Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Signe Roswall

A story of succeeding and flopping and finding the quality of feedback after a quantity of feedback

In May 2017 I published an article on a Mobile Tickets app redesign called “I got frustrated with an app, so I redesigned it”. It focused on a complete usability and interface redesign of an app which had gotten horrible reviews after it got an update with an entirely new design.

It was my first major personal project and truth be told, I was inspired a lot by other same types of articles which were madly popular: Jason Yuan, the design student who redesigned Apple Music after being turned down for an internship as well as Kim Thuy Tu who wanted to challenge herself by redesigning Instagram. Those are some great articles and pretty awesome projects too by the way, well-worth a read.

My own article “I got frustrated with an app, so I redesigned it” has earned 199 recommends over a period of 3 months, 90% of them came in the immediate days after it was published. That’s the most “likes” I’ve ever had online in my entire life so far.

It’s only a fraction of the amount of recommends of the other two articles I mentioned: the Apple Music redesign has 5.3K and the Instagram redesign has 4.2K. But it’s the most I’ve ever had and it’s a whole lot when starting from zero.

The Path to Success

I first shared the article it on a Graphic Design group on Facebook I’m a member of. It got 40-something likes and a lot of great feedback in the comments from my fellow designers and developers.

I couldn’t believe it. That alone was great.

One of those designers suggested I share it on reddit, so I posted in on r/graphic_design and it has 272 upvotes and 41 comments.

And then suddenly, this email appeared in my inbox:

Where’s the “ERRR FECK YEAH PLZ” button? 😂

I became a writer in the publication prototypr Prototyping: From UX to Front End, and if that wasn’t insane enough, my story was even featured in their newsletter, on their Medium blog and on their website:

From left to right: 1) the story in the newsletter with an awesome description — thanks Graeme!🤘 2) the prototypr Medium blog and 3) the prototypr website

I went from having 3 or 4 to suddenly 400+ people following me. My Medium Stats were going nuts, 4 K reads in one day (probably the day the prototypr newsletter was released) and more followers rolling in every day, pushing that Follow button and showing their trust in me and my work.

I know what you’re thinking, that’s pretty amazing and that’s it, then, right?

Nope, that’s not all.

One morning, a morning so like any other morning but so unlike it as well, I woke up to an email from Medium congratulating me for becoming a Top Writer in Design. I couldn’t believe it.

Top Writer.

Me.

And I bet you’re thinking; “Top Writer,” wouldn’t you rather want to be Top Designer? Surprisingly enough, the answer is no.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer.

As a young girl I wrote horror stories and tales of lost love, I wrote and wrote and wrote page after page. I had very few friends and my teenage-years mostly straight-up sucked, so I wrote and read my way into the magic of other worlds. I also wrote poetry and songs, not that they were necessarily any good but I wrote them nonetheless.

I even started keeping a journal and it’s going on 8 years now. My latest entry was two days ago in which I was reminding myself to never forget the way my mother smiled and the light of joy in her eyes when she, my sister and I were out together Saturday night.

I’ve always been writing and to have suddenly been accepted as a writer was actually maybe even more important to me than being accepted as a designer.

It was unbelievable. I was in heaven.

This was the point where I called my sister, my mother and my father and told them the news. My boyfriend already knew, he’d followed the project on the sideline for the very short period I worked on it. They were all thrilled and congratulated me (my mother and father a bit sceptical since they’re not too familiar with the web and how it works. My mom, for instance, still thinks the MSN Messenger is the root of all evil and blames it for giving her viruses and spam even though it shut down in 2014. My dad prefers Windows XP and still has the installation disk for it just in case.)

Anyways, it felt great. They were all so proud of me.

I put the title Top Writer on my homepage and on my LinkedIn profile and realised I was proud of me.

That feeling is better than any drug in the entire world. And it’s just as addictive as well.

The Fall from Grace

Statistically the Mobile Tickets redesign article is my best story yet. That article has ticked home more likes and followers than I’ll probably ever have or get, again. And admittedly, it is a pretty good project and I had loads of fun doing it which is truthfully, the most important thing.

