Last Things

Hello, as I wrap up my time as an STA, here is what I was working on. I finished some Photo IDs in the past week and made edits to the Brand training I mentioned last time. Sorry about the briefness, I am running out of time!

and Farewell

Dear Design STAs and Staff:

Goodbyes make me extremely emotional, and I think it’s best that we just let the goodbye run its emotional course at maximum. Thank you all so much for letting me be a part of this wonderful team. Despite only being here for one year, I feel as if I have learned so much. During my time as an STA, I gained so much knowledge in the Adobe Suite, web development, teamwork (all virtual too), and communication, to name a few. Though there is still a long ways to go, the opportunity to develop these skills and work on design projects with a team like this was something I could have only dreamed of.

To Suloni, Valerie, and Maddy, you were the best supervisors. Thank you so much for being supportive, accommodating, super intelligent, and kind. Your mentorship and feedback on every project was much appreciated, and it felt great to be respected and given agency. It was awesome to be guided by each of your individual perspectives on design and life!

To the STAs, I am so honored to have worked on projects with you and learned about your relationships to art and design. We shared some good laughs ha ha ha and each one of you all are so talented, creative, and empathetic. I wish you all good luck in the future, and I hope you all have a wonderful school year!

There are so many things in the world that are just like you don’t know what you don’t know, and I feel as if being an STA has opened my mind to some of those things like in art, occupations, and general knowledge. And I feel like it has made me a better person which is cool and groovy. I am incredibly thankful for my time appointed as an STA, and most importantly I am so thankful for my time with each of you all! I hope I can visit again one day, and please please stay in touch!

Thank you thank you thank you so so much,

Athena Zeng

Today is my last day as an STA.

 

I’ve been apart of the team for 2 years, and it’s been actually awesome the entire time! Like, I wasn’t sponsored, paid, or REDACTED to say that! It’s been relaxed yet structured, and has allowed me to work on various projects that supplemented my CS studies in super beneficial ways. I didn’t end up taking any web related courses in my degree, but I was able to use what I knew and apply myself to learning new web frameworks and skills as I go. At my busiest, it was somewhat difficult to maintain work and school at the same time, but I can’t imagine a job to have during school with as many pros outweighing the cons other than being an STA.

Also, even though I started out in person, and it felt like FOREVER during the first semester. I ended up spending the majority of my time as a remote STA…which flew by in what felt like just another semester…and ended up being 2.5 semesters and 2 summers…thus is life.

I’m proud of the work I’ve done and grateful for the experience and great spirit from everyone I’ve met during my time.

My final project was my favorite, Epic Similes, in which I got to work tons in the backend of complex data handling and templating.

I stand on the shoulders of giants, the STAs before me, and of course Suloni and her magical handling of all of us…

and soon I will be revered as a giant whose people will stand on MY shoulders…

unless they become giants and then they aren’t people anymore? I guess that’s under the assumption that giants aren’t people…but frankly I don’t know if they are or not.

They aren’t even real, so I couldn’t get an answer via like evolutionary biology, unless a “giant” is a medical term for someone like 7″6′?

Which I’m not actually going to grow to that height, I guess I should be referring to giants in the context of fantasy fiction,

but then which fantasy world to I choose from in order to…….

This Past Week

This past week, I worked mostly on edits related to the Knowledge Base. I created a training for the Inspect Tool. This training is a very brief explanation of how the Inspect tool can be useful for temporary HTML/CSS edits. Here is an image from the training.

I also have been working on some changes for the Branding training from a while back, based on Abriella’s feedback. Earlier last week, I also helped out with some title cards from a training Poonum started, but she has left now 🙁 sad and I’m not really sure if I have all the files for it. I also worked on a photo ID, updating my Box folder,  and some Youtube tutorials in downtime/to switch things up. Only two days left of being an STA :0.

