CV and Cover Letter

SeanDowney-CVupdated

Cover Letter

Proposal & Invoice

Hill street Belfast proposal

Invoice

Presentation Pitch

Product Pitch (1)

Before starting my product pitch. I drew out a mind map to help me come up with different ideas.

From using my best ideas I wrote down a sentence explaining what product would be.

Once I decided on my final product idea I made some sketches which would help me with my pitch. Below I drew images of a rough schedule/social story and few pitch ideas which represented a Mask, Injection/Needle, Temperate Gun, Guidelines, Pull out comic Book and Vaccine Card.

Hill Street is a street full of rich and interesting history. Yet there is no site for it. Before I started creating my proposal, I wanted to find out about the history of this famous street and it’s building. It was important I had some knowledge before starting off.

Research

The Street

From the blackboxbelfast.com “Hill Street, a narrow-cobbled street running from Waring Street to Talbot Street, was first depicted on the 1757 map of Belfast as an entry running off Waring Street, the entry was originally known as Pott-House Lane due to the presence of a pottery shop along the street.”

Buildings

The warehouse which is now home to the art and entertainment venue the Black Box was originally owned by Bass, who were an English Brewers. They occupied the site up to mid-20^th century. During that time the warehouse had survived heavy bombardment of the Belfast Docklands during the 1941 Blitz.

One of Belfast oldest buildings in Hill Street is now home to the Dirty Onion and Yardbird has vast 300 year old history. It was originally a warehouse which traded things from fish and tea to tinned shop and whisky, etc.

Other places of mention include:

• The Thirsty Goat

• 44 Hill Street

Murals

This street is also well known for its icon murals. This mural is named “The Duel of Belfast, Dance by Candlelight” by Conor Harrington. It offers some stark perspective on the Troubles and political turmoil the world over.

Human Centered Design

Human Centered Design is a creative approach to Problem Solving which is commonly used in UX design. Human Centered Design is a process which is based around people you’re designing for and eventually coming up with a valid solution which meets the needs of users.  It’s important the design you create is catered to the specific needs to meet their requirements. It’s important to come up with ideas which they will embrace. Human-centered is about basically building a repour with your audience and importantly sharing what you’ve created, then getting your ideas out in the world with them.

Its also important to consider:

• How you think?
• What you do with it?

Human Centered Design is broken down into 3 main phases:

1. Inspiration- This is where you be bold and creative as possible trusting the process and listen to your target audience and become invested in their lives and therefore start to evolve your design once you fully understand their needs.
2. Ideation- In this phase you its important to come up with a lot of different ideas no matter how crazy or innovated. Then refine your ideas by getting rid of bad and making improvements to the good. During this phase you will learn, grow, and test your ideas. Building a simple prototype and allowing yourself to receive feedback and advice with your target audience so you know how you can improve. Keeping testing your protype you’re your happy.
3. Implementation- During the implementation phase you will start to bring your idea to life by working with others to help improve your idea until you are happy. The eventually to share your idea with others in the community which is the main goal from the start. You know it’s a successful from your target audience.

By following these steps you’re on to a winner.

Just remember with a human centered design, everyone will benefit from it.

Reflection

I felt this was an interesting article to read and it give me a better understanding to human centered designs. I thought it was very insightful and the video was on the webpage was very engaging and eye catching. It’s important with anything I design now and within in the future, that I do my best to base it around the needs of my users as they will be main audience. I would recommend UX designers and student look at this site in order to help them learn about what human centered design and how they could use it to better their design process.

For my Proposal project I was asked to create an invoice document. As I’ve never created an Invoice before I researched online examples of invoices. Below I have attached my own example invoice as a PDF document.

Invoice

In this document I have included:

• Company Details
• Client Details
• Due Date
• Payment break down
• signature

Reflection

On reflection I’m uncertain to weather to include just the deposit and final payment or the deposit, 4 weekly payment and final payment. I’m interested in learning what my class mates have suggested.

I have been requested for this project to write and design a PDF proposal document. This proposal will include the expectations and deliverables needed to create a website and brand which presented Hill Street in Belfast. Before starting my proposal it was important I carried out research on how to write a proposal, so I had a better understanding when creating my own what type of things I may mention.

Proposal

Below you can access my Proposal by clicking the link.

Hill street Belfast proposal

When creating my proposal I wanted to make sure I had a clear layout from the beginning. I wanted to make sure the content I included in each section was understandable and so the client know what was specifically happening in each step of process.

At the beginning of the proposal I included a Title page with brief details of the heading, subtitle, company, author and date.

