We have all been told to stay at home for months now, but this has given me time to re-ignite my love for digital art (and also a lot of video games). I recently bought myself an iPad and got to work on my backlog of 'Things I would do If I Had Time' list that included learning how to draw in Procreate! 

Here are a few pieces of work I've done:

The UX design field changes quickly, so it's important to be keeping up with the latest and greatest tools that are coming out! I was excited when Adobe XD beta released as I am a huge fan of the Adobe Creative Suite, so adding XD to my design tool set was a must. 

Every few months, Adobe hosts an event called Adobe XD Creative Challenge to help designers get familiar with the program. The challenge lasts for 2 weeks and goes over a variety of design prompts that challenge design decisions and provide feedback for participants so they can improve their UX skills. I participated in one and try to take on some of the challenges individually to keep me up to speed.

Last year (2019), I took a class through the Seattle School of Visual Concepts to learn more about using Visual Design in UX. As a UX Design consultant, my role varies depending on project, and I started to re-evaluate what skills I wanted to improve on as a Designer. I chose to improve on my Visual Design skills as usually, I was able to work with a Visual Designer towards the end of projects after my UX Designs were completed, but this was not always the case.

In the class, we designed a new version of one of the Seattle Times web articles and see if we could apply Visual Design best practices while designing, starting from a low-fidelity wireframe.