Final Evaluation

Since this is a job and not a internship I will continue working for Quesbook after this class. I’m extremely proud that this is my job and I’m able to do what I love while doing it for an educational reason and help kids do such an important test in their lives. I’ve learned a lot throughout these 3 months with Quesbook. There have been many life, design and experience lessons that have been taught so far.

For my final evaluation, I would say that I’ve been doing an excellent job at Quesbook. I’ve done work in both UI Design and out of the field but that should be expected in a startup. There are too few people to figure out only their positions. I actually don’t mind having to go outside of UI Design. This experience helps me with being a better Product and Visual Designer which I’m both interested in a great amount. My co-workers are amazing and I’ve had excellent experiences with them. Overall I can see myself with the company long-term and hope for future success in the field.

Eleventh Journal

Culture. I’ve mentioned in my last blog post how my director mentors me. This is a huge part of the Quesbook culture. I’ve noticed as new hires are joining the company, all the directors are stepping up and taking a personal interest in their new employees. There are many things about Quesbook culture that I enjoy.

Transparency. This is a huge part of Quesbook. All department files and researches are open for any other department to open and read. This allows for easy access of research. I’m a huge believe that even though each department is different, everyone can benefit from each other. There are always new things to learn.

Improvement. They want everyone to put their future opportunities of growing first. Even if it means leaving the company to grow your opportunities, Quesbook will help you out. The company takes a lot of personal interest in their employees and thats really great.

Tenth Journal

My career at Quesbook has been going amazing till this date and I look at Quesbook as a long term career. My Design Director has been an amazing mentor for me. She is very knowledgable and gives great tips and advice. I feel as if I’m in a unique position where my director has a personal interest in my future.

She has taught me many different things and showed me different opportunities within the creative field. My director wants me to explore different fields within the creative field to determine what exactly I would like to do in the future. Quesbook has this culture that they like to grow their new employees to bigger opportunities, and I definitely feel this with my director. I’ve learned to do many different things, such as Product Design, UX Design and even Quality Assurance.

Eighth Journal

What I learned about 401K

One of the many things I wanted to learn about was the 401K my company has to offer. I lacked knowledge of 401k before my job and wanted to know what exactly 401k does for me. There were many results. I had a lot to think about and mostly how much I wanted to put into this retirement fund. Picking an amount can be difficult due to the fact that it’s difficult to think about the future when I’m 65 years old.

I learned a lot and my company offered a decent 401k plan. I attended a webinar provided by my company. We were allowed to ask questions to the instructor and everything. The experience was great and I learned a lot. They even personally went through with me what exactly I’ll have in my account if I put a certain amount in the account. This was a great learning experience and taught me a lot of my 401k. There were many things like I had to be employed for 3 months to be in the companies 401k plan. I learned in other companies they usually ask for a year of employment, so this was a great deal on my end.

Seventh Journal

Learning About Benefits

The following weeks is my last weeks to choose which benefits I would like to receive from the company. There were many different health insurances to choose from. There were many different options for all types of insurances and the choices were a bit overwhelming. This was due to the fact that this was the first time I ever had to experience choosing health insurance for myself. The experience was new and there was a lot to learn.

What I learned about the process, was that you have to take your time. There was many days of research and being careful of what I choose since I learned you will be trapped in the contract with the insurance till your next contract renewal. I knew that I wanted insurance for sure to be safe and secure my health. Not only did I have to research health, but I also had to research dental, vision, life and even commuter benefits! I ended up going with insurance with no deductibles, because that’s what made the most sense for my current health status. I also chose a life insurance and claimed it to my mother.

Sixth Journal – Design Event

When looking for design events to attend, I found one that had 3 talks and a networking event. The event was Design Driven NYC #32 (A FirstMark Event). It’s a monthly design meetup where the host finds speakers to speak on many different topics within the design world. This can vary from product design, to graphics design, to the actual process of how a design team should work. It’s many different topics and allows the viewer to learn many different perspectives within the field. The three speakers in the event were Tania Philip, VP of Product at Shutterstock,  Orr Shtuhl & Ryan Hines, Product Designers at The Wirecutter and Nir Eyal, Author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. These were three great speeches and here is what I learned.

Tania Philips was a great talker. She discussed the process that a company should take to make a successful product. This included many things such as transparency and being able to discuss issues with your team. She also mentioned interesting things like how the team should be aligned and work at a pace. She also discussed her experience at Shutterstock and what she believed to be the best process to a great product.

