I am still working on the insights interest feature as well as other things that need to be designed. The redesign interests feature is a high priority project and that is the reason why I have to work on it before anything else. We got another designer involved in the project, she created the brand and style guides of the company. Right now she is only giving me feedback and suggestions to make the transition easier.

We held a meeting last week and I ran the whole thing presents my designs and suggestions. It was nerve wrecking because again I am not comfortable presenting in front of people. My designs were well received but still have more changes to make to the interests feature. Right now I am working on Round 2 and making a even simpler design just because they don’t want to make things harder for the programmers and engineers. My opinion, there aren’t probably enough funds to pay them to make these big changes. That portion of the staff is outsourced for a reason and the company is a start-up company.

I am strictly sticking to wireframes at this point to make it easier on me and them. Other than this I am consider taking additional classes to learn more about UI/UX.

A PDF of the wireframes I am working on: Insights Version 1

There haven’t been any events at my company so far and I have not met anyone in this internship that I would consider a role model or a mentor. To me a mentor is someone who brings out the best in yourself and pushes you beyond what you think you can accomplish. So I have not had that yet at my internship. I do admire the hard work that the founders of the company put into their business. They are very entrepreneurial and ambitious. With that said I do have a mentor and role model, who pushed me further than anyone. It was my senior project professor who believed immediately in my idea and through that idea I created my campaign in mediums that I thought I was not able to do. Thanks to my mentor my project was selected for the student. I believe in myself more than I have ever, I am confident in my work and enjoy it much more than when I started to pursue my Bachelor’s for one last time.

Because of my role model/mentor I am at Wedidit. They believe in me and trust me with many tasks at once. Today I was assigned the redesign the isights interests feature on the software platform. This feature gives non-profit organizations the option to see all the interests of donors or potential donors through their twitter feeds, facebook posts, etc. To me its a bit scary the fact that a company can gather information on a person without that person knowing but that is for another discussion. The interest feature can be a very long page depending on the person who might have many interests, and the original layout can be very confusing. I have to find a better solution for it visually; I finished two rough drafts versions and finalizing the two drafts by end of day Monday. I am grateful for the opportunity and that I have someone to look up to you.

Insights Interests Feature

Hello Everyone,

Every Wednesday I attend a workshop for a few hours and this week the workshop was a open panel that had 4 guest who where entrepreneurs or had a very successful companies. I liked they advice they gave us about networking and succeeding, they mentioned about having a personality. In other words one guy said something that stuck with me “A quiet mouth won’t feed itself.” meaning we have to be vocal and not be timid in the work field. This is especially important for me because I am very timid and I hate presenting myself and selling my work. This is crucial and I have been working on it.

For my internship, I just started working on stage one of the redesign of the software platform. It’s challenging in it’s own way, I have to make sure that my wireframes make sense and easy to read for the developers. I also noticed that I keep trying to go ahead 10 steps ahead by actually designing details in illustrator and Photoshop. Thankfully I am almost completely done with stage one, from here we need to schedule a conference call with the developers and engineers in Buenos Aires to see what are the limitations of the design and functionality.

Today I learned there was a urgent need for some illustrations for the blog that are available to their subscribers; I was given end of day deadline while still trying work on the software platform redesign. To me this is great because I have worked with various companies for the last 10 years; YES 10 YEARS!. Some of you know me as the older gal who has a ton of experience while others don’t know me. I have been in the design industry for a while, I decided to finish my Bachelor’s just a year ago. Companies will have last minute requests and give you daily tasks while still working on longer term projects. It’s all about managing your time and being able to multi-task while still meeting all of the deadlines. I felt great knowing that they trust me to give me various projects to work on simultaneously and are confident that I can deliver on time.

The theme blog is “The Fundraising and Marketing Rift, and How To Fix It” which I had to design an illustration that matches this along with quotes. They wanted something similar to the illustrations that the New York Times have for their articles online. My supervisor wears many hats since it’s a start-up company, he is the marketing specialist but he also has to write copy for these blogs as well as social media posts. We both collaborated on this project, he has some suggestions but he mainly just focused on writing the article while I designed the graphics for the blog. We had another intern proofread the article. Any questions I would address them with my supervisor via Slack. While discussion i mentioned  I wanted to design something fun with texture and somewhat neutral but easy to read for its intended audience. This was successful because it is creating buzz online. I also volunteered to created a downloadable PDF version for their clients, which I created that in InDesign.

http://blog.wedid.it/the-marketing-and-fundraising-rift

“The Fundraising and Marketing Rift, and How To Fix It”

Currently I am working on the software platform that Wedidit uses and offers its clients. All the suggestions that were given by the employees as well as the interns were condensed into a doc and given to me. We have broken down the redesign into three stages and they are in a hierarchy of level of difficulty. Stage one is the simply one with minor changes and changing a few things here and there. Stage two is medium difficulty and obviously stage three is the hardest. I am a bit nervous because I told them that I would create wireframes as well as the final graphics that would need to be provided to the developers and engineers. I am worried that I bite off more than I can chew, or I put my foot in my mouth.

