S
A
Saba
Aafreen
Welcome!
I'm Saba Aafreen and I aspire to start my journey in UX Design by innovating sustainable solutions and making memorable experiences! 😄
I innovate, love to help fix problems, and enjoy designing aesthetic and goal-driven designs.
Me
About
Let's Get in Touch!
I'm a student from York University in Toronto, Canada majoring in Information Technology and I aspire to make impactful user experiences!
I hope to contribute my design talent, solution-focused attitude and passion by creating user-friendly, meaningful, interactive, and inclusive designs! 🎨💻
I developed a passion for art and innovation ever since I knew what crayons and paper were. I always had a keen eye for detail and utilized the tools and resources available to me to make something unique and creative.
I'm always curious 🔎 to learn and find new ways that can make an experience memorable and convenient. I'm a big DIY enthusiast as I see everything having multiple purposes and not just one.
💚 My empathy for people and willingness to help people grows larger every time I impact someone's life. My positive and optimistic attitude helps me achieve my goals and encourages, not just myself, but others as well to reach success! ✨
My Core Values:
Empathy 💕: Empathy has always been part of how I work and communicate with others. I like to understand what others feel and look at things in their perspective so that helping them in their problems makes it easier to find the right solution.
Collaboration 🤝: I enjoy collaborating with people to make diverse ideas come to life and learning from each other is the best part of teamwork!
Solutions-Focused for Convenience 🔎: I find the root cause of problems and focus on fixing it and finding alternatives and preventions for the future. My focus is also to make things easier to use and to have multiple purposes.
When Life Gives You Lemons, You Make Lemonade 🍋: By this I mean be you, be happy and positive, and just be grateful for everything! It's ok to make mistakes and it's just part of the process of learning (credits to my parents for this life-lesson! 💗)
What I offer:
Design Tools/ Software 🎨:
- Fundamental understanding and proficiency in Figma
- Competent in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, & Lightroom
- Wondershare Filmora & Filmii, and iMovie for video editing
- Well-versed in Canva (fun fact: this portfolio was made using it!)
- Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint)
- Experience with website builders like Squarespace, Webflow, Framer, Wix, & Readymag
Coding 👩💻:
- HTML5, CSS, JavaScript (for Front-End design)
- R - Rcode (for stats)
- Processing (for animated art)
- Java, a bit of Python
Other Cool Stuff ✨:
- My native language is Urdu
- Fluent in written and verbal English
- Beginner in American Sign Language
- I love biking!
- Extreme cat obsession
- Fond of painting with acrylics
- Enjoys watching and playing soccer and basketball (Go Toronto Raptors!)
- Fond of trendy fashion and makeup
- Did I mention I love cars? (My fav the Dodge Charger SRT 392)
My empathy, curiosity, creativity and positivity has led me to grow a great interest for UX Design. I came across several opportunities to design creative and inclusive projects through personal projects, coursework and volunteering. These experiences have given me a different perspective on things and gave me chances to grow my skills and grow as an innovator. I can't wait to share my talent and skills with you!
My
Projects
World of Emotions
In a course during my first year at university, we were assigned to code a static website to reflect the idea of playfulness. My group and I decided to make an immersive website through abstract concepts of play. Our website was intended to explore three main types of emotions (happy, sad, angry) through the idea of playfulness. Our idea was to have a few games/activities to feel a certain emotion, reflect on their current emotion, or perhaps to reduce an unwanted emotion. My group and I used Figma as our planning and conceptualizing tool. We coded our website in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. I was responsible for planning and coding the happy pages and the artists' statement page. (Psst! This website's code is on my Github, feel free to check it out!)
Duration:
approx. 1 month
Tools:
Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Photopea, Google Docs, Zoom (team meetings), HTML5, CSS, JavaScript
Team:
3 students from DATT 1939 Making Interactive New Media Art course (myself included)
My ideas for the happy pages:
1
Our Moodboard including typography, colours, etc.
