Sasha Lu

[juniornewbie-blog]

My internship experience. Week ten. The End.

    The official last week of my internship has passed, and It is the time for my last blog post. It is hard to believe that a year has passed so quickly. On my last learning week, I wear working on my project, preparing for presentation and finishing my feedback on a course.

     On Monday Jon gave me additional information about the website and answered my questions. I got an opportunity to continue its work. I spend Tuesday creating Personas based on provided information. My next step is to create a use case scenarios. I assume that I can finish the entire project before the end of the first week of September.     

     On Wednesday, I was editing the video and preparing my speech for presentation. Unfortunately during my presentation, for some reason, the video played without sound. It distracted me, because  I was going to tell more about my daily routine and schedule, introduce my supervisor, and tell the story about me organising my working process at home, during the video.  But on the whole, I am satisfied with my performance. It was very interesting to listen to my classmate's presentations. I am glad that it was a good experience for everybody and many of them get work proposals after the end of their internships.

  On Friday, I translated my draft of Course reflection, but unfortunately was not be able to upload it on time, because my internet was not working for some reason. 

  To sum up, I want to say that this week has been busy and intense, like the rest of the school year. It's hard to say if I'm glad that it came to an end. Because I already miss for my classmates and teachers.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My internship experience. Week nine. Almost at the finish line.

    It's hard to believe that nine weeks of my internship has passed. Moreover, my last semester is coming to its end. I'm nervous but excited at the same timeA lot of stuff has been done, and much remains to be done, both regarding my current project and for myself as a professional.

      For this moment, I finished Mission Statement for canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca, extended the First Impression report after conducting the additional height level testing of website and researched potential users of the site by myself. I still need feedback from Jon to be hundred percent sure that I'm on a right track, though. I can not say that this is a big problem at the moment because I still have time until the end of the summer to finish all my work.

      All the rest of the time I spent preparing for my presentation, practice my speech and writing  IMM reflection. After my first draft of presentation deck, I felt unsatisfied with the result. My mistake was preparing a slide at the beginning and writing a speech script based on it, not vice versa. So I decided to redo it and make more consistent with video and my speech. Fortunately, this was more structural changes, and it didn't take a lot of time. I also reduced the amount of textual information on the slides to prevent distraction of the audience from my talking.

     I decided to start the presentation with a few words about the company and where it's located. After that show a short video about their Daily routines including photos both from my office and home. Then I will speak directly about our first project, its objectives, our progress, problems and difficulties what we faced, and this experience influenced me. The only thing is left to do - is to edit the video, but I think I will not have problems with this task.

     As I said at the beginning of the post, I'm excited about our last class, and I'm sure that final presentation will be entertaining and informative for everyone.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My internship experience. Week eight. Work continues.

      We are one week closer to the end of our internship and it time to report you my progress.  As I sad in the previous post, after I finished my First Impression report for canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca.. I sent it to Jon but unfortunately didn't get any respond yet because he is busy right now.  But I had a chance to speak with Terri and present my foundings.  We had a brief conversation about the current state of the website and I asked her my questions, but she was not able to provide me with all the necessary information. So I'm still waiting for Jon. 

    Because at the moment, I have more free I decided to prepare for the next steps. Right now I'm writing Project Statement for CGE project, preparing the base for Personas and researching Canadian Government market and policies.  I hope that when Jon will come beck I will be able to present him both First Impression report and Project statement, after that, with his find beck and additional information, I will continue with the creation of Personas and User Journeys in no time. 

     I also started  working on my final presentation. I created the structure of now I'm filing some slides with content. I'm also trying to figure out what exactly I want to include in the video. I told Terri that I need her to participate in filming and she agreed. 

   Although this week was not very busy for me, I have prepared the basis for my next moves, and I think I can finish the project before my last class.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My internship experience. Week seven. We did it!

