Last Saturday, I was invited to be on a panel discussion about women in ICT careers for a group of teenaged girls aspiring for future STEM jobs, as part of an International Girls in ICT Day program. I was asked to discuss my work as a web developer and entrepreneur. Following the discussion, I spent a couple of hours showing the girls some tricks to designing a website.
I posed a question to the girls: “What is good design.” Most of them thought I was talking about the aesthetics of a website. I then told them that my definition of good design is a system that creates a solution to a problem efficiently and creatively. Yes, it is important to have a nice-looking website and that is what attracts most users initially, but website functionality is what makes users want to stay and come back to a website.
Here is what I think good website design should be:
Easy for the user to understand
Advocates for the user and commercially successfully
Needs to understand the business side and supports the brand
Knowing how to work in a collaborative manner and be able to communicate design concepts
Showing skills that help a designer stand out from the crowd
Showcasing cutting edge and futuristic design concepts
Good design concepts work in many different industries beyond web development. Creators of products and services are always thinking about what makes good design. Who better than Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive to explain how good design works in industrial production!
The Girl Scouts have come a long way since the days I was selling cookies. The original “girl power” group recently announced that it will now allows its girls to sell their famous cookies online. The Digital Cookie platform allow Girl Scouts to create their own customized websites or mobile apps.
It was only a matter of time the organization would have to engage with e-commerce, since that is the way most people make purchases today. Online marketing and sales are great skills to have, especially for young entrepreneurs. I know looking back at my time with the Girl Scouts, I wished I could have utilized Facebook, created a website or run a Constant Contact email campaign.
However, the best and most important part of running a small business is the face to face interaction with a customer. Talking to clients in person forces you to learn how to make a sales pitch. When I sold cookies, I had to make the case for why a potential customer should purchase from me.
It’s about making eye contact, really listening to the customer and understanding what they want and what they can get from you. Face to face interaction also means learning how to deal with rejection when a sale doesn’t go through and starting over. These are all skill sets that you not only need to be an entrepreneur, but also the kind of people skills needed to survive in life.
While technology is a great thing, I also feel like today’s youth don’t have these people skills anymore. Digital natives only talk in their own language via social media. Even my own kids in my family seem to only want to talk to me via text message!
The other side of this issue are the safety concerns among some parents and privacy experts. According to Digital Cookie, girls can choose to created a webpage on the platform with their picture and their first name. The girls have the option to write a short letter on the page about their cookie campaign. There is a concern that the girls could be exposed to online predators. But most likely if the girls are already online using Twitter or Instagram, their online safety is already at risk.
I see this as a perfect opportunity for both the Girl Scouts and parents. For one thing, the organization should maintain that the girls sell a minimum percentage of cookies through in person interaction, while learning e-commerce techniques through online sales. Also, the Digital Cookie program should provide training for both the girls and their parents on how to stay safe online.
I think this new initiative is a great way for the organization to open a new chapter in its long history by being relevant to the needs of today’s young girls.
A couple of weeks ago I had my regular meeting with Cynthia and Keyshia, two students I am mentoring. In our latest gathering, I asked them if they had any thoughts on the role of the arts in STEM fields. Both of them were confused at first and thought I was joking. They didn’t realize that the arts played an important role in these traditionally technical fields.
I explained to them the roles a web designer and a web developer play in building a website. I think a recent Ask GWA post really did a good job explaining this:
…To put it into a different context, let’s think of a car. Web designers are in charge of how the car looks and feels, such as the color and design inside and outside, the shape and comfort of the car seats, the texture and use of the steering wheel and even the smell of the car. Web developers deal with how the car functions, like making sure the engine works in relation to the steering wheel, brakes and the gas tank, fixing a bad muffler and even making sure the radio works…
The same can be said about the iPhone. One of the reasons it is such a popular phone is not only because of its superior functionality, but also for its beautiful design.
I’m glad STEAM industries are getting more attention, especially in U.S. schools. Below I found these two videos that talk about this growing movement.
Renowned graphic designer John Maeda discusses the role of the arts in technical industries.
Last week I was invited to present web design/development instructional prototypes at this year’s ATE PI, an annual conference held in Washington DC that looks at ways to improve STEM education and workforce development in community colleges nationwide. My presentation was sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
I presented two websites I created from scratch, or hand-coded – Global Exchange Reality Tours and Women Talking to educators and policymakers from around the country. The point of the presentation was to showcase new ways to teach web design and development skills in an innovative classroom setting that will attract more students. I received a lot of great feedback on the prototypes.
Web development is one of the fastest growing fields today. However, there are not enough students pursuing these ICT careers. I have discussed many times here the need to address the fact that the United States beginning to lag behind in the global economy because of the lack of American STEM workers.
In my home state of Massachusetts, its Department of Education released a new report yesterday, Degrees of Urgency, that also warns that the Commonwealth is not graduating enough students in these skilled fields to fulfill growing demands in the economy.
Community colleges are best suited to train future leaders in these fields because they are already set up to provide vocational training. Also, community colleges are more affordable and accessible to more people than four-year colleges. In addition, these schools attract a more diverse student body, from young people fresh out of high school, to veterans returning to civilian life, to single parents going back to school, to working professionals looking to enhance their skills. I went to my local community college last year to take some programming skills.
I also had a chance to talk with other STEM employers at the conference about their hiring frustrations. Terry Iverson, president and CEO of the machinery distributor Iverson and Company, dispelled the common belief that there are no more manufacturing jobs in America. In fact, he said there are many U.S. based jobs, but many people don’t want them because of social stigma.
Chandra Brown, deputy assistant secretary for manufacturing at the U.S. Department of Commerce, spoke to the conference about her concern about the lack of women and minorities in these fields. She noted that workforce diversity improves dividends for many STEM employers.
“We need to tap into a resource we haven’t tapped into yet,” she said.
