RachelNanzer
WRA210
Summary
Both Kristen and Alexandra had an identity they wished to develop and an
audience in mind when creating their website. Such an identity helps shape the
personality of a website, and knowing the target audience, potential employers,
influenced the structure of their websites. As a result, everything about Alexandra and
Kristin’s websites were to naturally lead employers to their portfolio pieces and resumes.
As time has gone on, Kristin and Alexandra have both expressed the need to update their
websites and the importance of internships to help them get to where they are today.
Analysis
CareerIdentity:
While Kristin and Alexandra do similar work, they identify themselves
differently. Kristin describes herself as a designer and Alexandra describes herself as a
coder. Labels are significant in regards to the way others perceive us in American culture,
so identity choices within the professional realm should be deliberate. Some companies
may be searching for a creative person labeled as a designer and others may desire a more
technical person labeled as a coder. Despite the similarities in Kristin’s and Alexandra’s
educational experience, their self identified skill sets and labels influence the way
employers look at them and how they describe themselves on their website.
Kristin and Alexandra have helped me realize that to accurately advertise myself
on my website, I must first decide what I would like to advertise myself as. It is also noteable that I do not have to select only one identity. People exist within a complex web of
identities, so as an example, I do not imagine calling myself a web developer and a
professional writer would be off putting.
Along the way, Alexandra and Kristin both discussed the importance of
internships to get them where they are now. Internships give experience, portfolio pieces,
and a sense of what one truly enjoys. For example, after Alexandra completed her
internship, she knew she did not want to work in social media. She realized that she
wanted to build things, such as the construction of websites, which has led to her identity
as a web coder. Taking advantage of work and internship opportunities while at MSU
will also help me pinpoint what I am most interested in doing and what I would like to
identify myself as.
Lastly, Alexandra discussed about how career identity does not have to be strictly
professional. Most people desire to have competent and enjoyable coworkers, so
communicating a part of your personality in your website is something that can be
beneficial in the design process. It makes me ask the questions: How can I reflect my
personality in my visual rhetoric? How can I build my portfolio to represent the work I
am most interested in doing? What information would I like to make available about
myself to humanize myself and make myself unique and appealing?
ConsideringtheAudience:
As I mentioned in the summary, audience is a crucial part to any website
construction. Kristin and Alexandra both emphasized that the main audience members
would be potential employers. With the audience in mind, we can then pinpoint the main
purpose in the audience visiting the site: to discover potential people they would like to
employ. With this purpose in mind, highlighting portfolio pieces and resume material on
your site grabs the interest of the audience before they decide to move onto a new
website. Alexandra especially discussed the importance of making a website accessible
and easy to navigate so that people can complete their objective: to view her portfolio.
On top of that, it becomes important to make sure a website is visually pleasing. It
is hard to make an appeal that you are a web designer or a coder if your website looks
like crap (and not the good CRAP we have talked so much about.)
Design is important, but effort must also be put in to update portfolio pieces.
Kristin and Alexandra took very different stances in the decisions they made about their
portfolio pieces on their website. Alexandra expressed that she only wanted the newest
and best portfolio pieces on her website, so employers would assume she had always
been talented. Such a choice is based on an ethos appeal where Alexandra hopes to build
credibility by showing her work is constantly of high quality.
Kristin also uses an ethos appeal, but in a different way. She organizes her
portfolio pieces from newest to oldest, including some of her beginning work. Kristin
argues that allowing employers to see the progression and growth in her work will show
that she can continue to learn and grow in her profession. Both approaches are logical, so
I will need to consider how I would like to present my portfolio once I begin expanding
my experiences and skill sets.
CreatingtheWebsite:
Considering the audience provides the driving force behind a website. Everything
about a portfolio website should lead the viewer to your work, but the website also needs
to be accessible from multiple devices. Alexandra brought up the significance
smartphones play in web surfing nowadays and how accommodating for audiences
visiting her website through mobile devices helps market herself. Desktop, tablets, and
phones are all important to consider when thinking about the accessibility of your site.
It would seem there are a few things I learned from Kristin and Alexandra due to
things they did not do. Firstly, they both discussed the need to learn about more complex
coding on their own. It would seem, that even if it isn’t for a class, exploring complex
html now is the best way to prepare myself for my future. Teachers still have office hours
and there is an abundance of smart people around to learn from and get help from. On top
of that, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain from pushing yourself to go
beyond what is required of you.
