I found that all the comments were both encouraging and insightful to see. It was fantastic to see that my academic strengths in User Experience (UX) theory and web development were recognised, and I was further happy that my positive attitude and willingness to learn stood out during my internship. I wasn’t surprised about the comments on struggling with prototyping in Adobe XD, as academically I only knew how to use Figma. I was aware that it was going to be a learning curve switching software but I’m happy that my progress in Adobe XD and ability to pick it up quickly was noticed. I was also delighted to see that my coding background and logical mindset were recognised, helping me quickly learn professional tools like Wordpress when I have no previous experience. I value the suggestion of learning more PHP code as it is used in a lot of web development, and I definitely plan to build upon this skill in the near future. Overall, I think my supervisor’s comments were very fair as they have left me feeling more confident in my skills and abilities professionally and personally. I’ll be taking everything I have learnt from this internship and apply it to my future web development project next semester and beyond.
Towards the end of my internship, I was given the task to develop a website in Wordpress using Bootstrap. Both the software and framework I had never used before and were an industry standard. At the beginning, I was extremely challenged by Wordpress and its unfamiliar structure. I tried to apply my logical thinking and code-based background to familiarise myself and work through the different challenges. I ended up quickly understanding how Wordpress functions and how the industry standard tool of Bootstrap effectively creates responsive web pages through class styling. I explored every bit of the platform necessary to what I was assigned to, researched and read through official documentation and ask questions to the digital team when needed. I used my academic knowledge of UX design and coding to structure a user-friendly website that was both functional and efficient. The biggest thing I’ll take away from this experience is my ability to understand and use Wordpress as it is a vital real-world web development application. Combining Wordpress and Bootstrap provides an extremely functional foundation to web design and for clients who need to regularly update and adjust content. In the future, I will be using Wordpress and Bootstrap development to create all my websites.
Throughout my internship I had to work through real client projects that required UX design skills and attention to detail. These projects not only required attention to detail but also a high level of consistency and accuracy, especially when passing it onto a web developer to build. These projects brought out a tendency, where I always try to be as consistent and accurate as possible. I found myself triple checking designs and making sure the projects aligned with the best practices given to me. This tendency made me realise how much I value the quality of my work and the pride I take in doing so. Whenever I was creating, I consistently reviewed my work, even after really minor changes. I asked for feedback from my supervisor and digital team constantly throughout the day and designed improvements based on what I received. Further, I made extra effort to effectively learn tools in Wordpress and Adobe XD when I was unfamiliar with them. These decisions were all made for a desire to perfect my work. This experience through my internship affirmed my great attention for detail, consistency and accuracy. It affirmed that projects such as these is something that I love to do and further adds value to any professional settings I may be apart of. In future, this strength will be greatly used especially when I land a job in the following years.
In my internship I was introduced to many different tools, one of which being Wordpress. Wordpress requires an understanding of PHP, which is required to develop more advanced functionality and customisation on websites. My coding strengths lie in HTML, CSS and JavaScript and so my experience with PHP was slim to none. With my limited knowledge of PHP, it made my Wordpress project challenging when I wanted to implement more advanced structuring. Getting to implement dynamically changing content on my webpage was a skill that was a must to learn, allowing me to create professional and flexible designs independently. I tackled this weakness of PHP by reading online documentation and asking the digital manager when necessary for guidance. I kept mental notes of when and where PHP was being used, and for which functions it was necessary for. These mental notes will come in handy for when I finish my internship and can focus my learning specifically on it. So, the biggest thing I need to work on and build further is my PHP development skills. Learning a more sophisticated approach and understanding of PHP will let me develop effective Wordpress sites and will expand my area of expertise for future projects. In future, I plan to build upon my PHP skills through practical exercises.
Overall, my internship experience was better than I ever expected. In assignment 2 I anticipated many objectives from practical experience to personal challenges. I gained real-world experience in web development and UX/UI projects, enhanced my current skill base and obtained new abilities in creative problem-solving strategies, which were all anticipated in my previous assignment. I also wanted to gain increased confidence when presenting ideas which didn’t exactly happen as I didn’t have to present in any formal matter. Furthermore, I anticipated gaining a better understanding of industry standard workflows. This was definitely something that I now know pretty well, from what applications they use to manage these workflows such as Workflow Max and Slack to the actual design route they take. All in all, my time at Giraffe Studio was extremely beneficial by improving my interaction design skills to better prepare me for the industry.