Alfredo teaches web design & development (Being the Unicorn lecture)

In preparation for lecture...

Please close up any laptops, cellphones, Dreamcasts, NES's and other 'beep-boop' devices.

Becoming a Unicorn

What makes you different?

1. Who do you want to work for?
2. What 'makes you unique' (but employable)?
3. What skills do you possess that are not easily replaceable by AI?
4. How do you reconcile all these years of us telling you to be programmers, but designers, but artists, but content strategists, but makers, but animators, but sound designers, but cognitive scientists, but architects, but creators of virtual worlds, but game designers, but storytellers, but video editors, but photographers, but creative entities, but researchers, but ...?

Creating an Ethos

This week's labs

A(n) ethos is the understanding, characteristics and definition of oneself as a ____________.

Visuals

Who are you visually?

Let's look at a couple of examples:

• Moh Robati's Portfolio
• Lauren Wickware's Portfolio
• David Hellmann's Portfolio

Showcasing Your Work

Help us understand why it is good

Ensure your projects cover:

• What was the context?
• Who was involved and what was the task?
• What did you do?
• What was the outcome? (and why does it matter)

Step 1: Situation

1. What are necessary details to explaining P2?

Step 2: Task

1. What are necessary details to explaining P2?
2. What was a challenge you encountered in P2?

Step 3: Action

1. What are necessary details to explaining P2?
2. What was a challenge you encountered in P2?
3. What was an action you took to address that challenge P2?

Step 4: Result

1. What are necessary details to explaining P2?
2. What was a challenge you encountered in P2?
3. What was an action you took to address that challenge P2?
4. What was the result?

Why Should I Care?

Industry and learning

Portfolios are all about reflective practice, and learning well always involves self-reflection.

P3: What Do They Want?

How employers approach applications

How employers approach your application:

1. Skimming the cover letter (5s): Well written and custom?
2. Look at the resume (10s): Well designed, clear branding, good typsetting?
3. Read the resume (20s): Have skills and experience relating to job?
4. Look at web portfolio (30-60s): Want custom URL, non-templatey website

More coming soon!

This slide will be up shortly.

Sameyness

Make that framework less framework-y

"I'm sick of seeing the same damn buttons. I'm sick of seeing that same damn toolbar up top. It's driving me crazy."

Personality

Identifying how you want others to see you

How might you communicate that you are 'efficient' without using text?

Code Plagiarism

Be wary

You are allowed to use frameworks (ie. Bootstraps or Foundation web UI frameworks), JavaScript libraries to make working on the site easier, but the final design must be your own work. All materials must be cited.

When in doubt, ask the TA or instructor.

Self-Plagiarism

Be wary

If you have a pre-existing portfolio that you are revising or redesigning for this project you are required to provide a URL to the original by July 15. This just helps us ensure that there is no self-plagiarism occurring in the project.

Self-plagiarism will result in grade of zero. No exceptions.

Identifying employers

Remember every website has an audience, in this case your potential employer is your audience. Hence we'll be having you identify who you might want to work for in the future, to help you focus your site.

Keep it real

For the employers you look at and the job descriptions you find, please be realistic.

For today's code tutorial

We will be covering code pre-processing, for which we will need prepros.io

Once you have that installed, take a look at pugjs.org and sass-lang.com

Please make sure you have today's starter kit — available at short.alfredosherman.com/339-t08

The next couple weeks

Just a reminder of what is coming up in IAT-339:

• Jul 15 — P3 critique, final reading reflection, explanation of coding quiz, CSS animation tutorial.
• Jul 22 — P3 critique, coding quiz.
• Jul 29 — P3 critique, speed optimization, 'debugging' day.
• Aug 5 — P3 final portfolio review.

If there are other code items you would like covered please do not hesitate to reach out and let me know.

Activities for today's lab

Busy agenda!

1. P2 audit
2. Employment exercise