Boosting your career with social media

Check out this great article I found on the .net magazine website.

It talks about the importance of being up-to-date online when it comes to finding employment, especially in this tough economical climate.

It's becoming rapidly clear that if you don't have an online presence, it will be so much more difficult to find work and be involved with your network, especially in the field I'm wanting to enter, Interactive Media.

Being accessible online, gives potential employers the ability to quickly access information about you and contact you instantly, resulting in work hopefully!

Of course, being in the web industry, it'll be very important to have a professional online presence, and therefore the way you conduct yourself online will be very important to consider.

Why Markeaton?

Other than the photo speaking for itself, why did I choose Markeaton Park for my interactive space project?

Well Markeaton Park is the place where I spent a lot of my younger years growing up. It was the park we used to go to and every time I go back I get a strong sense of memories of people I've been with and things we've done there.

Having all those fond memories has fueled me on to create a website that's accessible to children and adults so that both age groups can get the most out of the park. I want to create an environment that is useable by people with partial sight, who are deaf and those with learning dissabilities. As well, of course, as for people who are able in all those factors.

I'm going to be going back to Markeaton over the next few weeks to take photographs and pick up some information about the coming events over the winter season, so I can create this website suitable for the project.

Joel Schafer: 'I'm into minimalistic clean design' January 15, 2008

http://www.designinterviews.com/interviews/599

Love it, love it, love it!
Joel Schafer has pretty much captured my vision when it comes to design. Just like Joel, I love the simplistic but effective design. Using just a couple of colours and adapting space is one of the best ways to design as it keeps things minimal and the information and data you need is right infront of you where you need it.

Even though Joel's interview was short and to the point, I liked that. He told you what you wanted to know but kept you wanting more, which is another great design aspect.. keep the user coming back for more!

Dan Saffer: 'Interaction design is an applied art' August 13, 2008

http://www.designinterviews.com/interviews/interaction-design-is-an-applied-art

Reading this interview with Dan Saffer was really interesting to see how someone who works as an Interactive Designer thinks and uses his time.

What I thought was just as interesting is how similar Dan Saffer is to myself. I found myself agreeing with almost everything he said. On comments I hadn't thought about on my own, I read what he had to say and found myself understanding and wanting to know more about what he had to say. For example,

"What are the core elements of an interaction that web designers measure during the creating process?

Usefulness, usability, and desirability. If your design fills a need in people's lives, works well, and looks beautiful, you've got design gold. There are lots of secondary characteristics that fall under these headings, like efficiency and balance and trustworthiness and a whole host of other traits, most of which can only be fuzzily measured but are important nonetheless."

This was really interesting for me as its gives you 3 main aspects to try and work towards when designing for interaction and general application of creative skill. Usefulness, usability and desirability are the essence of design within the industry and can be applied to almost any interactive content. Even on something such as an electric hand dryer. Usefulness as the user has wet hands and doesn't need to press the button. Usability is simple as the user only has to place their hands under the dry and desirability is there too as it's novel and makes us feel ever so slightly more technically advanced, life's simple pleasures comes to mind.

I also found Dan Saffer quite inspiring in terms of his principles he follows in his work,

'The Way you know is not The Way.' –Tao Te Ching

'A body in motion tends to stay in motion.' Newton's First Law

'If it was easy, then everyone would do it.'

Reading these three really struck a cord with me. Recently in my personal life the first of the three has been quite a prominent feature and something I will have to work on to change, so it was refreshing to see it written by someone else completely unrelated. Also, I think that all 3 of the statements are very true. At the end of the day, if you're working hard and pushing yourself continually with the ability to critically analyse yourself, you're going to go far and develop as a designer and that's why were at University, to learn, change and advance.

Website Completed

Website by ~sammarshall20 on deviantART
Here's the final version of my website! It's fully complete however the videos and audio don't work through DeviantArt so you'll have to just imagine what it'll be like when i load it onto my own website.

Previous work

Here are two images I made a year or two ago that sum up who I am. I think they're both quite relevant and thought I would share it with you to see what kind of things I've worked on in the past.