Today was the first day of the second shadowing program at SAS. I had come from spending 3 days shadowing people at marketing, and today I started shadowing Mark Malek at SAS’s UX Design (user experience) field. UX Design deals with the presentation and efficiency of a website. It does not create ideas for websites, but takes an existing website and makes it as presentable and enjoyable as possible for the user. I met Mark for the first time and we sat down at the cafeteria introducing ourselves and talking about my background in technology and design. We then spent a few minutes going around the UX offices and meeting people that worked there. We then settled in his office where he ran me through his profession and the tools he uses to get work done. He uses programs like Adobe Illustrator and Sketch to make interfaces, but we focused mainly on Sketch today. Sketch is a good tool to lay out a website page or draft and brainstorm appealing visuals. He pulled up a random website page from SAS’s drive website and he recreated it so I could become familiar with the program. He provided me with a MacBook that I will be able to use throughout the week. Once we were done, it was time for lunch and we both broke out and I was able to eat with some fellow Cary Academy students.
After lunch, we attended a quick one-on-one meeting that Mark has with another intern regarding Sketch. The intern had a few questions on Sketch and it was helpful to learn from the questions asked and answered. We then went back to his office where he showed me several websites and tools that designers use to get inspiration and showed me more advanced and nifty tips on Sketch. We went over tomorrow’s plans and finished for the day. This was the first time I have ever experienced something like this since it merges two string interests, design and technology, that I have not always been able to put into practice and allows me to see how they are applied in the workplace.