Alexandra and Kristin have helped me understand that portfolio websites are
often constantly updated and redesigned. As a result, I must consider how to make my
website as sustainable as possible. It seems that Alexandra struggled with constantly
changing her site, while Kristin gave up on her site and took it down for a little while due
to how unsustainable it was.
By creating my website with my own built in html I will have greater accessibility
to make adjustments in the future. Secondly, I think I will rely on basic CRAP principles
and design intuition more than design trends. Since design trends are constantly
changing, I feel that creating a visually pleasing design with CRAP principles in mind
would cause less need for change later down the line unless I would want to. Hopefully,
by developing my own design I will also stand out from the crowd.
TakeAways
Some of the major things I have learned from Alexandra and Kristin are that I
need to begin thinking about my career identity, how I would like to market myself, and
that utilizing internships could help determine what I would want my career identity to
be. When going to design my website I will keep sustainability on my mind, so upkeep of
my website will be as smooth as possible. When I create a design for my website I will
use CRAP principles with the goal that the visual elements of my site will be appealing
over a longer time of period. Most importantly, I have learned that I need to make my
website accessible for different devices and make my website easy to navigate for the
intended audience.
TranscribedInterview:
Alexandra: Hi, I’m Alexandra White as you guys all know from reading all about me
and stalking my internet presence (inaudible)…well you should. Uhh, I in December
2011 from Professional Writing, which was my home away from home at Michigan State
and until 6 weeks ago I was a full time …(inaudible).. and now I am a full time technical
writer for a software company. So, I am still developing and writing code, just this time I
am teaching other people how to do it and complex technical problems. So, thanks it.
ProfessorMcArdle: Awesome, thanks. Alright, so we are going to have a couple
questions come your way. Is that cool?
Alexandra: All right.
ProfessorMcArdle: Awesome
Caleb: Hi, my name is Caleb Watson and ..umm…I was wondering..uhh.. when you
were in WRA 2-1 or 210 like we are uhh did that influence your decision to work on
websites, or was that already a goal you had?
Alexandra: Hi there, kind of. (laughs) Before 210, my experience with web
development was bold tags and basic html on live journal. So that was about it, but 210
and really 410, the advanced web authoring class, influenced my decision. I really enjoy
building things and fixing things. Uhh, back when I was in 210 there was no java script, it
was just html and css, so to really be able to accomplish anything,..uhh… 410 was
necessary. Uhh I built my portfolio in word press while at school and building it and
rebuilding it just kind of confirmed that that was what I wanted to do full time.
Caleb: That’s awesome, thank you.
Alexandra: You’re welcome.
Ellie: Hi, I’m Ellie, and I am wondering what the greatest…umm…job or internship that
you had to boost your career.
Alexandra: Ahh, definitely a hard question, because I’ve had…(inaudible)
…fortunate… (inaudible)…great opportunities. (Inaudible) internship I ever had was
with a company called Swagger, which was a street style fashion site based in New York
City. Uhhh, My whole goal was to get experience with anything and to be able to leave
the state of Michigan for the summer. Uhh, so I was very fortunate and I know that not
everyone is able to take an unpaid internship, uhh..but I worked at target for 4 years to
save up money to be able to do…uhhh…and I was a video editor, which I only recently
started doing again. I was not doing video editing in any of my previous jobs, but
formative for how one should work with, particularly one who cares very, very deeply
about every minute detail of the things that you produce. Also it was a cool thing on my
resume that every job after that asked, “What is Swagger, and how is this helpful to you
at all?” and basically being able to articulate why it was a valuable experience…uhh
um… Plus, I was one of the first interns for WRAC, and that was, I produced the
communications strategy and social media strategy and (inaudible) a lot of writing that
was helpful to setting me up to success…err for success for future full time positions.
That said, having a salary is great. Guys, having a salary (laughs), having money is great.
Highly recommend it for your future.
Ellie: Great, thank you.
Marta: Hi, I’m Marta and I was wondering what your—what—how you decide which
content you are going to include in your site. For example, in your “Who I am” page you
not only have an “About Me” section, but you have also your philosophy and then you
had some quotations from people you were (inaudible). So, how did you decide to
include all of that.?