4
2
3
Sitemap
Our Artists' statement page
Learning Outcomes:
I enjoyed the whole experience working with other students even though this was during online learning but we managed to stay connected and help each other out as much as possible. I was lucky to find great teammates who helped me expand my skillset and learn new design tools like Figma and coding techniques. I learned different ways to make eye-catching visuals and interactive components through coding with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and found this part of designing a website interesting as well.
Miss Queen Jewels
Miss Queen Jewels is a small home-based online business I started back in 2020 during the summer. I was always fond of wearing dainty jewelry and also would handcraft them as a hobby. I decided to turn my passion for jewelry making into a business. I started coming up with product ideas, branding, and researched about how to start a business online and business marketing using resources like Shopify, and I followed other jewelry businesses to get an idea of the culture and trends.
I have an online presence on Instagram where I interact with my customers and market my products there. I used this platform since it was the ideal place to target my products and get access to a wide audience. I've grown so much as a business owner since then and learned quite a lot.
I mostly sell necklaces, chains, and also sell earrings, rings and other jewelry. I have one product which I enjoyed designing which is the name necklaces because my customers can personalize their necklace and I get to handcraft their names using wire and get creative!
I've designed my business's logo, graphics, business card and thank you cards all mostly on Canva which was really helpful and easy to use especially for business.
Duration:
July 2020 - present
Tools:
Canva, Instagram, TikTok, jewelry making tools (nose pliers etc.), jewelery pieces (clasps, chain, charms, wire etc.), jewelry packaging
Team:
Individual
Customized Name Necklace using jewelry wire
@missqueenjewels
Learning Outcomes:
I've learned various business marketing skills and knowledge and was glad there were many online resources for small business owners like myself. I've connected with so many other small jewelry businesses as well that helped me learn how they reach their audiences. I also enjoyed learning how to use social media as a tool to target my audience and allowed me to use my creativity. I also learned a lot about my audience and what they like after using polls and surveys on Instagram and seeing which products are more popular which grew my empathy for them even more and helped me create better products. Overall, I feel great knowing that I can make jewelry that means something to people.
AETERNUM
This is a course project from the course Publishing in Digital Media, in which I worked in a group to publish a corporate website on Wix for a diegetic prototype based in a dystopian world context. My group and I first started to note down our individual skills and software we know how to use and in that way we were able to distribute our tasks amongst us according to our skill set. Sometimes we broke into smaller groups of two to work on a more challenging task that involved more than one person to complete such as creating video components like an intro video and the company's story video.
Check out our website AETERNUM!
Diegetic Prototype
[dahy-uh-jet-ik]
adjective
Duration:
Tools:
Team:
approx. 3 weeks
Canva, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Wondershare Filmora & Filmii, Wix, Google Docs & Slides, Zoom (team meetings)
Group of 6 students (including myself)
In brief, our version of the world has an issue of overpopulation and extreme environments so we decided to create a diegetic prototype that is a microchip with gene editing technology to modify human lifespans and edit human genes to be able to adapt to the environments. In our world, governments don't exist anymore and corporations like our company AETERNUM govern society. The chip can give certain abilities based on each plan package (Bronze, Gold, and Platinum). The higher the plan, the more abilities one can get from the chip implant.
Disclaimer: our ideas and website is for fictional purposes only.
We planned the content to go on each page of our website on Google Docs and followed a schedule I created for all of us to stay on track. I also organized several team meetings to problem-solve and work on our project together if needed. After completing our website and publishing it, we presented our project outline to the class by explaining our ideas and story, and giving a website walkthrough.
a design or object that exists in a fictional world or environment, influenced by a narrative (characters, plot, etc.)
AETERNUM
Latin phrase
[ahy-ter-noom; ee-tur-nuhm]
eternal, forever
Colour and Typography
Logo design ideas:
Package tiers inspiration
Our subscription packages
Learning Outcomes:
I gained a lot of experience and skills through this project which really challenged my communication and leadership skills but I was able to complete all project requirements along with my group. This was a great opportunity to implement all my skills that I already have like communication and video editing. Coming up with a dystopian world and a diegetic prototype was very fun as well and got us to expand our imagination. I myself used to read many dystopian novels and this project allowed me to create my own dystopian world!
