User Experience
I’m loving being able to dip into User Experience as this has been one of my passions for a long time. Before I started the bootcamp, I was employed as a Marketeer and the customer journey’s always intrigued me. It’s my dream job to be able to look into this as well as doing development. Studying new things such as User Research techniques, the psychology behind UX and the learned behaviours of users is interesting for me. I’m enjoying finding out when to change learned user behaviours and when not to. I’ve got my mentor in work who has been doing User Experience for a while now, so it’s been great questioning things and tapping into his extensive knowledge.
User Interface Design
I always knew what I did and didn’t like but I never necessarily felt I had the best design eye. That is, until I started this course. I’m really opinionated over what I do and don’t like so this bit of my role fits in perfectly, too. I love searching through website designs to see what the current trends are in the industry and what I can bring to the table for our projects in work, specifically in FinTech, and I’m truly loving this part of my role as well as UX. Bringing the latest design trends to our products and generally pleasing people with my designs is what I love to do.
Development
At _nology, as a group, we were gathering lots of info on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React and Redux and at Optimum Credit, we’re using the Angular framework. It’s been an adjustment trying to learn all of the things I learned in React again, but I’m loving the challenge so far. At the moment, I’m busy creating a company UI Library using my skills with HTML, CSS, UX, UI and Angular. Every day, I feel my code is improving as I’m learning new things. I’m constantly impressed by how far I’ve come in 6 months. It’s also great to mirror and find new things from developers who have been coding a whole lot longer than me, which means I can get all of the info I need to be successful, much like a sponge. I must admit, first time I’ve been nicknamed a sponge.
Wrapping Up
I think it’s fair to say that at Christmas last year, I didn’t think I’d be here. Things had grown old within Marketing but I feel like both the nology course, and working at Optimum Credit as a UX Developer has reinvigorated my work life. I feel like I’ve got my passion back for what I do, even putting in long hours on some days to ensure I learn that little bit extra or that I complete something I’ve been trying to do for ages.
The one piece of advice I’d give to a career changer is… Go for it. I’m so pleased I did! It completely transformed my career and my life for the better. I’m loving every single minute.