Ravi's November Week 2 Reflection
Reflect on the responsibilities you’ve taken on so far at U+, what project(s) are you most proud of and why?
It has been a pleasure to work at U+ so far, my proudest moment was when I designed a poster in different languages for Social Media. It was wonderful and at the same time it was a bit stressful because I had to maintain the design while translating it to other languages. I did my best not to make the text confusing as well as the appearance of the work. That is why this project is special because it allowed me to use creativity in solving problems. It also helped me know how to target a diverse audience by a proper design or layout of the product. The rewarding factor is that when the final product is posted on social media platforms, someone is able to see that his or her work can achieve something or impact a particular change.
Think back to the goals you set for yourself near the beginning of your co-op term. What steps have you taken to achieve these goals? (if you haven’t started yet, what steps are you going to take?)
My learning goals at the beginning of the co-op placement included improving my content creation abilities, managing time effectively, and collaborating with others. For content creation, I have been creating posters and slides, experimenting with different layouts and styles and gaining knowledge about how to present my work targeting a particular audience. I believe that these tasks have improved my ability in the design aspects. To address the lack of efficiency of time, I ensure that I am properly timed and that I have a to-do list. This has helped a lot in handling workload and managing time, especially when big tasks are divided into smaller ones to accomplish. For teamwork, I try to be specific when explaining the things to be done and also allow others to correct me.
What’s an unexpected skill you developed over the work term so far and how do you envision this bringing a positive change to your career?
One of the soft skills that I have learnt in this work term is the ability to adapt. When I began working on multilingual projects I learned how to adapt designs and layouts for various languages while ensuring the readability of the content. This will be very useful in my working environment since I am likely to work with diverse teams or develop content for a global market. Being able to accommodate change and being able to understand detail are very important in any given role.
If you could change one thing about your working environment, what would it be and how would it positively impact the quality of your work?
I would like to have even more chances to cooperate with my colleagues, for example, daily meetings or more meetings with the purpose of discussion of the ideas. This would enable me to acquire new insights and angles to the work I am doing, making the work more innovative and efficient. The communication with my team members more frequently would enhance the quality of the work that I delivered to meet team objectives. Also, it would be more fun to participate and would be more productive since I can learn from other peers.