Lu Riordan
 

Insider Inc.

 

Candidate Design Challenge, Senior UX/UI Designer

The Challenge

Background

In the fall of 2020, an opportunity presented to apply for a Sr. UX/UI Designer role at Insider Inc.—I jumped at the chance.

Challenge

After chatting with the team, I got a better feel of the role, brand and the value I could bring.

I was then presented with a 48hr design challenge to showcase my skills. Full of fresh insights into the company, I was ready to flex my creative problem-solving muscles.

 
 
 
 

The Plan

Discovery

The discovery phase was to better understand the challenge, brand, target users, and main “competition” while also uncovering unique opportunities to solve for, both for the end user and the Insider Inc. team.

Design

Not wanting to waste precious execution time, I planned to keep true-ish to the brand's current look and feel and flex my problem-solving superpowers* in the ideation stage.

Package

A good challenge never ends when you think it should.

The presentation of process can be a designers nightmare and also ends up happening in the deep hours of the night. Planning and prepping for the delivery was a must.

*Candidate does not possess actual superpowers

 
 
 
 

Day One | The Research

kickoff |understand

The email arrived. The challenge was clear and exciting, so after dissected the challenge to make sure I hadn't missed anything—I was ready to start the planning.

Discovery | Empathize

Having insights into the brand and challenges, gathered from online research and topics discussed during the interviews, I had an idea of my unknowns. I put together a rough interview script and connected with my on call participant—my brother— to collect some data.

Discovery | Define

Using the data collected, I set out to identify and define the users goals, pain points. As the data became insights the Insight became Ideas and I jumped ahead into the inspiration stage and fell down an internet hole without realizing.

Losing track of time, I didn’t get to build out a polished Persona, but I had some good trails to follow.

 
 
 
 

Day Two | The Design

design | Ideate

With the goals and rough needs worked out—and a full pot of tea—the brain shower commenced.

Full of random ideas and solutions, I sketched them out and prioritized which ones would be most beneficial to the brand and the users while being realistic with my time frame and skill set.

No lulu, a custom AR filter for Snapchat contributors isn’t possible at this stage.

design | Sketch

I sketched out the main ideas and identified the key elements that would need attention or callouts with more detail.

design | Build

Using Sketch and the assets provided, I went about laying out my concept in a wireframe format. Once happy with the general shape of things, I built out the High Fidelity prototype tested the flow of data and imagined functions On InVision

 
 

The Results

Ship | present

Time being the real challenge I didn’t get the designs or presentation to the polished annotated place I would have hoped for but I was happy to deliver on time.