Digital & Product Design – by Nicole Dominguez – About me

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Digital & Product Design – by Nicole Dominguez – About me

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caf-fair

Slideshow for careers in the arts fair

On Github sodevious / caf-fair

Digital & Product Design

by Nicole Dominguez

Careers in the Arts Fair, 2015

About me

Senior Product Designer & Front End Developer at Sawhorse Media

Self Taught

  • Learned HTML and CSS online
  • Started picking up photo manipulation software
  • Made fan sites and blogs for fun
Explain what Sawhorse does. Muck Rack is a platform for journalists and pr professionals. The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media.

A year later...

Freelance

  • Started doing some gigs on the side
  • Designed busines cards, websites, blogs, flyers, logos, etc.
  • Did it while in school, with any free time I had
  • posted on reddit.com asking for an internship
  • it worked! I got an amazing job
  • spent the summer before senior year there
  • started focusing on user interface and product design
  • worked for various startups doing freelance
  • Lead Designer at reachably
  • Product Designer at NASDAQ OMX
  • Senior Product Designer and Front end Developer at Sawhorse Media

http://nicoledominguez.com/caf-fair/

What about college?

When it comes to design and programming, college is not necessary at all.

Employers look for passion, skill, and a body of work.

(I went for a semester and dropped out)

The Hard Parts

I did a lot of this alone, but I was focused and motivated because I was really passionate about what I was doing.

If you're young, people will try to put you down, but believe in what you're doing and keep going.

What's a Product Designer?

  • define and solve problems of users
  • do the visual interface design
  • research about users. Who are they? What do they need from your product?
  • build prototypes of the product's features for testing

What's a Front End Developer?

We build the parts of a website or web application that users (you!) interact with.

Day-to-Day

doing research to figure out how to make our product better, how to solve problems our users face

code new parts of our websites

wireframing and designing new features of our product

directing designers that are creating our new brand

creating style guides that show people the right way to use our brand

The Good

This job is really fufilling, because you get to create digital experiences that influece people on a day to day basis!

Lots of room for success and "moving up the ladder"

Great technology community: easy to network and find work

The Bad

Sometimes working at startups means long hours and lots of hard work.

Technology changes every day, so you constantly have to be learning new things

The Future

"Chief Design Officer"

More and more companies will realize how important design is to an organization, they will invest more in it.

Coding will become more widespread

Tips

  • Invest time in learning new things, always.
  • Passion will get you really far. Figure out what things make you happy.
  • Keep all of the work you create in an online portfolio (I used tumblr)
  • Network and meet new people. The best way to get a job is through a connection.