In the beginning of the document I included a table of contents so they knew clearly were each section was and Version history so the client knows how many times it’s been edited or changed.

The following section included:

• A project overview-which was a brief description of the project I would be working on.
• The project approach- this is where I explained to the client how I plan on completing this project.
• The Scope of work- in this section I identified the roles of both the client and the company.
• Assumptions- What the client can expect upon competition of project.
• Deliverables- in this section I clearly stated to the client what work they could expect to see each week.
• Ownership/rights- The type of contact and who it’s owned by
• Additional Free/Costs- included information about any additional costs.
• Project Pricing and Payment Schedule- Stated when payments should be made and the overall cost of the project
• Acknowledgment and sign off – agreement between designer and client in order for me to start the project.

Reflection 

It took time to undertake this project but I felt I made great effort completing this project. I made sure I kept the text and headings consistent in each section to make it look professional. I felt it was an interesting challenge as I haven’t had much previous experience creating a proposal. I feel now a lot more knowledgeable and aware of how to design a proposal. Therefore I feel I’ll be more confident in creating my own in the future. When doing any future freelance work a proposal may be a good tool when communicating to my client in  written form what I am going to do in order to achieve the required outcome.

Improvements

As a future UX designer I will take time to design an unique front cover for any design proposal I write which will represent my brand colours I write. Also when I gain more experience I may decide to charge more for my services.

Portfolio Site 

https://www.figma.com/proto/F9OtU31IPAodcVJOW2YQJG/Elements-Product-Updated?page-id=0%3A1&node-id=2%3A3&viewport=241%2C48%2C0.25&scaling=scale-down&starting-point-node-id=2%3A3

Elements Project

https://seansportfoliosite.webflow.io/

Web portfolio Reflection

I thought this was a very successful project. The aim was to make it professional which would hopefully attract potential employers and follow UX designers to my site. Following the feedback from the class I made the necessary changes. After making my improvements I got further feedback from my class. The home screen I used a plain black background to make my text stand out and visually appealing to the user. I made sure the typeface, colour scheme and structure of content were all kept consistent throughout the website following advice received from my lecturer. I agree it enhanced my portfolio site. During the first week our lecturer gave a quick recap of using HTML and CSS which we had learnt in first year and using our knowledge taught us how to use web flow which I thought was extremely useful for this project.

I gathered inspiration and learnt a lot from looking at past student’s portfolios, especially Calum Dixon portfolio as I particularly liked his simplistic layout which I thought was effective. This helped me to create my own site and I certainly took inspiration from his portfolio.

How I could improve my site?

In the future I would like to learn how to add accessibility features and images to my portfolio site, so it is all inclusive for people with various disabilities. For example, people who are visually impaired, I would like to have option to make my text and images larger, clearer, and brighter so they too can access my portfolio site. I would also like to improve the look and feel of my overall site as well as making it responsive with mobile and other devices. This is an area that I would definitely need to work on the adaptability of my site as I worked on the website but need to make sure it is accessible and works on mobile, tablets and other hand held devices.

Elements Reflection

I was pleased with my outcome of the elements project. I felt each page was simplicist and colorful, which would appeal to primary school pupils. The information is displayed in a visual and interesting way. I used clear images to represent each element and cut out the background to make the images stand out on screen as I feel they will appeal to the curiosity of primary school pupils. I used language which I felt primary school pupils would understand. The Icons and facts represented at bottom of each page is clear and very eye catching which appealed to primary school pupils.

The research I gathered from my survey of primary school pupils really helped me to see what their understanding was of the elements in the periodic table. It gave me a great basis to start this project and allowed me to cater to their needs. I choose to design it for an IPad as from research I realized most pupils use them in primary school.

How I could improve?

Possibly I would like to draw out my own images of the elements and to create my own Icon set instead of getting images from the internet.

I would like to have shared the elements project with the same primary pupils I done the questionnaire with and receive some feedback on:

• What have they learned?
• Did they find it easy to use?
• Did they find it interesting?
• Was it engaging?

Using the feedback from the pupils I would make further improvements to elements project taking on board their thoughts and opinions.

Improvements

Following the feedback I received in Week 11 I made some improvements/changes to my original porotype design.  Firstly I tried spacing out information to make it clearer. Then I tried to align my content and removing background images on my photos according to make it more professional looking as suggested by another class member. I also redrew the lines as they looked a little faded. I also decided to add an Icon set which Kyle suggested. Finally I wanted to make sure the content was linked properly meaning the user could click on a specific element and it would take them to that one. Same with when click back to the home it will take them straight back.

Final Elements Project screens

Below you’ll see the final version of my Elements Project

Elements Project