    Finally, we finished our first project! After Terry had returned from her business trip, we were able to have a call over Skype, and I presented her my final strategy and explained my decisions on every part of my report. As I said on one of my previous posts, in the final document I included the summary of all the issues that we found during our research. I explained what implications these issues have on the user experience, websites performance, conversion and search engine optimisation.

   Then I talked about our strategy to make the website better - the three stages of the redesign of the resource.

   The first step - Cleaning, is the list of actions that need to be performed to get rid of the existing problems in the short time frame, without spending a lot of resources. It includes the purge of unworking content and pages, fixing blind spots and unworking plugins, adding of description paragraph to existing categories and so on.

   The second phase includes advice on reorganising of existing categories depending on contents; it's purpose and type.  Guidelines on how to make user navigation much simpler and convenient. I also described redesign suggestion based on Axure wireframes created by Ting, including homepage and typical post page to give users more smooth and comfortable experience. The advice about the recreation of existing description paragraphs for each page, rewriting articles in Contacts and About Us sections, to be clearer to users and SEO friendly was also included.

    The third phase is a long-term plan. Our suggestion was to recreate website on a new handwritten platform because Wordpress is not the best decision for the Biotechnology Focus website regarding performance, safety and future implementations of planned features. In this section, I have included tech stack with the most efficient solutions for the site and gave the list of pros and cons of this decision.

   Also, in separate sections, I provided recommendations on the management of social media and the formation of unique offers, pricing, and promotion for a paid subscription.

   Terry said that after she saw my report, and Ting's wireframes she has a clear vision of how the website should look for more efficient functioning. So I think that we did a good job.

   After my presentation, I continued working on my First Impression report for canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca. Like the last time, I tried, during the high-level testing, to find all possible empty spaces, mistakes, and decisions that do not correspond to the heuristics principles. At first glance, the site is in a good condition. A lot of best practices and standards are followed,  apart from some problems with formatting, layout, and content. Nevertheless, since Jon (the product owner) is not back yet and  I do not know specific information about the target audience, their interests, and goals of the site, it will be necessary to conduct an in-depth analysis focusing on the details after I will get the answers.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My internship experience. Week six. New beginning.

    In my last blog post, I promised you that I will tell how everything went with my presentation of Final strategy to Terri. Unfortunately  on Tuesday Terri was busy all day and she didn't have a chance to give us her time. And after that, she left for a one-week business trip.  So we decided that we will send her our documents and start our new project then after she come back we will present our Strategy for a first project and First impression for the second.

    The second website that we working on is canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca. Canadian government Executive positioning itself as the source for networking, innovation, and leadership for senior public sector executives in federal, provincial and municipal departments across Canada. The problem is that website is under development right now and it is updating every couple days. So it's hard to make the first level analysis because everything is changing recently. I had no chance to speak with product owner Jon yet. But he provided us with recorded conversation between him and development team, so we at least have something. 

    For this project, we will stick to our previous strategy. We will create project charter to have a clear vision of projects goals, tasks, and milestones. After that, we will continue with the creation of Personas, User journeys, and content audit. This time, we want to pay more attention for an analytics and user tasks to be sure that we are creating the best solutions for the users of the site.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My internship experience. Week five. Final steps. #updated

   It’s the fifth week of my internship, and I'm finishing my final strategy for our first project. Last week, I was talking about what had I done in the first part of the Final strategy report. In this post, I want to tell you about the second part on which I have been working during the week.

  Once the first part has described all the problems that must be solved, I started the description of the recommendations to fix them. I decided to share our strategy in three phases to the most efficient approach to resolve these problems. The second part of the Final strategy includes three stages to improve the website: Phase 1 - Cleaning; Phase 2 - 3 R's, Phase 3 - Brand new site; advice on SEO, Social Media and suggestions about Pro account.