I want to go above and beyond and have great pieces for my portfolio, have the experience in my resume, and have my supervisor give me great references.

The Many Qualities of a Designer

The Many Qualities of a Designer

I have been testing their platform along with the other interns. Wedidit has us using the platform they same way that their employees and clients us it, they want to us to find bugs and anything that simply doesn’t make sense. Since they are used to using the software regularly they can overlook bugs or options that aren’t user friendly. I was able to find things that weren’t user friendly as well as icons that were hard to read.

For example when exporting a campaign, there is an option for slideshows with captions and those captions were in white, font size 10 and very thin. If something is a caption it should be bolder and stand out more. Also the redundancy of a instructional video that would pop up every time I would edit my campaign. That video should only pop up once and that is when you are just starting to build a campaign to guide you through it. There many other things that were brought up by the other interns and all of these things will be condensed into a doc and that will be handed to me to start the UI/UX design process.

I am excited and a bit nervous, I want to make sure that I can finish everything that is assigned to me in the little time that I have in this internship. I have heard many students during their internships do not get to finalize their projects. Keeping my fingers crossed.

My role currently at Wedidit is UI/UX designer and my supervisor is the Inbound Marketing Specialist. I was able to get this internship via the Brooklyn Tech Triangle Program which several school participate in. I signed up for the program and I had was given the ability to apply for several companies. If a company is interest they will invite the potential intern to be interviewed. I was selected by several companies and i scheduled my interviews during the speed interview event. Fortunately for me I already had an internship lined up for me if i wasn’t selected during the interviews but that internship wasn’t paid. Several companies reached out immediately and selected me and I was matched through the program with Wedidit.

On another note, just an update on my internship….

One of the things that Wedidit likes to be involved in is networking events and stay active on the social networking channels. I have been assigned to work on an e-invite for a networking event that for a company that they work with. It is a networking event that will take place in mid July and its where non-profit employees can mingle and discuss interests and their involvement in the npo world. So that was quite easy considering that they have given me total creative freedom because they trust my skills in design.

I am also working on some social media art pieces that contain quotes. They are inspirational and geared toward non-profit causes. It is easy but difficult, its easy design wise but finding the right image and making sure it is royalty stock free is a pain. Also any image can easily change what the quote stands for. I have also created some banners for their webinars that are open to their clients.

I am enjoying this experience, it’s different and relaxing.

My Reaction During Networking Events (The nervous guy in the front)

I am currently interning at Wedidit and my internship position is UI/UX design. Wedidit is a company that helps nonprofits raise more money and reach new donors online. They have a software platform that gives the nonprofit organizations more information on potential donors as well as helping them set up donation campaigns. The office is a share spaced that is shared along with about 10 other companies and it is located in the DUMBO area of Brooklyn.

This is a start-up company which means work hard, play hard. The schedule is very flexible but when you get to work you are required to give it your all. People normally stroll in at 10am, I am normally the second person there since I usually arrive 9ish and the ending time is 6pm for most. Some of their employees work 2-3 days from home and in house the remainder of the week. We are allowed to wear whatever we want as interns but the employees need to dress up when they have clients coming in to visit, dress to impress. From what I noticed it’s very laid back which is great.

The first few days I have been in training, learning as much as I can about the company. I have been watching webinars, videos, reading their blogs. The CEO and my supervisor wants us to understand the company before we start to dabble with any of the work that will be assigned to us. This makes sense to me since research is very important when designing for any company.

I am looking forward to this internship as I haven’t done web design in a while and UI/UX is a whole another take on web design. I am grateful for the opportunity given to me by Wedidit.

Graphic Showing The Difference Between UI/UX

I am a very diverse designer with over 10 years of experience in brand identity, graphic design, web design, animation, multimedia, eCommerce, advertising, and entertainment. This also includes front-end development including HTML, XHTML, CSS as well as leading strong campaigns in advertising both offline and online, with an understanding of interactive design, user interface and social media.

Specialties: Advertising Art Direction, Graphic Design, Brand Identity, Illustration, Print & Web Design and Animation