Alexandra: Sure, ahhh. Well on my site, I think the most important thing is the work
itself. If anything, my resume can tell you the job experience I’ve had, but it doesn’t
prove that I am actually good at anything. Seeing my work proves, gives what someone
might potentially hire me to do. As far as my “Who I am” page, I think of it as a
secondary selling point. Ahh, to get to know me, because through the work that you want
me to do I’d hope that you would actually want to work with me too…ahh..and that I’m a
nice enough and interesting person that we would (inaudible)…ahh. A philosophy of my
senior year at MSU and I—I still feel like it speaks well to what I want to accomplish and
the value that I bring as a writing major, because writing is the key—has been the key to
my success despite the fact when I was a web developer, I wasn’t doing writing in the
long form sense as I do now and as I did before, but it was still very
important…umm..and I figure that the full quotes- just nice- hey its not just big talk from
me other people think I am worthy of being hired places as well. Trust these people
(laughs).
Marta: Yeah, those are good ideas, thanks.
Linda: Oh, um, hi I’m Linda. Umm and I really like looking at your design portfolio.
Umm…I thought it was really pretty, and one thing I wanted to know in particular was
how you were able to make it so you can view it on mobile as well as PC.
Alexandra: Sure, ahhh, so first of all, thank you. I don’t consider myself a designer. I’m
a coder, but I like to think that I can look at other people’s designs and be inspired…and
a to—compliment theirs, and ah but its 2016 and if your website does not work mobile,
tablet, desktop, projectors, whatnot, then users who come to the site won’t experience it
correctly. Uhh and beyond that its not just forcing everything on your desk top to be on a
mobile site. You don’t necessarily want all of the same content and some things are more
important when you are having a smaller interface to interact with, so that is something I
am still working on. Ahh I read some statistic that 70% of people are visiting websites on
their phones first and if that’s the case, I want people to have a better impression of me
first on their phone. Looking at my resume may not be in front of their computer, but
instead an ipad or an android tablet of some sort and see my website and I don’t want
them to be turned off by a misplaced (unaudible) or content that doesn’t stretch well. It’s
just as important to look good no matter what size the device is.
Ali: Hi, my name is Ali, and I was wondering what you think is the most important part
of your portfolio.
Alexandra:100% the work. Like the portfolio work itself is the absolute most important
thing, cause like I said earlier, that’s the proof that I can actually do something. Umm..the
samples of the work, but writing about what the work is supposed to accomplish and
there are some projects that don’t live online anymore or don’t live in the place that they
used to live. Umm… for example I built a wedding on site for a couple of my friends last
summer and the…their website URL letsgetmarried.com no longer exists, because why
would you keep that two years after, you know. I can save that 10 dollars a year to buy
some other absolutely useless domain that (laughter) ahh, but keeping that website up on
my personal domain…(inaudible)..shots of what it looked like and talking about how it
worked is really important too, so that even if a person can’t visit the website as it was
when it was live, they can still experience that work and see how it functions. That makes
sense.
McArdle: Rachel
Rachel: Um, Hi, my name is Rachel. I wanted to ask you a question about the layout of
your portfolio. Um is the scroll over thing that shows the information after you’ve
already seen it. I was wondering if you’d ever considered having all of them with the
filter over it and then when you roll-over it reveals the portfolio piece.
Alexandra: I’d definitely consider that. Umm I think it’s a—the whole reason I decided
that is I wanted give a choice to not necessarily text and theoretically if you’re there you
know I am a web developer, so you know what our choice—not necces-- and its not
necessarily the most successful which is also something I need to work on, thinking about
people who are looking at this with screenreaders or who are de(??) to many different
colors sort of pressed up against each other. Umm…but it’s, it’s something that I need to
take into consideration or thinking about that layout I doesn’t need to be 100 blocks
pressed up next to each other. That’s just what was popular 2 years ago when I redesigned it (laughs). So, it’s necessary.
Rachel: Thank you
Bryan: Alright, hi my name is Bryan, and my question is, how did you decide on your
domain name?
Alexandra: Uhh, so my name, Alexandra White, is soo generic. There are so many of us
in the world. Umm, so when I went to buy a domain, alexandrawhite.com was taken.
Uhh, I happened to own alexandra-white.com, so theoretically I could have done
something with that, but Freshmen year I thought I was super cool and was going to
brand myself and at the time I also wanted to be a costume designer, so I stuck myself
with a name that I every time I have a conversation with 210, I remember that I regret
this choice. Ahh, and that I should do something about it, but I’ve been just too lazy to
match the domain to my other rebranded aawhite. So, thank you for reminding me of the
things that I need to do, so that I look better on the internet.
