How to use the Figma workbook

First, get your Figma workbook by signing up at the top of the free course page.

Then, open the Figma file, and navigate the workbook assignment by switching pages in the left panel.

Download the Figma workbook if you haven't already.

So I wanted to make a quick video to help you navigate and use the workbook that we created for you. So here's the workbook, right? It's on your desktop, let's say on your Mac and then when you double click it it just doesn't work. So it's a .fig file, but it doesn't let you automatically open Figma. That's the problem, right? So how would you actually open this file? So the way to do this, as you open Figma, and you will see that there is an "Import file" button here. When you click on this button, you'll then be able to import the file. So you do this, you click open and then it will open up. 

We give you a few tips to get started, we totally encourage you to download the desktop app. And then here you will see that, there are a few recommended plugins. It's really up to you if you want to get them or not. And one more thing is "Our answers." 

There are a few screens that we hid from you, so that you can check the answers later on without having to see the answer right away, so you can actually do the exercise without cheating pretty much. Here's the first tab, right? I'm going to show you that in action. Here is the industry, SWOT, and competitive analysis tab. 

This is for the first phase of the UX process, which is research, understanding. And here , you'll see that, you know, you conduct your industry trends and there is this transparent one here. Same for SWOT analysis, you'll see that there is a transparent one. It's our answers. 

And same for competitive analysis. And this is the same for all pages. First you do the exercise. You do everything you have to do and when the time comes to actually check and you want to compare your answers with our answers, there are two ways to do this, right? So you can click here and then press zero on your keyboard. Just zero. And then the other ways that you will see that when you select that frame, I see that there is a "pass through" of 0%, if you change that to be 100%, once again, you'll see it. 0%, back to transparent. So that's how you can check your work against ours so that you can make sure that you're moving forward with confidence. 

The next thing that you will do, so think of this left-hand side panel as all the steps that you all need to take in order to complete the case study. So, we start by conducting an industry, SWOT and competitive analysis that will give you a good idea of the business environment , just at a glance, right? 

You're not here to be in business analysis, you're here for UX design. But because UX is at the center of the user, the business, and the technology, you don't want to miss out on any of this, right? So that's why I think a little bit of context from a business standpoint will truly, truly help you. 

So next, once you have that overall view, then you will frame the problem. And framing the problem exercise is absolutely amazing, it's one of the cornerstone of how we teach UX. And , I hope that this exercise will give you more clarity into the problem will help you understand the bounds of your problem. 

 So this is a very, , very important exercise. Then once you're done with this, there are five interviews that we conducted for you. Here is everything that people said, and then you can just read it. And at the end of each transcripts, what we wanted to do is write your five key takeaways and all the takeaways, that's all you have to do. So we gave you two examples, here and here, of how we did this and then it's really up to you to figure out how you want to do the rest. 

And then the next step is once we understand the data from those interviews, then you want to chunk it down into smaller cards. Right? You want to break down the problem? You want to break down all this amount of data, because back in the user interviews tab, that's a lot of data, right? How do you actually make sense of it? How would you actually start understanding, seeing the patterns, seeing the trends forming, well, the affinity diagram is the best way to do this, and this is where you're going to do this. 

And then once again, if you wanna check the answer it's right here, and once you're done with this exercise, you will understand the problem much, much, much better. And that means that you might want to reframe the problem. The problem may not have changed, in which case that's fine, you don't need to reframe it. 

But if you've noticed that after learning a lot from this affinity diagram you're like, "you know what, the problem I was about to solve, is not exactly right" then, that's exactly what you would do, you would reframe the problem here. And then you would, you go to the next step, which is to analyze competitors' solution. That's just to get the creative juices going, just to see, you know, how do competitors solve a similar problem? We don't want you to copy them. 

It's just for you to gain an understanding of how it's done out there and see, you know, weigh the pros and cons of each, see how that could influence your designs. So once you're done with this, then you go into sketching. This is pen and paper, and it needs to be very fast and iterative. You don't want to be in Figma. 

 If you have a whiteboard at home, then even better just, just use that whiteboard, draw a bunch of different iterations for your solution, and then once you're done with this, you will then start your digital wireframes. You can use our lo-fi wireframe kit or you can build your own, components entirely by yourself, it's really up to you. I'll leave it up to you. 

And the last part, will be creating your user flows. From beginning to end, how does a user achieve a goal ? Where do they start? What do they do in the middle? How does it end. Once you have that, then once you have that full flow, you understand how the user is going to be able to achieve their goal. 

And that's the case study workbook, in a nutshell. And so we hope that you like it. And if you have any questions, we'll be super happy to help. And good luck!