It’s hard to believe that week 4 of interaction design (and all the tasks involved) have already passed. This week not only means that we’ve been back in school for a month, but it also means that we are well on our way to developing Project 2: a redesign of various interfaces of The SC Legislative Oversight Committee. This project has presented many challenges that neither I nor my group saw coming. In the midst of working on our templates, we had the opportunity to tour Truematter, a local User Interface/Experience design company. Here we talked with Dean Schuster, partner and co-founder, who was able to provide incredible insight about the world of UX/UI design. Although I do not intend to go into this specific field of design, it was great to learn about how designers of various specialties like user interface, illustration, web design and more are able to come together to create a beautiful and well designed product. Not only did Dean educate us about the work that Truematter does but gave us an in-depth view of their process. It was great to see how a successful company such as Truematter comes up with effective design solutions while also working on a project that requires this of us as well. It was good for my team as a whole because towards the end of the talk with Dean, he gave us examples of the most effective components of designing for optimal user experience. I made sure to write the points he made down, for example using less text overall, leave out the subheaders, and make sure every word being put out is not only purposeful but impactful. This visit could not have been timed better and inspired me to finish off our current project in a more thoughtful way.