I came to Unboxed for work experience, with a limited understanding of what an agency actually does. However, with an open mind and excitement to learn new skills and experience a different work environment, my time at Unboxed has been hugely impactful. It has taught me loads about the work that goes into digital services, content design, coding and business development.
Coding
In my first two days, I met the wonderful Celia, who is a developer. She gave me a brief for an NHS hospital project, focusing on helping people suffering with Rheumatoid Arthritis by creating an online NHS form for patients to fill in. I started off by doing a bit of research about the condition and thinking about what I needed to include. Celia then suggested I do some prototyping of the design, before we asked Vicky to do some user testing and give some feedback, of which I took on board and tried to adapt to the design. On the next day, Celia was incredibly helpful and informative as she then taught me how to build some code, so that my prototype could actually work as an online form. I really enjoyed this experience as it has made me actually understand the process that developers have to go through to create an outcome and the work that they have to do to make sure that it is useful and effective.
Content Design
Later on in the week, I had a conversation with Laura, who explained to me the details of content design and the importance of tone and language, as making sure that what you're designing for is conveying the right message in the right way is crucial.
Business Development
In addition, I had a conversation with Jo who talked to me about her role at Unboxed focusing on the business and marketing side. She explained her role was to work with and build new relationships with other companies, in order for them to work with Unboxed. It was really interesting to learn about another role at Unboxed that is really important.
BOPS and the sketching session
I was able to sit in on a sketching session for a current project on building planning that many of the Unboxed team have been working on. It was a unique experience, where I was able to see how designers and developers work together to look at new angles and share ideas to develop their design process.
Research and design
I also was able to work with the amazing Tom, a designer at Unboxed. Tom talked me through and showed me the process of design and the importance of research. Tom is currently working on a project about property owning and the right to manage, two things that I had little understanding about. Through research using resources that Tom provided me and asking him lots of questions, I began to understand the content, which then helped me when beginning to prototype my design for an app to help people living under right to manage and leaseholders time manage. Once I had drawn up my design and talked through it with Tom, he then got me to use Figma, a design tool. I created my design and presented it so that you could see what the design would look like as an app on a phone. This project was really nice as it was something new that I hadn’t done before but was exciting to learn about.
A big thank you!
I would like to give a big thank you to everyone at the Unboxed team, who were all so welcoming and lovely to talk to. Thank you to Celia and Tom, for taking the time to plan really interesting projects for me to do, that allowed me to experience both the developing and designing roles at Unboxed. And helping me along the way whenever I had gotten stuck and for answering any questions I had. I would also like to give a big thank you to the lovely Vicky for being so welcoming and giving me the opportunity to come to Unboxed for work experience.
Thank you Unboxed!
