I chose Blix for my work experience placement because for a long
time, I had been interested in web design and development, but I
had never really experienced what it entailed. I figured that the
best way to find out what it was all about was to try it.
On my first day, I was introduced to the team and given the
necessary tour off the office building and safety talks before I
was immediately given something to do. This, luckily, has been a
common theme throughout my week, I was never bored. Thankfully, I
was not working with an employer who was happy to see me bored.
From the first second, Dominic has had me learning and experiencing
what he and his colleagues' line of work involved.
In addition to working with the team and to help improve my
experience at Blix, Dominic suggested that I start a web course on
Team Treehouse. This course went through the basics of HTML and CSS
with the end goal of creating a basic website. This was useful to
me as it allowed me to understand what was going on, not perfectly,
but somewhat! It was a reasonably long course so whenever I had
finished what I was doing throughout the rest of the week, I had
something to do that was fun, yet also allowed me to increase my
skills in the area. Now at the end of my week, I feel as
though I have a basic understanding of what elements of coding mean
and although I do not think at the moment I could write any code
from scratch, this is a skill I will probably continue learning in
the future as it is interesting for me and if I want to pursue this
career in the future, it is a necessary skill I must have.
On my second day, as soon as I came in, I was invited to sit in
on a planning meeting between Tom and Ben, Blix's two marketers.
The meeting showed me the planning process undertaken in order to
be able to manage the workload that they are given. In the
afternoon, Claire, Blix's Digital Designer, talked me through what
she does on a daily basis as part of her job. After Claire
explained her job, I was tasked with coming up with the design for
a website's homepage on paper, called a wireframe. When I was
finished, Claire and I went through my design and saw if we could
add/change elements of it to be able to better fit the client's
brief.
On Wednesday morning, I worked with Josh, one of Blix's Senior
Developers, and he explained to me what he does throughout the
process of creating a website for a client. Josh is responsible for
creating code for Blix's websites. He told me about the functions
of HTML, CSS and Java script in a website, and which language does
what. Josh then talked me through Umbraco, a content management
system that allows clients to edit content on their website easily
and efficiently, making the maintenance of the website readily
available to them. Josh enjoys animating and using Java Script and
particularly enjoys making 'Burger Buttons'. In the afternoon, I
completed my online course and began a second one that would allow
me to further understand CSS, or 'Cascading Style Sheets.'
On Thursday morning I continued with my course for half an hour,
before Tom went through his job as a digital marketer. Tom's job is
to increase the online visibility of businesses using a number of
different methods. These methods include:
- Using google AdWords to advertise businesses on certain
searches. He has to figure out what type of adverts to put, and on
what type of searches, in order to increase their efficiency and
decrease the cost.
- Using adverts on social media. Tom uses Facebook, and sometimes
twitter, to advertise businesses. Facebook allows you to show
adverts to certain audiences, based on Gender, age, location and
even ethnicity, for example. Tom has the responsibility of
tailoring ads and sponsoring the right posts in order to increase
the companies' social media presence and increase its
responsibility.
- Optimising content of websites to increase google presence. Tom
looks through clients' websites and gives them suggestions on how
they could improve their website. He often suggests the inclusion
of key words into the homepage and main pages of the websites in
order to make the website more relevant to potential customer's web
searches.
In the afternoon, as well as continuing with my CSS course, I
helped Claire to create wireframe for the News, Events and Courses
pages of a website. Claire made a quick mock-up of the design so we
could see it. This allowed us to edit the design slightly to make
it more accessible for the consumer, and more fit to the Client's
brief.
I spent Friday helping Claire find images for the website we've
been working on together before I went for a 'Team Lunch' with the
whole of the office. This whole week, the entire workforce has
extremely happy to help and accommodate me. They have shown me a
career that I had not seen before, and helped me to discover more
about it.
I have learnt some new skills, and it has made me want to look
further into this career path. It has been an extremely informative
and fun week and I can't wait to possibly come back for more work
experience in the future.
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