Linda: I still think it’s cool, designing lightning (laughs)
Alexandra: I didn’t hear that, what?
Linda: Oh, it still sounds cool.
Alexandra: Thank you. (Laughter) I guess I’ve been looking at it for so long that I think,
Ugh this can’t be read anymore. I need to change. New hair, new domain, new me. (little
laugh)
Marta: Umm, It’s Marta again and I have a second question. I think I kind of understand
why you did this, but ummm, I’m assuming your website is kind of your website and its
not just your portfolio site. So my question was, why did you decide to put your blog on
your site?
Alexandra: Ahh, I think it was a couple reasons. One, I think it is a nice expression of,
again, my personality and who I am. Of the work that I do, because I do write about more
in detail work experience, but it also I-it’s a place for me to talk about non-work things,
so in the summer 2015 I was a stage manager for a non-profit theater company that I
work with occasionally, and our show went to off Broadway, which was—and it was
(inaudible)….Hey, I am more than just a web developer. I do all these other things. I’m
an interesting person, maybe. (Laughter)
Caleb: Hi, this is Caleb again. Ahh…I was wondering what classes you took at MSU
best set you up for success. I know you mentioned 210 and 410 already.
Alexandra: So, 210 and 410. Very important, particularly for when I became a fulltime
web developer. Umm, really the professional writing (inaudible) valuable in my
education. I won’t lie, I think that some of the liberal arts classes were not super valuable
and not necessarily because they shouldn’t be valuable, but because when you are
teaching to a room of 300 or 600 people individual learning…. Sorry, (laughter) I am
saying it and everyone knows. They already know this. (laughs) That doesn’t mean you
shouldn’t do well. Your degree is important. Professional Writing, that, that’s where its
at. I think I took to technical writing class and the uhh first grammar class, which was
maybe 370., I think. It was super important and super hard, but even if people tell
grammar doesn’t matter, it does, and your writing will be better if you spell things
correctly.
Caleb: Alright, thank you very much.
Alexandria: Hi, my name is Alexandria. Umm, I was looking at your resume on your
website and I was wondering..um..how you decided what should go on there. Did you put
every experience that you have ever had on there or did you…um..choose?
Alexandra: So, not everything is on there. Umm, I was a crazy person. Guys, don’t have
six jobs at once. Don’t do it. It’s a terrible choice, last semester of school and just-just
don’t. Have one job. Umm, I worked at a- what I think was a failed MSU web project
called Spartan Connect. Maybe it still exists. Umm, but I blogged about how to
experience Michigan State as a freshmen, and tips and tricks and what-not. And it’s not
on my resume for two reasons. One, you could not find the content online, because it was
a private for Michigan State students only website, and two, it is not relevant to anything
that I do. I-I, the things I included are things that are still relevant and things that I think
were interesting. So, again Swagger, not totally relevant to what I do now, but it was a
good starter and I am proud of the work that I did there. It’s long, it’s definitely long and
honestly could be trimmed up, but the most important part of a resume I think is the skills
section and then proving those skills again with the portfolio.
Katie: Hi, I’m Katie and I kind of have a two parter. I think you mentioned this uhh
before, umm, but when building your site, did you think about mobile more or desktop?
Because I noticed on the mobile version, it looks like a lot-like it flows differently and on
the desktop version there are like three different buttons that take you to the portfolio and
you can scroll down. (inaudible)
Alexandra: Ahh, When I was- got (inaudible), I think I redesigned the site probably
more than ten times in the past 5 years since I’ve had it and in that last (don’t know the
word) I designed desktop first. Which, whenever I rebuild it, sometime in the next year- I
won’t be doing that. It will be mobile first, and truly making a mock up that is for a
phone and then thinking about expanding it outwards, because that works better. Ahh, the
button thing is interesting. It didn’t exist at first, but I got feedback that said, “I don’t
know how to find your portfolio, make it easier for me to find your portfolio.” Really,
really, really, clear how to get to my work. Umm, which again, is the most important part,
so I want people to be able to see it, access it, pay me money to do things. (Laughter)
Katie: Thank you.
