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An interview with Jason McSweeney  At This is Milk we're all about upskilling and reskilling and our recent intern, Jason, was the perfect fit. Whilst running his own Thai boxing gym, Jason started studying UX and design in his spare time. He soon became passionate about UX - so much so that he recently shut his gym to retrain as a UX designer. We asked him about his journey up to this point, how the pandemic has affected his career, and the benefits of starting afresh at 40.
Tell us about your journey up to this point. I moved from Ireland to Scotland 15 years ago to work as an admin manager for JD Gyms. This was followed by stints in Glasgow and London as a Sales Rep for Coca Cola and Vitamin Water. While I was doing this, I also started working as a personal trainer and running a Thai boxing gym. Redundancy gave me the opportunity to focus on the gym full time, which I ended up running for 10 years. How did you end up in the world of UX design? While I was running my gym, I started to take an interest in graphic design. I was hiring people to do promotions, social media and advertising. I’ve always had a creative side and realised that it would be much quicker if I learned those skills myself! So, I signed up for some online graphic design courses and learned the Adobe Suite programmes. Before I knew it I was looking at Experience Design and it just progressed from there! My perception completely changed. In the past, if I’d come across a badly designed website, I would’ve just left it. I started to understand why a website was bad. I started to see that no user research or usability testing had been done. It all started to make sense. I could see that so many websites were designed for the company and not for the user. I was hooked! Did the pandemic affect your career change? With my gym closed due to Covid, I could completely focus on learning about design. I was getting up at six in the morning and working until late - I was totally in the zone. I thought I could do this all day long. That was it. I’d found what I wanted to do. I signed up for a six-month UX diploma course with the USDA Institute based in Dublin, which I'd discovered via the UX Scotland Facebook Group. I started messaging people – one of which was Angela, and that's how I ended up as an intern at This is Milk! Covid has caused a lot of damage for a lot of people – job-wise and family-wise, but in some ways, it's been good to me. If the pandemic had never happened then I’d never have had the chance to go down this path. It’s my Covid Career! What are the advantages and disadvantages of changing career at 40? I think there are more advantages than disadvantages to starting afresh at 40. Obviously, I'm a lot more mature, I've had experience running a business for 10 years which is no easy feat. I've dealt with hundreds of people from all walks of life. I think life experience is so much more valuable than just a qualification that you didn't really know why you were getting in the first place! So many 18-year-olds don’t really know who they are or what they like. I certainly didn’t. I just did what I was told I should do. Things are changing all the time, jobs are changing all the time, so you have to be constantly adapting and changing too. What have you learned at This is Milk? I’ve been shadowing Morgane Tanguy, and have been involved in everything from user research to usability testing to feeding back to the dev team for the new learning platform, Neve. It's been a really exciting time, and I just soaked up as much as I could whilst I was here! What’s next? It’s been brilliant getting practical experience at This is Milk. I think learning and applying what I know to real situations is so important. I didn’t want to get a theoretical qualification without getting work experience at the same time. Last month I shut my gym for good. I believe that if you want to do something you need to be all in. I’m fully committed to becoming a UX designer. I'll be looking for a UX role as soon as my course is over and in that sense, I think my internship at This is Milk will be invaluable. I can’t wait to get started. Thank you and good luck Jason! If you'd like to contact Jason, click on his name to go to his Linkedin page.
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 As part of the research for our new learning platform, Neve, we recently ran user interviews and testing with people who have ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder). We asked the group about their negative and positive learning experiences to help us understand what makes learning easier or more difficult for them. Here's what we learned. Instructions need to be concise and straightforward. "If I don't know how many tasks there are going to be and how long they're going take, I might find it stressful." Some people with ADHD struggle with planning and organising. Be clear about what is expected, how long it will take, the number of tasks involved, and the materials that will be used. This allows the person to focus on the activity itself without having to put extra effort into understanding how the activity works. Paying attention can sometimes be challenging. "I get distracted fairly regularly... I could literally have something on in front of me, but my mind would be a million miles away.” Many people with ADHD struggle to focus for a long period of time. They would rather learn at their own pace with plenty of time for breaks. It helps to present material in different formats. "I like the transcription alongside the video. I find I can retain more when I can read the script and watch the video.” Pure text-based learning can be difficult for people with ADHD. Offering the same material in multiple formats such as video, audio, text, and through an activity, allows individuals to choose the options that best fit their way of learning. Repetition of the material also helps people better retain what they have learned. If you'd like to know more about our new learning platform, Neve, please just send us an email and we'll arrange a time to have a chat. You can also sign up for our newsletter.  You've all heard of the carbon footprint, but what about the digital carbon footprint? The digital carbon footprint is all the emissions generated by online activity via digital technologies.
It may not be something you've considered much before, but there are small things you can do that will have a big impact on reducing our collective digital carbon footprint. Let’s talk about it: the internet pollutes the environment. The internet uses a lot of energy. Any digital activity, such as searching and browsing the internet, sending an email or uploading images generates CO2 emissions. The cloud also has a big part to play in this. The data we store in the cloud is materialised in data centres and vast servers. These centres and servers need huge amounts of energy to run and to support the internet. Small steps you can take: Instead of cloud storage, use local storage such as USB sticks and hard drives whenever you can. We understand that this is not always an option at work for security and sharing reasons, but think if it could be a solution for other things, for example, photos and videos.
Design can be greener...via accessibility! Design for accessibility is sustainable and eco-friendly because clean, easy to use designs reduce the data transfer. This reduces energy use , which in turn reduces gas emissions. Small steps you can take:
Think of sustainable content. The heavier the content on your website, the heavier the data transfer and the more energy used. Every video, image, icon and piece of copy has an impact on your page weight and, eventually, the planet. So try to approach content in a sustainable way with these small steps:
If you've read up to this point, you'll understand how every tiny interaction or action on the web has an impact on the environment. This is a really important thing to be mindful of (and share) as we add more and more devices to our day to day lives. In this blog, i've shared the small steps that are most important to me, but there are so many other small things you can do to make a change. If you’re interested in this topic, I’d recommend checking out this article: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/internet-carbon-footprint. Thank you for reading :) Morgane UX Designer at This is Milk If you have any thoughts, i'd love to hear from you. You can contact me on Linkedin or at morgane.tanguy@thisismilk.co.uk. I also host a podcast called Fairtales about discrimination in the work place - follow me on instagram @fairtales.podcast |
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