It’s hard to believe it’s been a whole month, but my contract at The Pixel Shop is over. The principals, Vince and Tim, took the whole team out for frozen yogurt on Friday in honour of my last day, which was fun, but it was sad to say my goodbyes. I managed to learn a lot over the month in terms of what really goes on behind the scenes when it comes to web design and development. The coding skills I brought with me came in handy, but now I have some real world experience as well.

I’m on the lookout for my next challenge – wish me luck (again)!

I promised I would post updates on my career situation, and I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve started work as a UX Designer / Interface Developer at The Pixel Shop. What exactly does that fancy title mean? Well, I’m going to be taking on a variety of roles on various projects. Some of it will be front end development, but I’ll also be doing some information architecture, usability testing, and more. Update: In the end, I didn’t do any development or usability testing over the course of this one-month contract. The majority of my work involved marking up text into HTML and entering it into a CMS, as well as testing sites by viewing them on various devices and browsers. Other tasks included information architecture, conversion of images among various filetypes, and creation of copy decks for English text that needed to be sent off for translation into French.

I was first introduced to Vince and Tim from The Pixel Shop a few weeks ago, at Hiring Week for Bitmaker’s 5th cohort. Of course, I was a student in cohort 4, but when the following cohort’s Hiring Week rolled around and I still wasn’t employed, the Bitmaker staff invited me to join in. From there, things moved quickly: our initial chat at Bitmaker was on a Wednesday, then they invited me for a follow up at the office the following Monday, they made me an offer the day after that, and I started work that Wednesday.

I’m really enjoying the experience. I work with a great team, on projects for a variety of clients ranging from small non-profits to big corporations. Every day it’s something new, whether I’m updating existing code or coming up with a new structure for a site that’s being completely overhauled, so there’s never a dull moment. Plus, the location is fantastic, and my commute is about 25 minutes by bike.

Life is good!