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!
I first decided to become a journalist when I was a kid. I just loved breaking news. Whenever there was a big story happening, my eyes and ears would be glued to the television or radio. I would ferociously devour every articles about that story in newspapers and magazines. Whether it was the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal or the 9/11 terror attacks, I became a news addict.
But something changed this year. 2014 was just full of bad news, starting with the MH370 disappearance. How does a plane just disappear into thin air? It really hit home with me because I once flew Malaysia Airlines to Kuala Lumpur years ago on business and know of at least one person who has actually flown on that flight to Beijing within the last year. At first I was addicted to that “breaking news,” for the first month, although there hadn’t been any real news about MH370 since the day it disappeared. But after that month it became so clear that the plane may never be found and it just made me sad to watch the story play out.
And then after that, it just became one depressing story after another. Another Malaysia Airlines plane is shot down over Ukraine, airstrikes in Gaza, school shootings, Ebola, Boko Haram, the CIA torture report and the ongoing war on black males.
This year we lost some really great people like Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee, Amiri Baraka, Nadine Gordimer, Pete Seeger, Tom Menino, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and most sadly Robin Williams. One of my heroes Stuart Hall also passed away this year. He was one of the reasons I minored in post colonial studies in college and his communications theory even influenced my ideas around branding and marketing for my business.
However, when I heard about the beheading of Jim Foley by some “aspiring rapper” in ISIS, I had to just stop looking at the TV because I literally felt sick to my stomach that something like that could happen to a fellow journalist.
Now I just try to meditate to take my mind away from the horrors happening on this planet, even if it is just for a few minutes.
Fallen Heroes
I grew up watching the Cosby Show literally. I remember when I was a kid, I was only allowed to watch TV one night during the school week and that was on Thursday nights when the show was on in the late 1980s and early 1990s. My parents were big supporters of Bill Cosby’s family values philosophy. Sometimes I would wonder what it would be like to be Rudy or Vanessa and have Dr. Huxtable as my dad. I would still watch reruns of the show well into adulthood because the show is the most enjoyable, family oriented thing to watch on TV these days, compared to the sea of garbage reality TV shows.
But this all changed in a matter of days when I saw video of Hannibal Buress’ now infamous rant. And then came all of the women. All of them had the same story of being drugged and raped. So many women. How did I not know about this when a woman sued him in 2005? Maybe I wasn’t paying attention back then or maybe I was in denial that he would do such a thing. As more women come forward, I say to myself “Who is this man?” This is not something the morally upstanding Dr. Huxtable would do. Or would he? Dr. Huxtable was also a gynaecologist, which makes the whole rape thing even more creepy.
I really want the charges to be false, but if they are true, I hope the women get justice and can find closure. But, if they are true, my childhood is ruined.
New Business
In business news, it’s been a good year for me. This new journalism startup I have been working on for the last two years is starting to pick up steam with the possibility of going live in mid to late 2015. The project will be focused on economic development in the Caribbean. I also had the opportunity to work on two documentaries and instructed three media development courses for journalists from Senegal, Lebanon and Cambodia.
I got my certification in web design this year after months of learning and mastering four programming languages. I created a test prototype Women Talking which gave me the opportunity to combine my journalism and programming skills. I was invited to speak about interaction design at Columbia University and teach a web design class for a group of journalists from developing countries at UN Week. I am also developing a brand new media development project that I will be announcing next year.
I also presented an instructional web design prototype at ATE PI, a conference for educators and policymakers looking for new ways to improve STEM education in community colleges nationwide. It was an honor to be invited and play a role in how STEM is taught to future leaders in the field.
I launched a creative design studio within my company called Global Wire Design over the summer. I hired three new employees for it. Global Wire Associates as a whole is doing very well. We have seen our highest profits ever this year.
As I go into my tenth year of running this business, I am grateful for my success and all the great people who helped me get to this point. There were a lot of “haters” at the beginning who didn’t think I could do this, but I have proved them wrong. When you put your mind to it, you can be successful at anything. I am here and ready for whatever new challenge comes in the new year!
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.
