At the beginning of this year I wrote a to-do list of activities to develop my digital skills. One of the areas that I wanted to work on was my visual design skills so my list item was to participate in the Daily UI Design Challenge where each day for 100 days (except weekends) you receive an email prompts that gives you the ‘topic’ for the day.

Well it’s now June and I’ve finally started.

I’m using PowerPoint to create my designs for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s a program I have easy access to. Secondly, it’s a design challenge and I wanted to see what I can produce with what I have.

Here’s a few of the designs that I’ve created so far:[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5007″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”5008″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”5009″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5010″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5011″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”5012″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Essentially the designs are combinations of shapes and text boxes. I’ve played with their colour, transparency, outline thickness (called weight) and alignment. I’ve added shadows and even used the edit points’ feature in PowerPoint to manipulate regular shapes into something different.

While I’m hoping to improve my design skills over the 100 days, I’m already finding that in completing each challenge I’m thinking more about how a person might interact with what I’m designing. Is what they need to do obvious? Does it make sense? Would it be easy to use? I think these questions are also applicable to digital learning design and we need to talk to users to find out and refine and improve.

There are lots of people sharing their designs on Twitter via the hashtag #DailyUI and also on a site called Dribbble (which is a good place for design inspiration). I’m enjoying the chance to be more creative, experiment and play with design so am looking forward to the next Daily UI email. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]