My portfolio

You might remember this image from Week 7 of UXDI when I started working on my portfolio

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a bit, might have noticed that my little logo has now appeared in the top right corner along with the links to other social media.  If you're brave you might even have clicked it and found yourself on my portfolio.

This portfolio has been long in the making and is in fact my second attempt.  The point is to show my UX skills off so people can see the sorts of projects I have worked on and my design methodology, and because I like a challenge and I like to learn new things I built it from scratch in HTML and CSS, rather than use a template.  This does mean that its not responsive yet, but I'm working on this and soon it will look just as good on a mobile phone as it does on a desktop.  Normally I would have build it the other way round so it looked good on the mobile first, however I had a deadline to work to.  But I did have the mobile version in mind when designing the desk top, so it shouldn't be to hard to amend.

Feel free to go have a look and if you have any comments do let me know.

Business Cards

After all the work on UXDI to learn about UX design, now I have to go and show potential employers why they should employ me rather than any of the other guys from my course.
First things first - I need a business card!

They arrived today and I'm really excited.  I've never had business cards before and these rather fetching 'green' cards from Moo have come out just how I wanted. 

I designed myself a logo after week 6 - visual design week, but wasn't sure what it would look like in print.  I shouldn't have worried, they came out perfectly.

And I might have got a little excited and bought some stickers too, but they are very excellent.  At least you'll know if I've been around if you find these stuck all over the place.

Knitted poppy

Last summer I came across a knitting pattern for a poppy.  As I'm trying to improve my knitting skills while creating things I actually want I thought it might be quite a nice project.  I ordered myself some wool and had a go.

Detail of the leaf

However, while the stalk, leaf and petals came together quite well I got stuck on the tiny black centre.  I tried so many times to make it and in the end actually snapped the end off one of my bamboo needles! And so I gave up.  I couldn't knit it with one needle.  

Then on the stars and snowflakes crochet workshop a couple of weeks ago one of the ladies had a knitted poppy with a button centre.  Perfect!  I raided my button jar as soon as I got home.

I am so please with how its come out.  I deliberately worked a safety pin into the stalk while making it up so its easy to attached, but maybe a tiny bit too big to wear.  I think it looks great on my bag.

But while this was a nice project to work on and I am happy with the end result I have not forgotten why we wear our poppies.  

We will not forget!

UXDI - Week 10

Me with Ben, Zhenjie and Simon - last rehearsal 

So there it is 10 weeks done and UXDI complete.  Except it’s not really - now the hard work begins as we sort out our portfolios and start to look for jobs.
I have had an amazing 10 weeks!  I’m so glad of all my previous reading, I think I would have found some of it much harder without it, and of course there were ups and downs, but right now I am just amazed at the amount I have learnt and how well our final project went.

Coffee shop paper prototype - a little bit of last day fun

Week 10 was all about Wednesday.  On that day all our clients came, one by one, to hear us present the work of the past 2 weeks. My group were last and the bar was high after watching everyone else’s presentations, but when we finally stood up there it went really well and ALL the feedback was so positive!
To have the client ask if I would continue on the project was another real confidence booster.

The final presentation

I have to say a huge thank you to everyone at GA - not just Andrew and Luis but all the people like Laura and the TA's working behind the scenes just making it all happen.  Also to the rest of the class, everyone has been so nice and supportive - it made it so easy to work with them.

And finally I have to say a massive thank you to ‘im outdoors.  For all the lifts to and from the station, all the dinners cooked for me and for all the UX stuff he’s had to listen to and read every day without a word of complaint.  I might have been able to do it without him, but it certainly wouldn’t have been such a good experience.

Celebrations

So in true UXDI style here are my three key takeaways from the course:
1. Don’t be so precious about your work.  Be ok with chucking it out and starting again (once you’ve taken photos)
2. Take photos of everything, you never know when you might need them
3. Time management is key (I already knew this, but I think it might have been a new concept to some of my class mates)

So now is the start of a brand new adventure.  I don’t know what comes next but I’m excited to find out…

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 on UXDI.