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[spekulative]

apr 25, 2020

yesterday i created my first character illustration, which took me a lot longer than i thought. i realize my familiarity with the illustrator interface has dwaned, and it frustrated me more than it excited me while i was creating. on the contrary, i’m starting to enjoy the ui/ux process a lot more and it’s really clicking with me. i really feel like this is something i could actually do in the future. in the meantime however, i think i might actually want to grow my current instagram and incorporate more text based, graphic-print like stuff. so that my instagram can be more of my experiment hub and place to freely express myself with art, all the while i migrate my UI/UX onto dribbble/behance. it might be my platform i need to express all the advice i used to give to ppl, which is who i truly am, WITHOUT seeking any form of validation or having external intentions. because to be honest, even with a following base i’m not posting for validation but rather to actually share what i think and who i am freely, without judgment. if it impacts a couple of people along the way, great. but it’s most important to me to remain authentic and true to myself. 

[spekulative]

apr 21, 2020

second day of my remote internship today! i’m interning as a ux designer for a startup, so I’m super excited because I get a lot more autonomy due to being in a small team versus a corporate environment where I think things would be more structured. I’m really happy with how today went because I was able to share my first designs and work on the design-developer handoff process, and all this is entirely new to me which means I’m continuously learning on the job. it’s been tough for me to get used to things in the mornings, but I’m working on it and today I was able to stay pretty alert and awake for most of my working hours so that’s a win! excited to see where this takes me :)) 

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apr 13, 2020 - taking it slow

today i watched “rams”, a documentary revolving around Dieter Rams which was very eye-opening about his design philosophy on “less is better”, and his perspectives on consumerism and today’s materialistic society.

since it was the weekend and i had a math test today i didn’t do much design since, other than finishing up another daily ui today. i feel that i’m slowly improving and im glad! im realizing its a bit annoying to constantly create a new design system everyday for my different daily uis so i think i just might use the same design system for every ui. that would make it challenging !

short blog entry today because i have yet another exam report i have to work on for business... until next time!

[spekulative]

reupload, but here’s my first ever blender creation :)

i obviously have a lot to work on, i.e. lighting, materials; but just happy that i was able to push myself to try something new! went for a more soft-realism-esque look as that’s what i want to strive towards as opposed to modelling photorealistic objects in the future!

[spekulative]

starting anew!

hi! if by the odd chance you knew me from my old blog, i realized that i was restricted from carrying out a lot of functions i might want to in the future if i were to grow my blog (it was a sideblog to an old, 2013 blog i had and when i replied to comments or respond to asks it’d be as my primary). so instead i decided to create a new account so that lycho could be my primary blog! since i did have a few posts that i wanted to keep for history sake, this is just going to be a mega post of my past few posts: 

apr 6, 2020 - the beginning

day 1 of my journey with ux!

frankly, i’ve been on this journey for the past two years (ever since discovering it) but i feel as though i haven’t made any real progress. i’ve always claimed i wanted to grow and learn more about the field, yet those goals never showed in my day-to-day actions.

this blog is a collection of my progress on this journey to keep myself accountable. the goal is facebook in a year, baby!

i know it’s super idealistic and quite tough for a second year like me who’s not even in a design program (business, actually). but i still want to try. i want to do something for myself for once.

that is why i am committing 4 hours everyday to honing my craft. whether that is learning about ux through watching youtube tutorials, skillshare course, or reading medium articles, or actually practicing the craft by making redesigns or wireframes, i will dedicate this time strictly to advancing my expertise within the field. and this blog exists to keep up with my every step of the way :)

apr 8, 2020 - website overhaul

today I worked on cleaning up the modularity of my existing website a bit, making use of consistent classes instead of hard-coding like i used to! oh how i love modularity!

small win: making a navbar that breaks out of the standard bounding box of the site’s content --> next goal is to make it a sticky navbar with js!

other than my website, yesterday I finished a skillshare course on user-centred design, albeit short, it was really valuable and it only motivates me to continue learning. I’m starting to realize how much I actually like doing this stuff and think it is something that really clicks and not just something im doing for the looks.

slowly but surely getting the hang of dedicated 4 hour time chunks to my craft - i failed yesterday and the day before (woke up around 9/10 instead of starting at 8:30) but today i did pretty well! took a short 20 min nap inbetween haha but I’m still proud of myself overall :)

it’s been pretty depressing and lonely lately with the quarantine (when the sun is shining so bright, teasing me grr..) but I want to get back into a routine and be productive although i do have my lazy days. it just overall makes me feel better because who knows how long we’ll have to live like this. might as well get used to it.

apr 9, 2020 - website overhaul

hi! so today i wanted to be very candid and share that i feel like i did fail today in terms of the goals i had set out for myself, though I reached 1/2 goals so that’s good! the first was to finish refining my website and publish it (check!), while the other was to finish the financial statements for my business assignment but alas that did not end up happening haha, but i forgive myself for it and know that tomorrow will be a new day!

I actually woke up early today (around 7:30, earlier than usual) and felt awake, yet mentally I just wanted to go back to sleep so I ended up getting up at 9:30. I then regretted it and beat myself up for it briefly for doing that, but I realized that I should let myself off in these strange times we’re all living in right now.

so, i think i really am going to get serious about my design journey! my only concern is that i feel like im stretching myself too thin - i have a full time design internship offer for this summer for a startup, as well as 2 leadership positions on clubs where I lead/work on the branding and design, but also at the same time I”m always at home so not sure what is reasonable and what is not. Because when I’m not doing that, I want to be self-learning, but I recently a discovered a mentorship program where I could be mentored by a startup founder to help scale her business, but again I feel like I’m stretching myself thin. though it’s a really good opportunity.

anywho, updates on my website like this post was supposed to be about is that i finally published it again after not liking how it looked before, and i think this revamp is a lot cleaner! proud of it. i try not to reveal many of my personal details on here bc i’m not sure who would actually be reading it, but this blog is just a way for me to track, myself, how i’m doing and to keep myself accountable :) i just didn’t want to set it to private cause it’s a hassle for me to always enter the password if i want to look at my blog.

lastly, i want to start consistently workout - and in the long term actually start a real blog where I write about my experiences, in actual coherent sentences! amazing. creative-wise i really want to start learning 3d illustration and blender, even though i’m an aspiring product designer but i just love 3d and motion, so idk might be stretching myself too thin again but i feel like I need to stretch my creative muscles this way and push myself as a creator. also starting the daily ui challenge again tomorrow after giving up a few months ago - haha!

let’s see how this one pans out :)

apr 10, 2020 - learning + starting anew

today i started two new things !!

restarted daily ui challenge after quitting a week in last year

started to learn blender ! !

i still feel like i failed today because i mostly sat around doing nothing OTHER than design, which just affirms to me that im truly passionate about this stuff for only having motivation to do it (or just a strong will against my homework for uni still....either way im taking it)

although i’m not that great at blender yet and felt frustrated during the process, when i got the end result i realized i like how it turned out despite it not being perfect, and it’s inspiration for me to keep learning and expanding on my skills :)

same with daily ui - i found that my approach this time compared when i literally knew NOTHING about ux was very different.

for example, something I already notice I'm doing differently from the last time is focusing less on decoration and more on practicality, actually naming/grouping layers and leveraging design systems, and injecting personality to make the experience delightful. I'm also limiting myself to two hours now (though this one took about an hour) so I have more time to do some research, sketch and wireframe before styling.

looking forward to a better day tomorrow! i might do a little less design (maybe just a daily ui shot) so i can focus on actually tackling the report i’m supposed to finish as well as study for an upcoming exam, so we will see! feeling good :))