In my social media profiles, you might have seen that I’m a self-proclaimed “designer.” But the truth is, I was never really a good designer — because I never practiced. As a front-end developer, I constantly felt limitations when I had to come up with my own designs. Overtime. I decided that I was going to need to practice to get any better. After I saw the Icon a Day project, I thought it’d be interesting for me to design user interfaces on a daily basis. My life routine as a high school student was very boring, having most of my day occupied by school and school work. After being bored of the routine, I wanted to do something interesting and fun everyday. Thus, the 300 UI in 300 Days project was born. The name itself was self-explanatory — started on September 1st, 2015, my mission was to design user interfaces everyday for 300 days (full school year).
“The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine” -Mark Murdock
Through my daily school life, I found that having a consistent schedule helped me move forward. allowing me to accomplish interesting things throughout the day, while doing the (often boring) necessities without much effort. After I experimented on how to fit ~2 hours of UI work into my daily life, I found the perfect solution. I woke up at 4:30 AM everyday (ok, maybe not every day) and designed a user interface for 2 hours, until I had to go to school. That way, I had time to work on side-projects or freelance jobs when I got home.
After I made the user interface early in the morning, I received feedback from friends throughout the day and published it at night, to Behance, Dribbble, Twitter, and of course, the 300 UI in 300 Days blog.
I’m sure continuing to dedicate 2 hours+ everyday won’t be an easy task. After all, I’m still a high school student trying to balance my personal / school / professional life! But, I’m incredibly excited to see how I’ll develop as a person, a designer, and to start an amazing journey!
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Jay is currently a sophomore at Bergen County Academies (HS) in love with designing and developing solutions to help others. His ultimate mission is to contribute and inspire the world, through projects like InFuture.
