Hello From Priyansha 👋

Hey everyone,

My name is Priyansha Jha and here goes my attempt at expressing the overwhelmed emotions that I’ve experienced in the last four weeks. Even though the period is still short, I would say that these last few weeks have been nothing but an intellectual adventure. Be it from writing my first ever blog to winning a bronze at the great ‘Avanti Skribbl Championship’, everything has been absolutely superb! It really amazes me how a nurturing workplace can help you turn your potential into results and these results are the ones that bring about change in society.

In addition, the mentors are incredible be it with the feedback or when you are stuck with something. The kind of insights you get from mentors really pushes you to get out of that comfort box of yours and strive for something that delights you as a designer. In the past few weeks, my work has been to design two new features on Plio.

Survey Mode

My first task was to introduce a new configuration to the question editor, which would allow creators to add questions that don’t need to have any right or wrong answers. We call it the “Survey Mode”. The purpose behind the introduction of this feature was that sometimes creators want to add questions for data collection, just like in a survey. For example, your age or your favorite subject. It was to be implemented for all three types of questions (MCQ, Checkbox, and Subjective).

The main challenge for me was to keep the design consistent with the overall editor design and to keep it aesthetically pleasing while also ensuring that the interface is simple enough to understand and work with.

Text formatting

The next task at hand was to design and place a text formatting toolbar so that one can customise the text (bold, italics, underline, etc) of the question being presented to the viewer and allow the creator to be more creative in terms of adding questions and options.

Although it was not a difficult challenge to design the toolbox, it stresses you to think about how you can improve a design that has been a staple and consistent on every software, webpage, or interface.

Starting my design journey at Avanti Fellows was challenging. Yet it was also enjoyable because the workflow and communication within my team made it really convenient to work. When I talk about communication, I would like to exclusively mention two amazing engineers going by the name Saloni and Manya. I never thought that developing designs with them would be this smooth as this was my first time working with a team of engineers on a project. We talked about the possible edge cases and then modified the design accordingly. It was really intriguing to observe how developers think about the backend and how it affects the design part.

Now to the best part, FRIDAYS! The book days and game days are just really relaxing. Ending a workweek is already one of the best things and these small interactions give a powerful head start for the weekend. The one thing I really miss is the offline work culture. It would have been great to meet all these amazing people in person and learn more about each other. I really wish that this COVID-19 situation gets better and we get to work together in person.

Looking forward to seeing them all.

Priyansha

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