Tag: education

Posted on

My Experience in Professional Practices in Interactive Media

What Surprised Me 

The thing that surprised me the most was that I knew that developing a presence is important and was something I was already doing but I didn’t know how much I was missing to make my presence even stronger. I had a website already but because of this class I have improved it and improved my LinkedIn account as well. I had a lot of important things missing or that needed work done and because of this class, I have improved on a lot of things concerning my professional presence. 

How Will I Apply This Class to My Professional Life 

This class has many things that will be applied to my professional life. Almost every assignment will be applied to it. My business card, research on careers, my resume, and website, just to name a few, will all help me in the future.  

Skill and Knowledge This Course Suggested I Needed  

This class taught me that I still have a lot of things to work on. One of the things that taught me that was learning that the career choices I am interested in have a lot of competition and I am going to have to set myself apart from others and gain more knowledge and skills to get the job/jobs I want. There are some technical skills that I need to learn like software to learn and how to do better research and be more efficient on my work, but a lot of the skills I need to improve on are the people skills and getting more connections in my industry and overall improving my professional presence. I also need to work on my time management skills as that is something I struggle with in general and also something this course has shown me I needed to improve. 

How Can I Improve These Skills and Knowledge 

Technical skills will be easier to improve as that will just take practice and time to learn new skills. The people skills and better professional presence will also take practice and time but will also challenge me more to put myself out there more and put myself in situations where I would use these skills. I will have to go out of my way to chase these improvements which will take longer but will be worth it in the end. There is a lot of research I could do on how to improve specific skills or find out what I need to do which I will need to look at to help prepare me for the real world and my career choice. It all just comes down to putting myself out there and putting in the work.  

An Important Thing I Learned 

The biggest thing I learned is that professional presence and connections are more important than I initially thought, making it very good that I realized this before getting into the real world.  

Something I Wish Was Included 

This isn’t really about the subject matter in the class but its how I took the class. I had to take it online in a completely different setting alone which made this class much harder and less helpful so a lot of the work and things I needed to learn were on me to learn which can be a bad thing and a good thing. There was a lot of information I missed out on having taken it online and made a class that is typically one of the more important classes because it helps set you up for after graduation less impactful because I didn’t get the full experience. Overall, my experience in this class was okay, I just wish I didn’t have to take it online like I did. 

Posted on

My Experience in User Experience Fundamentals

What I Liked 

The thing I liked most about this class was the fact that we got to work on making a prototype of an app. I have always been interested in making and designing things, especially apps and games and in this class, I was able to design a prototype for an app that had game like features, so it worked towards both of my interests. Creating everything from the beginning with not much knowledge on how to do so was challenging but also very fun. I got to learn more about designing things, which is something I also enjoyed. I also liked doing the topic posts, at times they felt very tedious, but it was fun researching these topics and writing about them as they all allowed me to learn more about things I am interested in. 

What I Didn’t Like 

What I didn’t like about this class was the number of little assignments mixed in with the big assignment. I did enjoy the topic posts but sometimes it just felt like it was just adding to the stress even if I learned some things from it. Time management with this class and others became a big struggle for me. Learning Figma from scratch was also hard but fun to learn in the end but still, added to that stress of time management with all the things I had to do and learn. 

What I Learned  

I learned a lot in this class, from the technical, and hands on experience to the LinkedIn learning courses we took, I ended up learning about things I had little to no experience with which was great because I would probably end up using the things I learned to help me in the future with my career. I got to learn a lot with the topic posts too which was nice. Learning Figma and how the app building process works was by far the most interesting and fun, as that was a more hands on experience.  

What I Wish I Learned  

I know this was the first time learning Figma for most if not everyone in the class but learning some more advanced tips or just more advanced things for not only app designing but in general would’ve been nice so I would be more knowledgeable for the future. 

What I Didn’t Take Seriously Enough 

Something I didn’t take seriously enough, and this goes for all my classes, is time management. I struggle with managing my time throughout all of my classes, as a lot of assignments at once can stress me out.  

How I’ll Apply This to My Career 

This class showed me a lot of things, from designing an app and its IA, to usability and accessibility, to user testing, to building a working app. One of my career choices and something I am interested in is UX design so all the things I have learned in this class will be helpful in some way. This class is actually what made me consider UX design in the first place. Something that this class has taught me that will help me in whatever career I chose will be project management and making sure things are delivered on time and done on time, along with working under pressure. This class is a class that has had one of the biggest projects I have had so it taught me a lot in that sense. I plan to continue to build the skills and knowledge that I have gained from this class on my own, as I am sure they will help in the future. Overall, I had a good experience with this class and made some friends along the way too.