    At this moment, the website is in terrible condition, but despite this, the user continues to use it for the news and relevant articles. So not to spoil the experience of existing users and to not to harm the brand itself we decided to start with cleaning. Phase number 1 involves fixing all critical errors that can be solved in no time without spending a lot of resources. It includes - the removal of duplicated, blank and nonworking pages, adding page titles where it is needed; disable widgets that do not carry any value for users, but degrade performance; an increase of font size from 11 to 16 for a better user experience during reading, and the reorganization of the mobile version of the  site.

    The second phase is "Thee R’s Approach” – “Re-Organize”,  “Re-Design”, “Re-Create”. During which, we will reorganize existing categories depending on contents they have. For now, the website has a dozen categories that are not making any sense for users. Sometimes video files and podcasts might be found on pages which are designed for articles. So our suggestion is to simplify the categories and give an opportunity for users to use filters for quick search and navigation. This phase will also include the redesign of the existing website, including homepage and typical post page to give users more smooth and comfortable experience. Our suggestion is also to recreate existing description paragraphs for each page, rewriting the articles in Contacts and About U sections, to be clearer to users and SEO friendly.

  The third phase is a long-term plan. Our suggestion is to recreate website on a new hand written platform because Wordpress is not the best decision for our website in terms of performance, safety and future implementations of planned issues features.

   I also described best practices on how they should run their social media, gave guidelines on how to create SEO friendly articles and gave suggestion on their Pro account from marketing and sales perspective.

   On Tuesday, we will present our strategy to Terry. After our meeting, I will tell you how it went and what will be our next steps.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My internship experience. Week five. Final steps.

    It’s the fifth week of my internship, and I'm finishing my final strategy for our first project. Last week, I talked about what I did in the first part of the Final strategy report. In this post, I want to tell you about the second part on which I have worked during the week.

       First, we decided what Terry wants to see in the final version of the document. We agreed to include the following components: global level and page level issues; user- case scenario; Personas; our suggestions on the recreation of the website; Pro account development strategy and our proposals on social media strategy.

   So what is highlighted in each section? First of all, I summarized all the that we found during our research and analysis in Summary of all Issues. This category includes the paragraph that defines global level issues - the issues that are common to the whole website and affecting user experience and website performance including dozens of empty and duplicated pages, failure to comply with SEO principles, unworking WordPress plugins that conflict with each other, outdated design and so on. This section is also including the link to our Content Audit document that contains the list of all issues on each page and a column with our suggestion on fixing them.

   User- case scenario was made for six different users that represent two groups of websites users - scientists and entrepreneurs.  They goals were almost the same, but I tried to cover all the possible ways of how they might reach their destination using website navigation and functionality.

   I also created Personas based on eight interviews that Terri provided us with earlier. This interview was done one year ago with real with representatives of website target audience - managers, scientists,  investors and entrepreneurs who are working in biotechnology market.  

   I was able to finish the first part of the document without any struggles. The only difficulty was to write in professional and not make mistakes. In my next post, I will introduce you the second part of our strategy and will tell more about the boards that we give to improve the website.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My internship experience. Week four. We are almost there!

    One more week of our internship is passed, and we are on the finish line of creation of a final strategy for our first project. As I state before in my previous blog post, we decided to share our duties for the following period. So Thing started prototyping future design of renewed website, and I started writing our final strategy report.

    First, we decided what Terry wants to see in the final version of the document. We agreed to include the following components: global level and page level issues; user- case scenario; Personas; our suggestions on the recreation of the website; Pro account development strategy and our proposals on social media strategy.

    So what is highlighted in each section? First of all, I summarized all the that we found during our research and analysis in Summary of all Issues. This category includes the paragraph that defines global level issues - the issues that are common to the whole website and affecting user experience and website performance including dozens of empty and duplicated pages, failure to comply with SEO principles, unworking WordPress plugins that conflict with each other, outdated design and so on. This section is also including the link to our Content Audit document that contains the list of all issues on each page and a column with our suggestion on fixing them.

    User- case scenario was made for six different users that represent two groups of websites users - scientists and entrepreneurs.  They goals were almost the same, but I tried to cover all the possible ways of how they might reach their destination using website navigation and functionality.