But within a month or two, my ‘Top Writer in Design’ title disappeared from my profile on Medium. I was so sad to see it go. And because of it, my self-esteem took a dive. The likes and recommends got fewer and fewer.

My 15 minutes of fame was over.

I wanted to get it back, I felt like I had to. I’m actually ashamed to admit I was longing for the loads of feedback and likes, the constant spamming of emails with people commending my work, but I was. I missed the way it made me feel because in truth, I’m not very good at remembering to be proud of myself and my work. I mostly just think of how it could be better and get nervous of all the ways it could end up a total flop.

The top writer title approved me, my word and my worth as a writer, designer and thus as a person. So most of all, I mourned the loss of it, and I felt like I needed to do something about it in order to continue to be that. (Though luckily I’m now able to remind myself all that was there long before the title.) I needed The Next Big Thing.

Traveling beyond A–B for two months

Never has a project been so hard or taken me so long.

I decided to look at another Danish traveling app called Rejseplanen (Travel Plan) and even though there were no major usability issues to fix, I knew I wanted to do something with it. But this time, it wasn’t just the lack of insight or user research data from the original app which held me back.

It was myself, too: I was holding me back.

I was constantly reminding myself of how it had to be really, really good. Often I asked myself “is this even relevant? Or this even interesting?” And I’d delete an entire paragraph.

How could I possibly ever do something as good again? My beliefs in myself seemed to have gone out the window along with my stamp of approval. I truly felt the meaning of the saying “the higher you fly, the further you fall.”

On top of all that, I’d set my own personal goal of not doing the popular thing, the projects everyone else were doing. I wanted to do projects inspired by my own opinions and sense of how I’d like the world to be, what I feel like is the meaning of my work. And that too, added to the difficulty.

Now I’d have to go out there and say something I really mean and care for which undeniably made me feel all the more vulnerable.

It took me two months. I worked on it, on/off, nonetheless it swallowed my entire summer break. I slaved, hour after hour, suddenly waking up from my trance and realising I hadn’t eaten anything all day. When I wasn’t working it, I was thinking it. I was pursuing it so hard, the more words I put in, the more app screens I designed, the more I could taste it.

It took me several edits, delete, copy, paste, edit, delete.

At some point I guess I was afraid to really say what I meant, afraid it would ruin the article when not just focusing on usability issues but taking it even further. Luckily, something inside me felt like it was the right thing to do so I stuck to it and didn’t end up making another project just like the previous.

I nearly drove my boyfriend crazy in the process, I snapped at him and acted a fool at times. But I remembered to apologise. Apologising is important.

August the 9th and it was finally done: “Traveling from A–B: Evolving a Travel Plan app (Rejseplanen)”

Impatiently, I hit publish. I wanted it finished, finally. I posted it to Facebook and Reddit, following the exact same procedure as the last article which surely must’ve been the recipe to success, right? And I waited.

I published it to prototypr, hoping it would be featured in the newsletter. I was almost sure of it: I’d worked so hard on it for so long.

I waited some more. Checking my phone again and again, even when I was out. Not even finding peace whenever I forced myself to put it away. A few recommends ticked in. 1, 2 and 3. A day after, 4 and lastly 5 recommends.

It wasn’t included in the newsletter. I checked the email as soon as it came, scrolled through it and deleted it.

I accepted the project for what it was

I figured; maybe it just wasn’t interesting enough. The timing had been wrong or the title wasn’t catchy enough. The design wasn’t good enough.

Also, I was very aware I’d tried to work with and write something different, so I also thought how maybe if it’s not so much a popular opinion it just won’t be very popular at all.

And as I thought that, I realised that was actually in some weird way totally fine with me. I know what my opinions are and what I want to do, if it’s not popular opinion then so be it.

There might even be a chance in having an unpopular opinion, of standing out as a designer. Because what makes us different is not our education or our skills. What makes us different is what makes us human; our experiences, opinions, feelings. Motivations, goals and dreams.

So just as I’d accepted I wouldn’t be getting that massive feedback I had once wanted because I’d chosen to focus on something else than usability entirely in this project, something happened.

