Another week of writing, editing, and typing.

I finished a first draft of the first half of the third (and last) course I’m writing. This one is an introduction to design and UX, through the lens of prototyping a simple mobile app.

Explaining “design” from a standing start, in a limited space of time, is… challenging to say the least. If I had thousands words and many weeks it feels like it’d at least be easier - but I have hundreds of words, and two weeks of content. So the course is more of a whistle-stop tour, and I’m agonising over each paragraph, keeping them on point without introducing more questions than they answer.

I spent a good chunk of time reviewing all of course 2, which - despite the picky detail that Track Changes likes to ask you to approve - was a relatively smooth process. I’d definitely learned a bit from writing course 1. About the single most challenging set of edits were having to come up with meaningful “wrong” answers for multiple choice quizzes, each with accompanying explanation. I’m no fan of multiple choice, but it’s a format I’ve been given, so I’m just working with what I’ve got.

I also recorded two screencasts for course 2, in which I walk through my own solutions to the exercises. Although they’re meant to sound ‘off-the-cuff’, and involve me narrating as I type, I still require a degree of scripting. A short list of key points in front of me gives me marks to hit: just enough reminders of what’s coming next that I don’t ramble or waffle, and we keep the length down. A quick edit job on each and they were good to send to the video team.

I also did a bit more wrangling for December’s Hyper Island teaching. That meant finalising some timetables, and meeting up with our client for the students’ brief. Fortunately, things are firming up: the variables in the timetable are turning into constants, which makes everything a lot more straightforward.