    I also created Personas based on eight interviews that Terri provided us with earlier. This interview was done one year ago with real with representatives of website target audience - managers, scientists,  investors and entrepreneurs who are working in biotechnology market.  

    I was able to finish the first part of the document without any struggles. The only difficulty was to write in professional and not make mistakes. In my next post, I will introduce you the second part of our strategy and will tell more about the boards that we give to improve the website.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My internship experience. Week two and three. Audit and Analysis.

Another two weeks of my internship have past and it's time to talk about my progress.

After we presented Terry all the issues that we found during the first impressions analysis of the resource, we started the content audit.

Before the beginning of the content inventory, we found a list of all the 53 pages of the resource and divided them equally between me and Ting. Terry is more interested in improving the usability of the website, SEO optimization and sales of  pro accounts, so we focused on the interface  and structure elements and blog posts. Without touching the news and scientific articles that are a duplication of the printed magazine articles.

During the resource audit , we had identified numerous problems associated with duplicated pages, broken links, lack of consistency in design, formatting problems, and so on.

Because Terry is very busy, we had to create a short document in which we generalize all the problems and presented them with inventory document.

After that we started creation of the final strategy for the redesign of the website in which we agreed to include a strategy for the reorganization of the content and categories, a change of interface elements, integration of SEO principles in the creation of content and Product development strategy for Pro account. We shared the duties for the following period, Thing started  prototyping and I proceeded to the writing of the strategy document. .

[juniornewbie-blog]

My internship experience. Week one. Introduction.

   In this post, I want to share with you how I spent the first week of my first Canadian internship.

   On the first day of my internship, I met with my supervisor Terry. Terry introduced me to each team member. Then she told me and Ting about her publishing company and magazines they publish - Biotechnology Focus, Canadian Government Executive and It Canada and their supporting websites. We decided that we will start with redesign project for Biotechnology Focus first and after we finish, Ting and I will work on remaining websites separately.

   Before we started our work, Terry told us more about the biotech market in Canada, the prospects for growth and development of the industry, its competitors, and readers. Terry had an interview material with the real representatives of the industry, which are her target audience - managers of biotech companies, scientists, investors, and entrepreneurs. She also gave us printed copies of Biotech Focus magazines to study, so that we become more familiar with voice and tone of its materials and have an idea about the content that they provide to their readers.

   Then, we looked at the website of Biotechnology Focus and Terry pointed to the problem areas of which she knew, such as broken links to social media, problems with the payment system PayPal, weak segregation of content on the main page.

   I proposed to create Project charter, to have a clear vision of our goals, schedule tasks. Terri agreed. We also created Project in Basecamp, to easily manage our working process. Immediately after we finish, I and Ting began to scan the website for issues as part of our first research stage and continued our analyze until Friday, when we presented our findings to Terri. The next step will be the Content audit of a website.

   We also agreed with Terry that since I live far away from the office & transfer  takes me 2 and a half hours, I'm going to work twice a week in office and three days from home. So during three days, from Tuesday to Thursday, I studied the provided materials - printed journals, interviews and material from the Internet, created Project charter, was analysing website to identify problem areas, conducted a research on the position of the site in different search networks for different keywords. During this time, I learned more about SEO, the features of the development and support of sites on WordPress and about biotechnology in general.

   I can not say that within a week we had any problems or disagreements. I like this experience and the challenges that we have - it allows me to explore different kinds of knowledge and to do a thing that I like to do - solve problems.

[juniornewbie-blog]

Canadian Startup-Visa 2016. Great opportunities for startup owners and developers from all over the world.

    Canada has always been an attractive destination for those who chase better life. Due to its prosperous well-developed economy, low level of inflation and high standard of life, along with stunning nature it appears to be the perfect place to settle down. All these factors attracted immigrants from all over the world to move to Canada for decades. So let's figure what exactly makes it a great country, not only for life, In and for the development of your startup.

