile-first approach can save you from a lot of usability issues in the long-run and even save you from losing users from these. Thus, as developers it is our responsibility to ensure that our products are usable, effective and satifying across all platforms.