Alex Kan, UI Designer
For the Record
A service for logging board game sessions. Problem: Existing solutions for board game logging provide a lot of stats, but do not capture fun aspects of the hobby and can also seem intimidating for more amateur players.
Role: I'm the sole designer on the project working together with a full-stack developer. The project is a work in progress.
Interactive Textbook
Problem: The experience of reading digital books is subpar. The design goal for this project was to make scrolling a digital book feel like turning pages of Edward Tufte's magnificent paper books. The business aim was to make the design scalable, so that my client could launch other books in the same format.
Role: I was the sole UX/UI designer on the project, working together with an art director, a layout designer, a photographer, and two developers.
Impact: the book gained more than 3000 paid subscribers in less than three years and earned more than £64K (4.5M roubles) during that time; my client was able to launch more than a dozen of other interactive books based on the same format.
Mixed Reality Stories
My UX research project at the University of Melbourne presented me with a UI design challenge. Early prototypes with minimal UI introduced friction for the participants that was breaking the flow of the studies. Â To address the tension I designed an audio-based experience coupled with 'wizard of Oz' approach for collecting data. Thus, the prototype I used in the studies, required participants to just tap a single 'play' button when they are ready to run.
Engaging Technology
I have been long fascinated with the use of 'entertaining' mechanics in 'serious' software. Here are just some examples.
WWWorkshops
Inktrap's Wonderful Weekly Workshop (WWWorkshop) is a design exercise for bolstering creativity. The rules are simple: there is a design prompt and 30 minutes for completion. I decided to challenge myself with three of their past WWWorkshops.
Presentation
I got used to presenting my work regularly and to different audiences: clients, academic researchers, designers, engineers, industry professionals etc.
The poster I made for Melbourne's Computing & Information Systems doctoral colloquium earned an honorary mention for best design:
I had two papers accepted to the Australian largest academic UX conference OzCHI.
My research findings inspired me to give a talk at UX Australia – the country's largest UX conference that brings together academics and industry professionals alike. The talk was rated second best on the conference app and received an overwhelmingly positive feedback.