                                      Optimal Business Climate

     Among the priorities of Ministry Of Immigration of Canada, one is an attempt to simplify assimilation process for newcomers. For instance, amongst the others aspects, Government of Canada in 2013  implemented new kind of Visas - Startup Visas, that aimed to help new residents to conform with a fast growing market of modern technologies. Start-up Visas design both to reduce pressure both on the economy of the country and new immigrants, who have to earn money for everyday life and to overcome hardships of first years abroad. 

     During first five years of its existence,  Start-Up Visas Program will be working in a  test mode and will give a chance to more than 2700 startup developers to come before the end of this period. At the beginning of 2016, more than 100 people already received such kind of Visas.

Most popular trends in this Program  are:

IT and communication sphere,  software and apps  development

Info Security and New Media

Pharmacology

Biotechnology

Agriculture and Ecology

   Canadian Government leads quite ambitious policy to support and develop a strong competitor for Silicon Valley in the US.  This ambition is supported by the reduction of bureaucracy for people who is starting their entrepreneurship. In Canada, you can register your business online without visiting any of the offices.  Moreover, there are a lot of Centres for the informational support of Entrepreneurs, and support Programs for Startups. The contact information of such of such centers can be easily found at the official site of CIC. 

Also, it is critically important that Government of Canada allows finances influx by flexible and transparent tax policy. For example, the amount of taxes may vary from 19.5 to 34%. It depends on received profit of company and province where business was estimated. VAT is required to pay only for businesses with an annual turnover of 30 000 CDN and it varies from 5% to 15%.

According to Forbes research: Canada is one of the ten countries in the world that are most attractive for small businesses.  Therefore, the percentage of small businesses that have overcome the critical "first year abroad" reaches 78.6%.

                                              Start-Up Visa

    First and most important thing that you need to succeed with your start-up in Canada - is idea. It should be a progressive idea, an idea that has the potential to break out into the lead in the global market of innovations. The idea must be well developed and expressed on the paper in a form of detailed business plan. Then you should present your materials to the potential investors. At this stage, your personal data is not so as important. All attention goes to the potential of the project.

    If the project seems to be worthy of investors attention, he needs to confirm the intention on its sponsorship and support by sending you a  Letter of Support. After you get this letter and all other necessary documents, you can apply to the Canadian consulate for a Start-up Visa.

When applying for a Start-Up Visa  applicant  must provide the following documents:

Certificate conforming the knowledge of English or French (IELTS  level 5);

High Education Diploma or Certificate of Completion of at least one year of high school;

Letter of Support from the Canadian venture capital or business, confirming its readiness to provide support for  Start Up (the minimum amount - 200 000 CDN for an investment fund and 75,000 CDN for business- angels);

Bank statement, confirming the availability of funds on the applicant's account for the first months in Canada ( 12,604 CAD for  the one person, for each family member, added approximately CAD 3,000);

Medical examination results from a medical institution, accredited by the Ministry of Immigration Canada;

Certificate of no criminal record

    The applicant can be followed with his spouse and children (family members will be included in the application for a Visa). Accompanying family members are also entitled to all the rights of Permanent Residents, including the right to study and work. The term of consideration of the application for Start-Up Visa should not exceed six months.

                   Business Incubators and Accelerators

   Immediately after starting the Start-Up Visas Program, the Canadian government made a decision to support newly created businesses through providing them with the assistance of business incubators and accelerators which accredited by the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration.

    Business incubators typically provide funding for innovative projects in the early stages of project development - " seed" and "pre-seed"  and then helps to find additional funding. Also, in most cases, they provide working space in co-working centers and the opportunity to study or to obtain professional guidance from industry professionals.  For communication with representatives of business incubators, as well as to apply for reviewing of your project, you can check a specialized portal F6S. 

   As a result of all the above, I can state that Canada - a suitable place for the realization of new ideas. And if you are confident in the potential of your project, ready to convince others of its consistency and prepared to develop it in the most proper environment created both by business and government, you should think about Canadian Start-up visa.

