Tag: SAS

SAS Day 7

Today marked the second and last full day with the UX Design team. I met up with my host, Mark, in building R and went over a few tips on Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is different from Sketch, the program that was taught to be yesterday, in that Illustrator is used to create icons and vectors and Sketch uses Illustrator’s creations and puts them in an interface for a website. Unlike Sketch, which I had learned from scratch yesterday, I was already familiar with Adobe Illustrator and Mark showed me some tools and resources in Illustrator that he used often and that I didn’t know about. We sat in his office for around 30 minutes playing around with Adobe Illustrator and creating different vectors and icons. Mark and I went to a fellow coworker Cheryl’s office where we discussed some of the issues in efficiency and design in one of SAS’s data analytics apps. The app worked differently in a computer, iOS, and Android and we were tackling the issues brought up when the app was used in the different platforms. After the meeting, we visited many of the Design rooms that were flooded in whiteboard markings and sticky notes about every tiny element of a website you can think of. This includes buttons, drop-down menus, links, and everything in between. Every element had several designs for when it is unselected, hovered on, clicked, and selected. After this we broke out for lunch, and since Mark had work to do, he let me drive to building A where I met with another Cary Academy student and had lunch with him.

After lunch, I went back to building R and met with Mark. We reviewed what I learned in the past few days in both programs before heading towards a meeting with the whole UX Design team, including Cheryl and other coworkers I was introduced to the day before. They each talked about their progress in their individual projects and tackled some big software design issues together. Mark let me use the Mac that he loaned to me to learn more of both programs while I listened to the meeting. Even though yesterday helped me learn about the tools and resources UX Designers use, today helped me get a better idea of what a regular day is for a UX Designer.

Day 6 at SAS

Today is the 6th day of my work experience program at SAS. Similar to last week, we job shadowed a woman who worked in the R & D program, but worked in a different building. She worked on the testing of the UI(front-end) of some of the products. She gave us a really detailed description of her job and answered some of the questions we had for her. A really interesting detail was that her entire team is actually all girls, which is extremely rare at SAS. After discussing about her job, we then went to a lunch meeting that discussed how they could improve their product based on customer’s wants along every step of the development process.

After lunch, we then proceeded to talk to one of the developers named Linda. She showed us a lot of her job as an admin on a software called Jira, which connects workers together to streamline and simplify the development and testing of a product. She also showed us some of the tools she was using to learn the programming language Go. This is because SAS has decided to transition from Java to Go in order to conserve a lot more memory. At the end of the day, we met with a few college interns to talk about college and their work experience.

 

Interns at SAS

Day 6 at SAS

Today Elena and I headed into building Q (the second newest building on the SAS campus) to meet our new host. This week our host is Scott Sims, a manager in the consulting department. We spent the first hour talking and getting to know each other and what our interests are so that we could make the most of the week. We then met with a project manager who presented a powerpoint on what her job entails, and what kinds of things you have to do in order to be a productive member on her team. We then had lunch with Mr. Sims and his two co-workers. We discussed exchange programs and foreign countries over our gourmet SAS meals. Elena and I then headed to meet with a director in the consulting department who told us about what her job is like, as well as the adversities of being a woman in the workplace. She told us that out of all the places she’s worked, SAS has been the most progressive when it comes to female empowerment in STEM. We then closed out the day by meeting with a member of Mr. Sims’s team who works on Data For Good projects. He told us about the current software he is helping develop that assists in child welfare cases. All in all it was a very interesting and jam-packed!

 

notes from our meeting with the director in the consulting department

one slide from the consulting 101 powerpoint, presented by the project manager

Day 6 – Human Resources

6/4/19

Today I spent the day in Human Resources. I started off by getting to know my host and how she came to SAS. We talked for about an hour about her experiences with SAS and what I would be doing this week. After talking, we went back to her office and started working on different things that she does as a University Recruiting Coordinator. We looked at new potential candidates and talked about the recruiting and hiring process overall. After meeting with her, I spent time with an intern in Talent Acquisition. We talked about his role and what he does for the company. He showed me a bunch of the different programs that he uses to look at people and sort the people they are hiring. He also showed me a bunch of different projects that he is working on. After doing that, we went to lunch in building C and talked about different things we are each interested in. I saw several people I knew from Cary Academy and other places at lunch as well. After lunch, we went to the top floor of building A where you can see the Durham skyline, the Raleigh skyline, and the RDU airport control tower. We then went downstairs and talked to some more people in TA who showed us more projects and how they approach University Recruiting. I then went back with my host and helped her complete some more of the tasks on her to-do list and prepare for all of her interviews tomorrow. I enjoyed working in HR today and am excited to come back tomorrow.