Here are some of the notes I took on a few of the tutorials I watched:

 

 

Top 5 Adobe Illustrator Tools You Should Know – Design Tutorial

Shapebuilder Tool

• Scan a photo into illustrator and lock it, work on another layer
• Shapebuilder is a replacement for pathfinder, it is in the toolset
• Drag to join
  • Hold down the altkey to delete
  • Use a line segment tool
• Shift M
• Then fill with flat colors using the eyedropper tool

Pen Tool

• Make curves
• Turn off fill
• One click makes a straight line, another click makes it a curve
• Click escape to get out
• Remember the shape builder tool can be used to get ruid of lines if you hold alt
• Width tool
  • Alter lines after you make the line really thin first, then you can adjust fulcrum points to make different sections larger using the width tool
  • Use expand experience to turn from a stroke to a fill
• Ellipse tool
  • Scissors tool
  • Create lines to segment where you want to start deletting
  • Then use shape builder tool to delete
  • You can change the but capp using a different tool
• Freeform Gradient
  • Fill tool selected
  • Then click gradient on the right toolbar with colr selectecd as needed
  • Using freeform gradient tool, you can easily adjust where the light is coming from and what color you want them to be
  • You can also use gradient lines using fill > gradient > freeform gradient
  • You can change the line to follow a curve
• Global Edit
  • Quick actions > Start global edit

Master the Pen Tool in 30 Minutes | Photoshop In-Depth Tutorial

• Everything in Pen tool is a vector
• Use P 
• Vectors do not pixelate but rasters do 
• What is a path
  • click
• How to make a curve
  • Click and drag
  • Move the handle to determine the degree of the curve
    • Longer handle = greater intensity of degree
    • Also influences the next curve
  • Have two handles so not sharp
• Delete the handle by holding alt and moving it or deleting it or brin
  • Alt does convert point tool, corners to curves and curves to corners
• Holding alt key breaks the angle, then with control you can move it
• Freeform pen tool
  • Adds points, convert point tool is alt
• Using pen makes it show up in paths
  • How to fill?
    • Go to layers panel and click on solid color in gradient half circle effects to create a shape
    • A shape is just a path with fill

How to Improve UI/UX Design Skills | 5 Quick Tips

1. Plan hierarchy of project 

• Plan hierarchy and flow through mockups on paper, figma, miro

1. Accessible navigation
   1. Simple, easy to use navigation
   2. Back or close icons on screens, accessibility is important
2. Clear dialogue
   1. Advise on good practices, just good reading text visually and in terms of dialogue
3. User feedback
   1. Loading on a button
   2. Hover cues
   3. Gives user idea of things happening
4. User testing
   1. Don’t worry about optimal test group right away
   2. Do initial testing, then make a decision

 

What is the difference between UX, UI, product, visual, graphic, interaction design?

• Product design
  • Designer owns the product from beginning to end
  • Refers to apps and software
  • Responsible for UI, UX
  • Animation, prototyping, coding, research, visual, and interaction design
  • Know when to develop hi fi mockups, animate and prototype
  • Know how to communicate ideas
  • Setting up wordpress, not too much code, but a little HTML is useful
  • Own everything from concepts to hi fi prototypes
  • UI
    • What you see
  • UX
    • User flow and experience 

 

User flow tutorial | How I use them in design projects 

1. What is a user flow?
   1. A series of actions a user takes to achieve their goal
   2. Ask three questions
      1. 1. Who is the user
      2. What is their goal
      3. What are the steps the user needs to take to achieve that goal?
2. Why do designers use user flows? Why are they valuable?
   1. A method to communicate designs from the perspective of the user
   2. The biggest WTF in design right now | by Alexander Handley
   3. User flow is the new wireframe. An illustrated guide on the different… | by Alexander Handley  
3. What do user flows look like? How do I create them?
   1. The bigger the product, the more time  spent
   2. Can be a combo of 
      1. 1. Task flows
      2. Wireflows (lofi)
      3. Screen flows (hifi)

• user 
  • The instacart employee
• Mapping out the task flow
  • How would the user access the feature? Where does the feature live?
    • In earnings page
  • Call to action
    • Shopper must know how much is eligible for payment
  • Transfer the available amount to 
• Competitive analysis
  • Look at venmo, cash, uber, lyft and looking at instant payment feature
• Now map out the wireflow along the task flow
• Then use overflow or figma to create a higher fidelity