Q & A - A few questions I have been asked and researched with answers I have given based on experiences.
What makes you a good designer?
Design as a profession is a juggling act. Working to create something that incorporates a client or mds specifications as well my own design sensibilities. Sought-after qualities in this field that I have learn't and established well include communication, curiosity, passion, ability to take criticism, problem-solving, patience, and reliability.
What makes you a good UI designer?
Visual elements, interactions, or animations all within the graphical layout of an application is a part of design and development for me. I feel the best initial approach to this is to begin from the marketing. I will question what needs to be displayed, why and how it can be displayed and function to lead the visitor to where we want the visitor to go and all that is pushed by the visual elements, the flow in which is interacts with the user and the user interacts back and how it alerts the user of it's existance.
What makes you a good UX designer?
It's the experience of interacting with the UI and again looking at the marketing of the UI that determines how the interface operates. As a great quote I once heard "Designing in a vacuum leads to less than ideal results." Their is a certain amount of iterative analysis involved in the way I approach the UX initially creating a wireframe, prototype rendering of the interface interactions and getting user, management and team feedback were communication is key.
What experience do you have in creating digital and print marketing materials?
Starting as a graphic designer back in 1997 at the age of 16 working with new clients, I later moved in to web development but keeping on track with design, the knowledge of web and app development helped me move into UI and UX design, holding them altogether and keeping up with modern changes within design I have gained the ability to design to a developer environment and a user perspective.
What type of design work do you enjoy the most; print or digital? How do you find transitioning between the two?
I find both print and digital to be different entities yet both can work hand in hand, as a graphic designer I take the side of marketing with a view to producing marketing materials, as a digital designer working in web and apps I take a user perspective with an Ideation on Usability Testing, looking at the User Journey, Research & Testing
Describe your creative process. What are the major steps?
I provide a proven digital strategy and offering a creative direction through Wire-framing and Prototyping, looking at the user journey and functionality.
Describe your experience delivering projects in a team setting, including team size and make up, and your role.
Being an agile, highly organised, energetisc, creative problem solver with over 20 years experience as a modern creative designer, a frontend, backend developer, I have provided a proven digital strategy and offering a creative direction through Wireframing and Prototyping with Ideation on Usability Testing, looking at the User Journey, Research & Testing having the experience and knowledge to push projects from beginning to launch.
Tell us about your experience and comfort level communicating, consulting, and otherwise interacting with clients.
Considering myself to be a polished and professional individual. I've always aspired to help people get the most from their project liaising to with a growth mindset. Creative direction is my nature and problem solving whilst discussing different routes and possible outcomes.
Tell us about a time when you were contacted 'off hours' by a customer who, from their perspective, was confronting an urgent issue that was actively harming their business ( such as a site outage ). If you haven't experienced this, just share your thinking.
I have experienced this in which a site was down due to unpredicted amount of traffic that day, which had shown our marketing and user experience on the website had done well, whilst discussing the issues with the client over the phone I had the ability to access and route through to the site in which it was a simple bandwith issue in which they had eceeded. Whilst the client was happy to stay on the phone I moved the site to another server and the very next morning discussed with the client how we can upgrade their server to work with the incoming ecommerce traffic.
Describe a time when you had a conflict at work.
Previously within employment as a Project Manager for an interactive ecommerce store we were tasked to create for a high end fashion shop. We were on a tight deadline, however, the developer would miss meetings and inform the team at the last minute aswell as lack communication.
I brought up the issue with her and explained how it affected the progress of the team. I suggested that she could be responsible for deciding when to meet if the other previous times didn’t work in her favour. As it turned out, she had a number of other projects which invariably left her with a schedule with few slots.
After our conversation, attendance increased and we were able to complete the store on time.
As with most client-services focused agencies, it is important (for both our company and our clients) to have good visibility into our projects and how things progress over time. Briefly describe your experience with time tracking and your thoughts around the practice.
As well as the security and version control, time tracking is just as inclusive in my routine in which I have worked with various time management software (Harvest, Time Doctor).