Orr Shtuhl & Ryan Hines, were great speakers as well. They discussed their task to rebrand wirecutter. This led them to discuss the many challenges of rebranding a company. Their specific issues were that the company had to two websites that were merging, this set many challenges for them since they wanted to keep the personalities of both old websites. They also discussed how wirecutter was purchased by The New York Times and they had to work with their product team closely. Many challenges for a team who was trying to create something different and owned by a company with generations of reputation. They didn’t want the company to feel to away from the Times but they also wanted the rebranding to feel fresh. They decided on an approach and went full out with the deliverables, they are currently still working on many features like any product team should be. I loved this since my ultimate goal is to become a product designer.

Nir Eyal was the best speaker in terms of public speaking skills. It definitely came off as if he does this for a living, which was great and allowed him to execute his ideas better than other speakers. His main focus was to make a product successful. He believed in this process called hooked. He believed that you have to discovered the psychology of what people really need, and if you’re not solving a problem then your product will never be successful. Which makes complete sense, if it’s not an issue that people want solved then your product won’t be successful. I feel like innovation too is a good way to have a successful company but I also agree it should solve a problem.

I learned a lot throughout the event, and I’m glad it was many materials that I can bring back and incorporate them into my job.

Fifth Journal

Business cards is the topic for this weeks journal. If there is one thing that has taught me that any design material is a process, is designing a business card for Quesbook. I enjoyed every step of designing the business cards and it was a great way for me to continue to learn our business design guide.

The process of designing a business card was very interesting. I was tasked to design a business card that was appropriate for both B2B and B2C. Which had a interesting challenge within itself. Our B2C was a different direction than our B2B. For one example we were using iphone emojis for B2C to market to students. Which is a totally different direction from B2B which was to let schools know we are reliable.

I knew the card would be majority used for B2B and I used many different methods to accomplish this goal. I ended up using our signature swerve of yellow as the side of the background and our signature underline highlight for the titles.

Fourth Journal

The following weeks has been very interesting and entertaining. Here at Quesbook we have been implementing our new branding guideline to all our different types of media. Our new website is finally up live and we have been working on other products that will be introduced in the future. For now, we are working with a new color palette we call highlighter. It gives more emphasis on the color yellow as the primary color.

Many of the projects have been visual projects, which is not surprising since I’m the UI Designer. I’ve so far worked on projects from everything from the website interface to business cards. Here are some examples of the work live:

Being part of the process for the new branding guideline has been interesting and helped me learn a lot. There are many factors that go into such a design change and it has to match with the voice of the company. The process has been great and there is a lot I’ve been learning.

Third Journal

After a week for working for the company, I think I have a fair understanding of the culture. Everyone Director respects each others works and always communicates among the goals of the company. This was a great source of communication. The company is very casual among clothes. The departments that dress a bit more formal will be the business side.

My office is open work area and everyone is in close quarters to speak and grab each other for any questions if there may be one. The office is beautiful and offers many different services. They use a WeWork office for their space. WeWork is a incredible company when it comes to office space. Its beautiful and makes the vibe good.  Everything from the kitchen to the bathroom are just beautiful interior designs. There is even a small common store in the office! Our typical hours is a choice among us. We either get to choose 9-6 or 7-10. We get one hour of unpaid lunch.

Everyone is kind to each other and the office is pretty laid back. We all respect each other and have one goal in mind, to improve the company. Everyones super excited for launch and attempting to make SAT/ACT experience better for students.

Second Journal

It’s been a week since I started working for Quesbook. This week has been great and very productive. I’m the Junior UI Designer for Quesbook. My job is to design the interface for their SAT/ACT prepping website. I also do other interface designs such as designing their triggered emails when a new user registers and other actions within the website. I’m also designing their new branding language and contributing to a interface library for future uses.

My supervisor is Silvia, she’s the Art Director for Quesbook. I came across this position while looking for a job. I knew I wanted to jump into a UI Design job and seeing Quesbook have a listing for a Junior position and expect 0-3 years experience was a great opportunity for me to jump into the field. When reading the description it was clear that I had the skill sets they were looking for.

The process was both short and long. It took me 2 weeks to get hired but the interviews were long. I had one phone interview which lasted 10-20min. Here I was assigned a UI design assignment to test my skills. The topic was interesting. I had to design a UI for a movie ticketing website. Making it easy and efficient for users to buy movie tickets. It also had to have a beautiful UI design. The in-person interview was long. I had a interview with the Art Director, Recruitment Director and CEO. I also had to present my project in front of their Art/Marketing and Business Director. The interviews with each person lasted a while and it took a total of 3 hours. I got the job offer the Friday before Labor day. That was 4 days after my interview.

During the interview I was asked many different questions. Since I presented my UI design it seemed like they were less curious if I had the skills and more interested in my personality. I was asked questions about my passions and why they should choose me. The questions were related to communications and my interest in the design field. They were curious to figure me out as a person.