It wasn’t at all what I’d expected.

I didn’t get thousands of recommends or break-throughs or features or the title as Top Writer back.

What I got instead was a comment on the project on LinkedIn, a guy from a bureau designing and building chatbots who really thought my project was interesting and wanted to meet over coffee.

I was positively puzzled. Chatbots? But that’s Conversational UI? I thought. I didn’t have that anywhere in my article, really.

And then another one popped up in an InMail asking me for a connect, also from a conversational design bureau. We talked shortly about the importance of the human element in tech, which was what I’d actually argued for in my article, or at least tried to. That tiny bit in the very long article where I’d shared my beliefs and opinions might have made all the difference to this person, making him want to contact me. He told me I simply had to meet with their Conversational UI Designer because he was sure, if we got together over coffee, magic would happen.

Magic would happen.

Today it’s monday

I have playdates for tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday with people who want to talk with me and discuss the human perspective in design and especially in Conversational UI Design. I don’t know much about the field or the work and I positively can’t wait to find out more. There might even be a job opportunity or two somewhere in there but most of all, there’s an opportunity for conversation and knowledge, two things I always aim to pursue. I remembered how this actually also happened with my first project: I was invited over for coffee by the design bureau who had created the original new design I had redesigned.

I realised how, if I’m going to be talking with designers and bureaus so passionate about design to be meeting with a total stranger (me) about it over coffee, there’s an opportunity in there to learn something, share experiences and beliefs and maybe even also to write about it.

This monday morning, a monday morning so like any other monday morning but so unlike them all as well, I woke up to an email from Medium saying my new article has gotten a comment. And even if it is and probably will continue to be the single only comment on the entire project, it’s the best comment I could possibly imagine:

The comment is in Danish, check below for the translation

Translation:

Hey Signe! I’m the product manager for Rejseplanen[The Travel Plan]’s apps and I’ve just read your blog. I’m completely blown away over partly how great it looks and partly how you’re just putting it all out there. Love it. There are different reasons why Explore* might not be realised in the near future; we’ve been over that type of feature a few times… But I hope we can contact you when and if we’re looking at a redesign next time, the rest of your look is great. Thank you for an awesome, awesome mondaymorning-experience!

*Explore is the new feature I added in my project Traveling from A–B as an opposite to the app’s current main feature.

Quality over Quantity

My previous “Mobile Tickets app redesign” article has 199 recommends.

My new one “Traveling from A–B” has 5 recommends.

And it’s my best article yet.

Not only have I learned to try and stop pursuing external acceptance and instead look for it within. That feeling of being super proud of myself? I have to be able feel that because of who I am and what I believe in, not because of what I publish on the web or how many likes I get. I like to get likes, but I don’t write or create for the likes. I want to be a top writer in design, not just having the label on my profile page.

I hope to find the courage to say more of what I actually mean, and for some reason, it does seem a lot less frightening now.

I’ve learned the value of the quality of the feedback over the quantity:

Despite my 199 recommends on my first app redesign article, I got a playdate invite from the bureau who designed the original. That didn’t happen because of those 199 recommends, it happened because of the content and the project. It also happened because I tried to fix the usability issues, not just complain about them. The way you approach a problem in a project says a lot about your character and your work ethics. And I’m so happy this was the impression at the bureau who did the original design: my desire to improve, not just belittle.

And despite the 5 recommends on my newest app redesign article, I’ve talked with 3 completely different, new people, 2 of them whom I’m going to meet this week over coffee that’s how interesting they found the article to be. There’s an opportunity in there of continuing to pursue being a writer — even if it’s not the Top Writer in Design on Medium.

But I want to give a big, heartfelt thank you to those 5 people who recommended my article. Because despite 5 recommends, magic is going to happen this week and also; I’ve given Birgitte an awesome monday morning experience.

That’s worth a whole lot more than all the recommends in the world.

Thank you for reading!

My best article yet has 5 recommends 💚 was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My best article yet has 5 recommends

Cool stuff, every week

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