I have the nicest, most patient UI/UX teacher IN THE LAND...

I have the nicest, most patient UI/UX teacher IN THE LAND because I swear I'm out here MISunderstanding the assignments - repeatedly.

There is a process we're following, and the first step was deciding what to design, then to gather information. Got it, no problem, done. ✅ Now we're doing layouts.

Our homework was to do hand-drawn sketches of what the app might look like on a mobile phone. So I did the first sketch. They said it was a "rough" and it was fine if it was messy.

Tonight, they had me re-do it using a program and said I could type the words, so I did it. One of the instructors said the bottom was a little confusing, so I fixed it.  But you can tell it's hand-drawn because it's crooked. Second image - Done! ✅

My teacher met with me and did the third drawing in the same program. I thought I was supposed to keep it as hand-drawn as possible, so I didn't use the rectangles/squares tools. Okay, it definitely looks nice.

But... When we got off the chat, I was like "She just re-drew what I drew." And Shaun disagreed. And I'm like "THEY ARE THE SAME THING!" And Shaun was like "You don't literally mean that, do you?"

But like, yes?

And she did a few versions and was like "Maybe there's an image here or a video there." And I'm like "What image and what video? We didn't discuss that. We don't have that."

And it has been explained to me that I'm supposed to be making this stuff up out of my head. But literally, nobody told me that. And how do you know if the image will fit? Or the video? We don't have any of that already. I made the design based off the information I had.

I made the whole Polish ALL the Things! app without doing this process. I made the things I wanted and then arranged them like puzzle pieces. My navigation bar is alphabetized. Shaun said this class definitely isn't how I normally work (though my work turns out great), and also that it's weird that my navigation is alphabetical.

I know this is going to sound so crazy, but I don't think I've ever struggled so hard to understand what I was supposed to do. Shaun said that I'm thinking extremely literally, and my teacher agreed. She said she struggled with this before, too, so thankfully she is working with me. But I just feel like the biggest asshole, although I'm not being intentionally obstinate.