Alexandria: Hi, it’sAlexandria again. Umm, and I- I guess you just kind of answered
this question. Umm, but on the bottom it says..uhh. that you reiterated your portfolio over
ten times. Does that just mean that you redesigned it or (inaudible, Alexandra begins to
say something)..why?
Alexandra: Yep, re-architect it. Re-thought about what should be on there and shouldn’t
be on there. Umm, originally there was a front landing page that had some information
about me that was not my “about me” page, and that felt—again—kept people from what
I think was most important, which was the work. Ahh, I probably would do it again and
that paragraph was probably unnecessary, because I don’t know if anybody cares that it
has been redesigned, see the old stuff, and nor do I want them to see the old stuff. Never
look (inaudible) a weapon to the way back machine, so you can see what terribleness it
was, but (laughs) I don’t want people to look back. I want people that I was this talented
always.
Linda: Alright, so umm I know at first you talked about how umm you wanted to be a
costume designer initially, well you kind of thought about that when you were creating
designing lightning. And also professional writing itself is not inherently a coding
directed major. So how did you get from PW and costume design over to what you are
doing now?
Alexandra: Ahh, so the whole reason I ever got into professional writing is I was a
theater major who hated being a theater major and I took the intro to digital humanities
class with Devoss, who I think a lot of people from my year, and people probably after
that Daniel, say saved their life. Umm, she rescued me from theater department, which no
offense to anyone who’s in the theater department. It just wasn’t right for me. I
discovered that I liked- I’d always thought I liked writing ummm…and at the time I
thought “ooh, you know what. This is great. I can be a travel writer,” but surprise no one
wants to pay you to do that. Unless you get one of the five jobs in ahhh and I slowly
figured out what I think I wanted to do (cough), while- while I was at MSU, I thought I
would be social media. I was the social media intern at Tec Smith, a local software
company. Umm, I had a lot of communications internships. By the time I graduated, I
can’t tweet anymore. I’m done writing posts for other people, and I decided that I liked
building things more, and, focusing on a right and a wrong answer, because if it doesn’t,
if it’s broken, it’s not going to work and that very apparent. So, forcing myself to figure
out, build something correctly, and make it look as best it can and do website magic. I
think that answers it, maybe.
Abby: Ahh, my name is Abby and I was wondering what else you though was necessary
to (inaudible) train yourself (inaudible).
Alexandra: Soo, again my work 100% is the most important thing, umm, on-on my
portfolio. Ahh the resume is certainly- it’s important, because it’s expected and when
people think when they come to a portfolio website that I can find out previous work
history. That said, there is also linked-in and a hundred other resume websites, so why is
that..ummm..just that bonus material that say, “I am a fun person. Work with me. We can
cool things, maybe.” (laughs) Work is the proof.
Linda: This is Linda again. Umm I noticed from, like, your last answer that you said that
you really liked building things. Umm, and I wanted to ask, if you were at MSU again, I
know- I don’t think the XA program was available when you were in undergrad- I am not
really sure when it started- but if you think you did it again, umm, would you still be a
PW major or would you be in the XA program?
Alexandra: Umm, a yeah, the XA program didn’t exist when I was there. I definitely
would have wanted to take XA classes. I don’t know that- honestly, I think I would have
double majored, with (inaudible) and computer engineering, cause I didn’t know that that
was an option either. I was never told that I could do that. Umm, and growing up I never
thought that was an option.
Linda: Why did (inaudible)
Alexandra: I’m sorry, what?
Linda: Oh sorry, why computer engineering over ComSci?
Alexandra: Or ComSci. It, either way- finding a, a way that taught me some more
hardcore development skills. Umm, learn on my own to some degree, but it would have
been nice to be in an environment that everyone was learning together, and I would feel
better if that was on my resume too. Even though, people say it is not important. You
degree doesn’t matter. You can get hired without a degree, if your work proves that you
can do things, but there’s a certain level of confidence as a women in tec that that would
give me.
ProfessorMcArdle: Well any other questions? Well, sorry for the tech dely. That was
my fault.
Alexandra: No worries, I am sorry for the delay too
ProfessorMcArdle: Well we appreciate you talking to the class and the class would
like to say (Class says “thank you”). K, I hope you are having a good time in the UP and
a we will talk to you later. Thank you so much Alexandra and we’ll talk to you later, ok?
Alexandra: Talk to you later, have a good rest of you class.
ProfessorMcArdle: Thank, thank you.
Alexandra: bye