Useful information and references:

A site dedicated to Canadian Start-Ups (you can see the ratings of startups, the most relevant markets, the volume of investments, etc.)

List of venture capital funds, business angels and incubators, accredited by the Government of Canada

The list of grants provided by the Government of Canada for the development of small businesses

Portal with a free database of small business funding

Government of Canada official site which contains a  list of all the programs and features that are offered for new business immigrants

[juniornewbie-blog]

«ReWork» — the book about a different way to look at your work. My review.

    "Job,” ”startup," “business."  What comes to your mind when you hear this words? Especially on a start of a new working week? Especially after you spend the whole weekend trying to solve the controversy with your investor on Skype, frequently interrupted by your team members, who was not able to solve the small problem without your help. After you delayed a planned already scheduled product launch for five days. What would be your thoughts? “It’s disaster,” “I’m devastated with all of this,” “This business is not for me”? Probably, every entrepreneur had this type of challenges before, particularly in the beginning of their way.   If you are familiar with this situations, or you are planning to start your own business, or even if you just office worker who can not figure out why is your routine hard work is ineffective  - it's time to read this book.    I’m talking about  "Rework», the book created by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson from 37signals company. This book became a bestseller and one of the most popular books among the office workers, managers, and entrepreneurs all over the world.     After I started reading my first impressions was: that "Rework" was written by life-hackers for life-hackers. Life-hackers - are not some modern superheroes, they are just ordinary people who just uses their ingenuity, observation skills, and knowledge in the most efficient way to "hack" everyday life.   

     Fried and Heinemeier Hansson do the same thing: they don’t make any sensational discoveries, but only show us how to use our observation skills and common sense to avoid situations when we stuck in a routine of our endeavors and "burn out" on our workplace.

What did I get from this book? 

Raising money from investors it a very good idea when you need to get resources for your project, but it's would always better to go for it only in a case when you don’t have your resource and can't borrow from friends and relatives. Spending other people's money makes you wasteful, addictive and puts you into "slavery" position to your investor: eventually you might develop a business that neither you not your customers like.  So try to invest your money and time to solve the problem which is closest to you - and you will get a business that is in demand not only by or your investor.

  Do not get carried away with the desire to become a "second Apple". Be the first company of your kind. Existing business models can not always be copied effectively. But if you still decide to do it, then you might become just a pathetic imitator, not an original producer or the creator.

  You should always start the business, not a just start-up. Start-up - is often just a faceless and compromised concept. Business - it is a model structure and a system of rules which will continue to grow and provide financial returns to its original author, founders, and employees for a long time.

  Try not to be involved in the gigantic strategic plans and "road maps" with a length of tens and hundreds of items. Try to create a useful and reliable small list of all the tasks broken down into smaller tasks which might be done in 1-2 days instead of 1-2 months.

  Small businesses are often more efficient and more profitable than a large corporation. Grow just for growth and creation of a startup to just sell it in future - are ones of the most common mistakes made by entrepreneurs.

  Do not "polish" the idea for too long: it is often necessary to produce and deliver the core version of the product to the market, which can then be improved and extended. The ideal is unattainable, and the time - the most critical business asset. As long as you trying to build your perfect product, someone might come to the market with their own similar solution.

Who should read "Rework"?

   You - to understand whether or not you should change your approach to the work and relationships with your superiors or employees, or even quit and start a new life and a new job.

   Your colleagues - to assess the importance of the of mutual respect and empathy in the workplace, as well as understand that 4 hours in the right working environment can give the whole team a lot more than 10 hours in a noisy office.

  Your boyfriend, wife, parents or friends - to understand that freelancers who are working at home are not only having a fun time. That "working environment" and "deadline" are not just for people in suits and ties which work in busy offices, but also for those who work with a laptop in pajamas and slippers in their bedroom.