Her Campus at York U
Her Campus at York U is a student club at York University that writes articles for Her Campus Media about topics like lifestyle, trends, advice etc. I currently hold the position of the Director of Marketing as part of the executive team and am responsible for the graphics and social media content for HCYU's social media accounts. I work along with the Vice President of Marketing and we both share responsibilities such as designing graphics and other content, posting, replying to messages and comments etc.
Duration:
January 2022 - present
Tools:
Canva, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest
@hcyorku
@hercampusyorku
Team:
Executive team - Marketing team (team of 2)
A few of my designs for our socials:
Learning Outcomes:
Being part of a student club at university has given me the opportunity to share my creative and design skills as well as be more involved in the York student community. I gained social media management skills and learned helpful content creation tips from my VP of Marketing who has been a great team player! I hope to continue making great content for HCYU and support their goals!
Ice Cream Shop Mobile App UI
This was a small project I decided to work on on my own to strengthen my Figma skills and learn new ways to create designs and prototype using Figma. I followed a UI design for a fruit shop mobile app and made my own version while observing and finding how the designer of the UI created their elements, frames, and interactions. My version is for an ice cream shop mobile app where I played with typography, gradients, lines, squares and other shapes and images.
Duration:
3 days
Tools:
Figma, Figma Community icons, Removebg, Unsplash
Team:
Individual (personal project)
Colour and Typography
My version ✨
The Fruit Shop Mobile App UI guide I followed
Key features which were also part of the fruit shop UI, was the home page with a top picks area to view popular ice cream flavours, a product page with more details including dietary marks (e.g., Peanut-free), and I also created a cart page showing the added items and total charge.
The prototyping/ interactions between each page and elements:
Learning Outcomes:
Through this experience, I learned how to get creative with colours and typography, spacing, and grid-use. I found Figma tutorials and other YouTube videos from designers who use Figma often or professionally, very beneficial since I got some guidance from them and learned some tricks and tips.
I also learned how I can make convenient and inclusive experiences for people using a food-related app especially when it comes to people's dietary needs. In terms of aesthetics, I wanted to make the app look playful and elicit a joyful mood because that's the effect ice cream has on everyone!
I've been through a few obstacles in terms of prototyping and interactions, which I overcame through several fixes and trying to find the root problem, asking why something is happening the way it is, and creating alternatives if something didn't work out. With these obstacles I also made good use of the Figma community and other resources to help me. Overall my self-learning process and passion for UX/UI design grew further more!
iFixit Fast-Fix Guide
In a writing course, WRIT 2201 Effective Writing and Research in Information Technology, we were assigned to write an instructional guide to an audience without any technical background about a fast-fix that has not been published before on the iFixit website. I decided to write a guide on how to replace a foldable grocery cart's wheels. I collaborated with the iFixit Technical Writing Team for project approval, guidance and feedback.
This project involved sharing a proposal, a draft guide and publishing the final guide on the iFixit website. I received an approval of my project proposal from the iFixit Team and worked on writing clear and user-friendly steps and took pictures for the readers. I received constructive feedback from the iFixit Team and eventually my guide was published. My guide helped hundreds of people thus far and it feels great helping people solve their problems just with the help of clear steps and pictures!
Duration:
Tools:
Team:
approx. 3 weeks
Microsoft Word, iFixit website editing interface, iPhone camera, hardware tools for the replacement
Individual (course project) in collaboration with iFixit Technical Writing Team
Check out my iFixit Fast Fix Guide!
Learning Outcomes:
This experience built my communication skills and gave me an amazing opportunity to collaborate with a real team who supported me throughout the whole project. I was able to build my problem-solving skills too and got to write for people who are looking for convenient ways to solve their issues!
Design
Saba's
Garage:
Welcome to my Design Garage! A place where you can find my other cool projects I did on the side ...
VISAMI
VISAMI
VISAMI
Tools used in these projects:
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Canva, Adobe Lightroom, and Processing programming language
Let's Get in
Touch!
Phone
GITHUB
Linkedin
Pssst! Check out my LinkedIn :)