SAS Day 6

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.

Day 5 at SAS

Today is the 5th day of the work experience at SAS. We started off the day by watching another good example of the project we have been working on. The GatherIQ team thought the instructions were a little loose and gave us a few changes to help us on our video. My group choose to challenge people to dance wherever they are if they don’t know any facts about the water crisis. It took us over 40 tries to perfect the introduction where we introduced some of the facts about the water crisis in Africa and what the challenge is. I really begun to appreciate professional actors’ abilities to have composure even after silly screw ups. After editing the video, we also put together a marketing power point to illustrate out how we are planning on making this video viral in order for it to make an impact. We will be presenting the video on Thursday.

SAS chocolate coins

Building C

Day 5 at SAS!

Unfortunately, I could not attend the SAS work experience on day 4. However, on day 5, I caught up with my group. We were tasked to come up with a video campaign that will spread awareness about the unfortunate lack of access in many areas of the world, while focusing on the global goal.

Targets of the Global Goal: 

6.1 – Provide safe and affordable drinking water  

        • Improve access to safe water 

6.3 – Improve the quality, treatment, and reuse of water 

        • Reduce pollution 
        • Eliminate dumping waste 
        • Minimize the release of chemicals into the water 
        • Increase recycling of water 

6.4 – Increase efficiency and supplies 

        • Ensure sustainable withdrawals of water 
        • Address the scarcity of water in some countries 

6.5 – Water resource management 

        • Managing water sources and keeping them clean and healthy 

My partners, Alyssa Thompson, Erin Singleton, and Anna Cheng, and I came up with the “Every Drop Challenge” in which 2 people see how well they can hold around 40 pounds of water, just like many in Africa, who have to carry this for more 4 miles at a time. We hope that this has potential to go viral with the hashtag #EveryDropMatters. We also challenged our audience to participate without wasting any clean water and donating to respective water donation companies!

Even though this video was produced in just a few days time, we hope this will inspire marketing campaigns for GatherIQ at SAS. I feel extremely fortunate to be a part of a process that could change people’s lives around the world!

SAS Day 5

The fifth day at SAS consisted in working and finishing the project we started on Friday. The project was to make a viral video that spread awareness of SAS’s GatherIQ program consisting of clean water I’m developing countries. We started by brainstorming ideas for our video, thinking if several options that would make people to want to participate and share in the movement. My group of 3 decided to create a challenge where people would have to plank with a jerry can full of water in their backs. Many young girls in third world countries have to travel for several miles with jerry cans just for water, and we wanted to make the user aware of some of the hardships of these children. We reviewed the idea with the supervisors at SAS and took off to record. We recorded each of us walking with the jerry can and collecting water from a creek to use as B-roll for our video sharing the cause. The thought it was a good idea to make an Instagram video where SAS would donate $1 for every 10 likes the post were to get. After we came back from filming, we ate at the office. Today’s lunch was delivered pizza so that we could work and think on our projects while eating.

After we were finished, we wrote a quick script and proceeded to record our voices for the video’s voiceover. We stated some facts about clean water and reviewed the movement and challenge. We all pitched our final scripts to the SAS supervisors for their approval and started editing. The day concluded with a visit from Dr. Mac just to check in with us and ask how we were doing.

Day 5 – Team Projects

6/3/19

Today we met in building C to continue our projects. When we arrived, we were shocked when the people who assigned our project decided to change it up. We got rid of the last project that we had worked on Friday, and started on a new challenge of creating a viral challenge video. We worked on this all morning and scrapped several ideas before settling on our best one. We then had pizza for lunch in one of the conference rooms. After lunch, we finished up our scripts for the video, and started filming some of the clips that we will need for the final video. We also researched background shots and found other information for our video. That was all for today, and I am excited to work in Human Resources tomorrow.

Day 4 – Team Business

5/31/19

Today we all met up as a group in building R and started doing some research for SAS’s Gather IQ team. We first learned a little bit about the app and what it was, and then we completed a survey. We looked at different parts of the website and gave lots of feedback in regards to what was good and what could be fixed. After that we had lunch in building R, and started on our project. We were tasked with creating a video that reflects one of the Global Goals that was featured on the website. We started brainstorming a video and a marketing plan that would best fit the project. That was all for today, and I am excited to keep working on Monday.

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