Though this book, does not become a revelation for me, after I finish it I saw a lot of things that was not giving me the positions during my working routine from the other point of view. And I realized that I could do achieve much more by simply playing by the rules.

I want to finish my review with a quote from the book that I will probably remember for the years: 

"Many novice golf players think that they need an expensive club. But what they really need - is a strong punch. "

[juniornewbie-blog]

My future. My expectations.

Throughout  my life, my passion has been to create, repair broken things and improve things.

That's why, I think  interactive media is an ideal place for the realization of what I have lived all my life. When we enter the world of digital, we gain access to a variety of tools that give us an opportunity to create something useful, interactive or just fun. Everybody  finds their place here, depending on what they want, from coders to designers.

For me, the most interesting areas of interactive media are game development and developing of websites and applications from the perspective of the user, storytelling, and usability.

As my College course has covered many aspects  of interactive media, such as content analysis and strategy, user experience and prototyping, basic development tools such as HTML, CSS, and PHP, I feel like I can continue my growth in any area related to Interactive Media, but I still need to learn a lot on my own and get work experience in Canada through field placements before I can call myself a real professional.

So for me, it will be perfect if I will be able to find a field placement that will extend my existing skills of prototyping, creating design layouts and management skills because my long-term goal is to become a project manager of digital development companies or even start my own development company.

I have work experience both in large companies and in small teams. Given that I am starting out in interactive media, I would like a field placement in a small or medium team where I hope to have a senior person in my team, who could not only share his experience with me, but will be also able to point my mistakes to me.

Even though, my English language skills are not at par, I want to take this field placement opportunity as a challenge and an avenue to practise and improve my language skills. I’m sure that I will be able to overcome this and become a better and stronger professional  after my field placement.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My mentorship. Part 3.

Unfortunately, I was not able to meet with Andrew for the third time because he was ill but we have agreed that we will meet on Saturday, and he will take part in a video for my final assignment.

But I was able to meet with the Roman, today on Sunday. I showed him the prototype of my application and ran some sort of user acceptance test with him. Roma liked my mocap, but he pointed to a couple of discrepancies in logic and UI of my application and gave advice on how to improve them.

We also talked about the complexity and the costs of implementation of voice control technology for mobile applications, as voice control - is one of the main function of which I make emphasis in its application.

I also invited him to take part in my video. He said that he would try, but in the same time, he can not promise, as he has plans for the following weekend. But we have agreed that we do not need to meet face to face, and if he fails to come up to me, we will have the remote session on Skype.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My mentorship. Part 2.

So I have spent the second session with my mentors. It was the second time with Andrew and the first time with Roman. I also received an email of Dmitry from Pamela. I wrote him a letter but has not yet received a response.

This time, I told Andrew about my senior project, its concept and showed him my hand-drawn wireframes. He liked the idea of the project, and after he became acquainted with my prototype, he pointed out  a couple logical problems in the search process of recipes to me and advised me to change a couple elements in design. Unfortunately, Andrew's management does not allow him to take me to his workplace, but it's not a big problem for me.

Also on Saturday, for the first time I met with Roman. We talked to him about looking for a job in Toronto and about the necessary for an IT professional on the Canadian market. Despite the fact that the Roman programmer and his technical level is much higher than mine, he said that he will advise me to his friends who is working on digital market and maybe it will help me in finding a job in the future.In our next meeting, I'll show him a working prototype of my application.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My mentorship. Part 1.

I have just returned from a meeting with my mentor Andrew and I want to share  my impressions with you.

Last week I decided to write a letter for my potential mentors. Unfortunately, at that moment,  I found only two potential mentors - Andrew and Lyudmila.

I got a response from Andrew almost immediately, he agreed to meet with me and talk on Thursday.

We met at his home, had a coffee and talked informally about the job in IT market of Canada.

