How to learn more than graphic design in the Daily UI challenge
Get a better result to become a better product designer
New aspirants have been struggling entering in the UX/UI sector, specially the ones that come from backgrounds different to design. Furthermore, as more people are entering the field, the barrier to succeed has been getting harder, and that is why challenges as Daily UI emerged.
Daily UI has been a common practice for new designers in order to improve their design skills. But even though the challenge has a huge fanbase, there are some senior designers that think of it as a waste of time.
The reason behind this thought is that showing some screen designs without any “thinking” behind it is more similar to graphic design than to UI. Rather, they recommend working directly on case studies. And I partially agree with it. But the problem is that the challenge was not meant to be a no-brainer design of the given topic. It is a tool that helps you decide a given topic to design, but the way it is done is up to the designer.
Get more from Daily UI
There is not a unique way of doing the challenge, it depends on the method every designer uses. Next, I will give some steps that helped me learn more than just graphic design in my Daily UI challenge:
- With the topic of the challenge, create a first brainstorm with all the possible ideas that come to your mind.
- Have a look at what other designers have done. I think this step should be done in second place to not bias the first brainstorm into something that has already been created. Add some ideas into your original brainstorm.
- Select a company that could fit the topic. This step is really important as design is meant to be created with a purpose and every company has one. You can choose companies that inspire you or you like but my personal advice is to choose companies that are looking for designers in your area. In this way you could engage with them showing the result and create an opportunity to get the job.
- Get to know their users. Check who is going to use the product you are designing and why they are using it. Search the problems they are having with the product and if you can do something about it with the challenge. If you do not find any problem related to the company that can be solved in the challenge, check the problems that users have on that specific topic.
- Look for good practices. Good practices are solutions to real problems other designers have found and solved. Having a look at them will make you a better designer as research is a must to become a great product designer. Research should not always be something you discovered, you can profit from the work other people have done previously.
- With all this information, create a first low fidelity wireframe. Do not over complicate it as it will function as a guide, the final design can be slighty different.
- Design your idea!
- Finally, share your work. Doing so, you would be able to see your progression over the challenge and also ask for feedback to keep improving your skills.
Create your own method
Yeah, I know, this takes a lot of time (personally it took about 1 to 4h daily), but the challenge will result in more complex screens that have deeper sense and meaning. It is not necessary that these steps are always followed strictly, sometimes it is good to focus on other characteristics behind design as could be UX writing, microinteractions or purely graphic design. A good designer should be polyvalent as every product has different requirements.
Another thing that you can experience with are devices. You can create solutions for really different types of screens, from the classic web and smartphone to less used ones such as car interfaces or smartwatches. In addition, you can always play with the different trends that have been emerging in UI such as neumorphism, glassmorphism or gradients.
The good thing about choosing real companies is that you will need to adjust your design to their design systems. You can check their documentation or directly their products. It is not necessary to take their system in a precise way, you can always take it as a reference or design freely according to how you think the screen should be. A tip that can help you is the use of a color picker tool and “inspecting” the code to check the paddings, colors, font and sizes they are already using.
My personal experience
I come from a business background and I had never used design tools before knowing what UX meant. The closer I had been to design was some instagram posts I done in Canva.
My first steps designing were with tutorials of Howard Pinsky, but that could not be called proper design as I was following steps. Daily UI helped me practice with the tools an UX/UI designer would use on a daily basis and think about solutions to specific topics. At the end of the challenge my confidence boosted and I was able to center my designs on the users and shape the ideas I had in my mind. This was a thing that I could not do when I started my first case, and it frustrated me.
If done in a correct way Daily UI can be one of the best challenges an UX aspirant can do if it has no design-background. You learn different skills such as discipline, deadlines and designing skills (that will improve in an exponential way). Combining this challenge with case studies will make your profile stand out as result of your better skills.
