Social Bio

 

When creating a social bio I decided to begin by reviewing my own very basic attempt at a social bio shown above. It simply states UX/UI designer which allows viewers to get a clear understanding of my area of interest but not much else. I want to make my bio more personal and informative but I have struggled with this in the past as I have often felt that my solutions sounded cheesy. Therefore, before jumping straight into re-writing my social bio I did a bit of research into what some of my favourite designers have written about themselves.

 

Paul Boag

Instagram: A dad, blogger, author, speaker, designer, husband, entrepreneur, trouble maker, geek, optimist, consultant, and podcaster.

Twitter: UX Consultant and grumpy old man of the web. Tentatively returning to Twitter in the hopes the toxicity has died down. I am not hopeful!

(same image used for both)

Jürgen Leckie

Instagram: Freelance UX designer from Amsterdam. Here I showcase mostly the sketching/concept phase of my process. Make it fun and make it work!

Luke Wroblewski

Instagram: Digital product design & strategy guy in Silicon Valley, CA. Known for Mobile First, Bagcheck, Web Form Design, & more…

Twitter: Humanizing technology. Founded: Polar (Google acquired) Bagcheck (Twitter acquired) Wrote: Mobile First, Web Form Design, Site-Seeing Worked: NCSA, eBay, Yahoo!

 

Review

The first thing that jumped out at me about the above examples is that the above designers have slightly different bios for different social media accounts and tend to share different content on different accounts. All start out with a description of their job/ job title with Leckie and Wroblewski stating where they are from/ based. Of the three my favourite is Paul Boag’s bios as they are more casual and engaging presenting his personality not just a job description therefore I am going to use Boag’s as a model for my own bio.

 

My revised social bio

UX/UI designer and motivational talk junkie. Designer of logos, websites, crazy UI’s and everything in between.

 

About Me

Before writing my About Me section I first generated the word association mind map show above and then answered the following questions.

Who are you?

I am an interaction design student at Ulster University. I have an HND in graphic design and about a year and a half’s experience working with branding and UI design. I am a psychology postgrad and have a great interest in people, their personality and what motivates them to do what they do and love exploring ideas around maximising my own and others potential to be effective, competent and happy. I love watching motivational talks and make a point of doing this regularly. I also have an interest in communication. I would like to improve my own communication skills and like to watch various talks on communication as well as talks around design. I want to further my knowledge of coding and would like to learn JavaScripting and python. I intend to do this between now and the end of the semester so I can begin to freelance making basic websites and package this with creating logos.

Who needs to know?

Potential employers and clients particularly those interested in website design, UX/UI design and branding.

How will they find out?

Word of mouth, testimonials, social media sites, my own portfolio website and through networking in local groups such as meet up.

Why should they care?

Because I feel I have something to bring to a company and to a clients project. I love learning and am conscientious which I feel are really important qualities to have and will be of great benefit to both employers and clients. I also feel that I am creative and enjoy pushing myself beyond my first attempt at a project outcome and creating multiple solutions. I am quite bubbly and enjoy socialising which should make it slightly easier and more enjoyable to work and communicate with me.

I want to make my bio professional but also personal and interesting so that clients and potential employers can get an accurate reflection of my personality.

Brand Dictionary

• create
• beautiful
• love
• skills
• process
• partial
• effective
• outcomes
• results
• solution
• balance

About Me Bio

Hello. I’m Rachel. I am an Interaction Design student at Ulster University. I have a background in psychology and graphic design. For the last year and a half, I have been working in branding and UI design. I love learning and am currently working on developing my coding and animation skills.

I am also partial to a regular motivational talk. I have a particular interest in what makes people tick, myself included. I love goal setting and I am working towards not only designing websites but also building them and adding moving elements. Keep a lookout for what’s coming!

 

What have I learnt?

• It’s great to review how other people talk about a particular subject to get inspiration
• While it is safe to keep things short and to the point, it can be bland and not memorable

How can I apply this to my work in future?

• By making my bio and writing, in general, more informal as seen in my social bio I can present a greater sense of personality
• When struggling with content writing in future I can review the work of others that I feel are achieving the tone of voice I want to present and note the language they use and how they achieve this.