I asked him questions related to finding a job and work peculiarity. He gave me to understand that the main thing in this case - is perseverance. As soon as he began to look for a job, he sent over hundreds of resumes and get only a few responds. He also told me about the peculiarities of Canadian workflow. In his opinion, work process is more open manner unlike in Russia or Ukraine, and in the same time, discipline and motivation among colleagues are higher than in his previous jobs. I asked Andrew if it possible, to perform our next mentoring session at his workplace. He said that he will ask for permission and give me an answer on Monday.

Unfortunately, Ludmila will not be able to be my mentor, as she leaves on a business trip to the US for two months. But she gave me the contact of her colleague - Roman.  Roma - thirty years old programmer from the Ukraine. He is working with Ludmila and he have a significant working experience.  He arrived in Toronto last year and his life story is pretty similar to mine. In any case, I believe his experience will be useful to me. I wrote to him and asked for a meeting and he said he could meet me on Saturday, March 31st.

I also found that in the last year guy called Dima was studied on my course. And he is also from Ukraine. Dima is now working as UX specialist. I asked Pamela about Dima and she said that she would write to him and ask about me. I hope he will be my third mentor.

[juniornewbie-blog]

My Personas is alive!

       As a  part of my Senior project, I need to create Personas which will help me understand my auditory better. In this article I would like to share with you the aspects that  have inspired me and the details of the creation process  of these three Personas.

      In the beginning I decided to split my audience into three different groups that will reflect habits and needs of users of Platemail Project. It was only the first step to have a general vision about who can be my potential client. After that I created one persona for each group and gave detailed description to  every person. These  groups are:

     The Beginners who just starting their path in the world of cooking and want to learn how to cook.

     The Experimenters. The users who know how to cook, or at least know basics of cooking and want to get new feeling out of the process.

     The Professionals. The Professionals feel themselves confident on kitchen but want to learn something new, such as new recipes and techniques. So who became my Personas?

   Olga is the Professional. Olga is based on my mother and two her closest friends Luda and Ann. They all have pretty the same habits and lifestyle, they all are mothers of three kids.All of them are housewives with pretty good cooking experience.  So I decided to mix them into one Persona. Although I speaked with each of them and they all was looking for different features on my application. Olga was more worried about savings and money management, Luda interested more in new exotic recipes and Ann was worried about time. All of these three was not very confident with technology so after creating this Persona I clearly understood what features might be useful for them. And I also understood that design must be clear and not difficult to interact to people who don’t have a lot of experience with mobile applications even if they are pro- cookers.

    Edward. The Experimenter. This perona is based on my closest friend Edward. All the information on this Persona is actually Edward's info, when I need information about the Experimenter I just called him and get all the data that I want.  We used to talk about my idea with project Platemail before and he gave me a whole new vision on things that I thought is the same for everyone. So with this kind of Persona I have a representative of audience who is looking for entertainment, new experience and innovations more than actually about cooking.

    Jacob. The beginner. Jacob is based on me and two of my friends that have the same problem. As soon as I moved to Toronto I faced the need to cook for myself. Because for almost all of  my life my parents were cooking food for me, I didn’t have the experience to cook something more enhanced than fried eggs or sandwich. I also don’t have great skills of choosing necessary products in the store and managing my time at the kitchen, so every cooking session takes such a long period of time. Along with this problem I used to have lots of products inside my fridge, that I  bought because I liked how it looked like, but   I did not use them  for weeks. I tried to use classical cookbooks and video lessons but it was boring and inconvenient.  All of my friends have faced the same problems when they started their mature life. So I decided if I have  mixed all of us into one person, this Persona will really cover a big amount of my users. I picked photo from Anton and name from Jacob. As far as our interests and lifestyle are  pretty the same, it was easy  to identify our favorite brands, demographics, goals and expectations.

    I also decided that It’s necessary to add more information about cooking habits, favorite food and level of cooking skills to all Personas, because I have a cooking application and I need more specific information about my Personas needs and food habits to create full experience for them.

   Anyway, I think that my target group is The Beginners.  Jacob is a Persona and representative.This group have a serious problem that they can resolve using my application, I mean to learn how to cook.