First web design internship — Week 11 & 12
Note: My internship took place in 2020. Lucidweb shut down in 2021 due to the Covid situation.
My last weeks at Lucidweb were the most interesting. It was certainly the peak of my internship in terms of learning UX. I was assigned to improve the usability of a new part of our platform, LucidWeb Pro. In addition, I had to finish the prototype for the player’s controllers which I have been focusing on for a few weeks now. I was heavy-hearted to leave this team on such a good note.
If you wish to understand all of my adventures, I invite you to read my previous internship reports. First, my arrival in Lucidweb, how I got used to the pace, how it was halfway through, how I kept myself busy, and finally how I became more autonomous.
The asset panel renewal
On a Monday morning, when I was doing my daily scrum meeting with the dev team, they asked me to review the panel that holds the scenes and its assets on LucidWeb Pro, in order for its features to be better suited for future transformation. Indeed, the panel is functional for now, however, it doesn’t invite us to implement new modifications easily. The platform is in development and has yet to hold all the features it was initially meant to. So I was asked to find a new way to arrange the layout of this asset panel so the dev team could work on a renewed and more organized slate.
First of all, I began brainstorming with Jordane, a front-end developer. Together, we talked about what were the current problems of the panel and what could be done about it. We used Figma instead of Adobe XD because it is collaborative and it was easier. We agreed on a wireframe that would be the base. Which is, for the panel to have scenes organized in a tree structure as we can see on Illustrator’s layer panel or Figma’s.
As I reviewed this first draft with Eliana, she asked me before anything to create a storyline, where every kind of situation would be taken into account, so we could understand all the features of the panel. Indeed, it was a good idea and so I did adapt the draft on the user journey to bring a clearer vision.
When it was ready, after multiple feedbacks, Eliana gave me the design system file and told me to use it to apply LucidWeb’s design on the panel. She told me to create the panel as I pleased. And if I wanted to, I could create new components for the design system. I was very happy to hear that she trusted me enough to let me choose whichever I found best suited. I took great pleasure in creating a panel that would be functional and beautiful in an aesthetic matter.
When I presented the latest design to Eliana and Kiet, a member of the dev team, I think they were satisfied with my work. Of course, there’s always space for improvement, for example, the icons, alignment, and such. But they told me that it is a good foundation, that they could work with and in the future add features as we talked about.
Now that I’m leaving, I can’t wait to come back in a few months from now to the platform and see all the changes. I am happy that I was able to finish the assignment before I left. It would have been a shame to leave it unfinished.
UX Controllers
Luckily for me, this assignment was also a job that I could finish in time. If you remember from last week, I was to merge the controllers from a player for 360 videos and from a player for 360 images. I was able to create a clickable prototype for the horizontal and vertical mobile. The layout did not change much except for the timeline and the play button.
Regarding the VR version of these controllers, aka the cardboard version, I didn’t have the time to create a clickable prototype but I still wanted to organize the layout of it since I had been doing research for so long.
Conclusion
When I arrived at LucidWeb, I didn’t have much expectation. I knew it would be difficult and not be an internship as expected due to Covid, but I was happily surprised. Of course, it would have been better to work physically together but I don’t think it restrained me regarding the job quality. In terms of what I have learned I would say that I definitely learned more in the second half of the internship rather than the first. In the beginning, I didn’t do much of UX, not because I was not capable of it but because there were no projects for me. So I did research and design assignments. But then, I was very happy to see more and more responsibilities given to me and more tasks oriented toward the user experience. I believe Eliana considered me as if I was her colleague and we would exchange knowledge. I always received suggestions instead of obligations during the feedback. Of course, there was always supervision on what I was doing but it was always beneficial.
Lucidweb also taught me that there aren’t only 3 devices, but in fact, numerous more. Here, I had the chance to work with a headset format or a cardboard format. I learned about virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, monoscopic and stereoscopic videos, and I learned a new range of vocabulary.
In the end, I want to thank Leen who gave me the opportunity of this internship and who was always kind to me. And of course, many thanks to Eliana who was always patient and who I’ll very much miss. I wish all the best to the whole team. Finally, I wanted to show appreciation to the readers who followed me through all my adventures.
