Today I will be talking about the event I went to in Brooklyn which isn’t too far from CityTech. It was in the Flatiron school building. It was a fireside chat about UX/UI, and how to get your foot in the door to a career in UX/UI. They do try and promote access labs which is a bootcamp curriculum that gets people skills in jobs in the industry as coders and designers for UX/UI.
Though some of it was a promotion for the school, it was a great way to learn about the industry including getting to hear people answers questions about the industry. We all introduced ourselves and got to know a little of why everyone was there. I learned exactly what people in UX/UI do, and what it is specifically. To put it directly it is the experience someone has before/after they are using the product. The UI serves as the cosmetics of the body. I learned about the importance of colors and psychology. Most importantly I learned about how crucial it was to have empathy for the user. To do your research on how the user uses the product is also very important.
A user should find things very easy to use without even noticing how convenient the technology they are using is. The industry and technology are always changing so you have to be willing to change along with it.
What exactly is an interface? A point where two organisms meet and interact. So it’s important to know how versatile that definition could be used when talking about UI. Some programs used in the industry are Sketch, Photoshop, After Effects, Invision, Keynote, Principal, Illustrator etc. Some of these were new to my knowledge so it was really nice to learn about them.
One last cool thing I learned about is a wonderful website called https://www.siteinspire.com and it’s a great website for getting inspiration from websites that have great UX/UI. The person giving the talk highly recommended. it. One of them used to be a product manager, and switched to UX/UI and also teaches.
Below is a pic of the chat. It was pretty amusing that they had a screen of a fireplace. They gave us free pizza as well, which was very nice of them. overall it was a very cool chat. My pics aren’t the greatest but I didn’t want to be too obvious taking pics.
