“IT ALL STARTED WITH A LINK” 😊
This is my design journey…📝📝📝
Friday, 15th of April my sister Rachel Omogbai sent me a link and instructions 🤣👇🏽👇🏽
Meanwhile, I’ve been in and out of design such as making brand templates and all.
I sent in my application that day and the long wait began 😀. I was always refreshing my email to see if I got into the scholarship program. Truth be told, I took my mind off it and felt it’s for the best.🤷🏽♀
Exactly two weeks and two days, May 2nd, 4:43pm, I got the long awaited email 💃🏽💃🏽💃🏽
The first hurdle was crossed and I was left with having to deal with getting a functional laptop, stable electricity, and being a student.
I got a laptop from one of my big brothers — Uriel in readiness to start my training.
Whilst waiting for the commencement of the training I got talking with one of the mentors @Sylvercodez who was in the dev track but was very accessible.
I had some innate expectations I was hoping to have ticked off at the end of the program that’s the way I would be able to measure if I did learn or achieve anything.
“My Expectations 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽”
Were these expectations met you’d ask? Stick to the end of my story…. 📝📝📝
The training started and we were asked to design a simple profile card 🤔 — my first time hearing and using the FIGMA application
My first ever FIGMA design 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
In curiosity and trying to familiarize myself with the application… I designed 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
Fast forward, We had some onboarding classes on UX PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND SOLUTIONS and we were asked to design an onboarding screen as well as the hero section for the NRC (Nigerian Railway Corporation) app and website respectively…
My onboarding screen 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
Don’t worry! Don’t look for the hero section it’s missing 🤣🤣🤣
I reached out to one of my design mentors @UduakE — who is safe to say is my design sister now 🤣🤣🤣… Mama Uduak if you’re reading this, “your face show your shoe shine 😉😉😉”
She was really sweet and always ready to answer my numerous questions.
This message warmed my heart and gave me the push I needed like, Hey, Motolani, people are watching! 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
Fast forward, we were given tasks here and there. Sometimes we had funny deadlines 🌚 and other times, we were on a chilled level.
The real hustle started when I had to start my school exams.👀… Oh! You are surprised too 😉yeah I was too.😀
I was a STUDENT BY DAY, DESIGNER AT NIGHT👸.
So my nights were for making designs and trying to meet up with task deadlines whilst trying to maintain my 2:1 (second class upper) jejely 🤣🤣🤣
This is probably where I’ll shout out to an amazing pest and friend🤣 — Abraham. He was my “zuri eye”. He was always ready to point out any important announcements on our slack workspace.
I still came out with a 4.0GP that semester so I guess that’s a thing. 🥰👇🏽
It sounds easy but holy moly it wasn’t 🥺… Don’t worry we’d soon get to the part where I cried and crew 🤣🤣🤣
Days were you’d be like, “Wo if I perish I perish” 😪 or the “something must kill a man, kind of days” 🤣 or the “days when sapa will be like, you want design dem never born you well”. 🤣 How will I forget the days NEPA will be like you need light? You must be a clown 🤡 but I serve a living God 🤣🤣🤣
THE PROCESS 📝
My First Mini Project was 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽(actually for me this was my first ever project)
I created a style guide 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
And here is a screenshot of the pages from my mini project 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
Fast forward, we were given a task to create a full-blown project — in series from IDENTIFYING A PAIN POINT — to USER RESEARCH -to- LOFI-WIREFRAME -to- HIFI AND THEN PROTOTYPE 🚶🏽♀️🚶🏽♀️🚶🏽♀️ wahala be like what? 🤣🤣🤣
PROJECT PROMPT 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
I decided to do a project in the HEALTH — TECH specifically in the mental health sector cause there is a background story to that 😉
I came up with 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
Idea brief: KER is a digital platform that helps users nurture and love themselves, as well as provides a calm and soothing environment through journaling, motivating and relieving exercises and therapy. Hence, reducing stress and anxiety.
HERE IS THE SCREENSHOT OF SOME OF THE PROCESSES 🙇🏽♀️👇🏽
LINK TO MY PROJECT PROTOTYPE 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
The long wait for the second phase the almighty PROJECT PHASE 🤣🤣🤣 — the cut off into the project phase was 70% — mainly because they wanted to weed out a lot of people
MY RESULTS WERE SENT IN 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
The invitation into project phase seem like it would never get here 😪… I’m sure my BP was almost getting to the moon at that point.🤣🤣🤣
The invite came in — let’s dance 🕺•💃🏽
I got into the workspace and luckily for me, Sylvercodez was the supervisor for my project.
I was in Team 65 — and we were to work on a FAVICON PROJECT — I was in Team 65, a team of 26 candidates, 13 developers, and 13 designers.
I led the DESIGN TEAM for the project even if I haven’t heard of favicons before 🙃.
We identified a pain point and translated it into a PROBLEM STATEMENT.
We got some insights from the RESEARCH 👇🏽👇🏽
HERE IS THE LINK TO OUR PROJECT 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
“It’s a responsive website which means is it would automatically adapt to your mobile screens — But please, view it using your laptop for better user experience ✅”
Thanks 🙏🏼
FINAL RESULTS 🤎
I go to bed at four, wake up at six
Yeah, I paid my dues… I didn’t accept defeat.
This is my story and I’m giving God the glory, nothing fit to quench my fire till I retire…WHAT A BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY 🤎
TAKE-AWAY 📝
When they said, “TRUST THE PROCESS — KEEP GRINDING”
Well, I’d say KNOW YOURSELF AND KNOW WHAT WORKS BEST FOR YOU.
UNLEARN • LEARN • RELEARN
Don’t be in a haste to make the big figures in Tech — BE HUMBLE ENOUGH TO LEARN IN ALL FACETS
JEALOUSLY BUILD AND MASTER YOUR CRAFT — watch out for the imposter syndrome.
It’s easy to feel like you know enough, and starts aiming for intermediate roles when you should still be in boot camps, internships, junior roles, etc.
Always, remember that NO TWO PEOPLE’s JOURNEY IS THE SAME 🤷🏼♀️
PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE ( this is also me talking to myself 🥺 ) — I know it’s not easy but have it at the back of your mind that,
“Sometimes you LOSE, sometimes you WIN”.
JUST DO IT ✔️
