Andrea Ho
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100 Day Design Challenge

I officially began on February 26, 2017 and completed the design challenge on June 5, 2017. I began with little to no design knowledge, and my goal was to become familiar and quicker with design tools and see how much I've improved from Day 1 all the way to Day 100.

The most valuable lesson I’ve learned in the past 100 days was that designing wasn’t just simply placing nice colours and shapes onto a page. It’s really about solving the greater user experience problem, to provide a seamless, problem-free experience for all users, whether it be within an app or a website.

Day 76 - MessageMe

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Today I decided to create a desktop chat box today.

My inspiration came from Whatsapp. I really like how Whatsapp organizes their conversation lists in a very clear manner. Also, I have placed the "Recent, Favourites, and Contacts" tabs at the bottom of the list because it isn't top priority for the user. Thinking about the customer journey map, the user plans on using this type of app is mostly going to use it for communicating with their friends, co-workers, family members, etc. So that's why the "New Conversation" icon is located above all else. Other than that, users will most likely to be using the "Recent" tab, where the most recent conversation will be at the surface.

Instead of the colour green, I changed it to the colour blue, similiar to the Facebook messenger's colour. I find it more suitable for this type of messenger app. Not only that, I made sure there was enough spacing between each chat box. One thing I struggled with was: What shows when the other user is typing a message? I tried to recreate the three dots that Facebook uses, however, it didn't work well with the layout I had. It's definitely something I need to think about more.

Other than that, I focused mostly on the visual design aspect, making sure everything was either grey, blue or white. I also focused on using appropriate text sizes, so that it was consistent throughout the design.

 
Andrea Ho