My 3 years at Hive…
Having officially graduated last month (finally!), I decided to spend some time reflecting upon the last few years of my academic journey…
Whilst all my friends around me would groan when they saw ICT was the next lesson on our timetable at school, it was the subject I most looked forward to each week from Year 7 to Year 13. The interest I cultivated through school resulted in me seeking a degree that would help build and support my future career path, whilst helping me develop my passion, knowledge, and skills in technology. Having identified at 6th Form that I was not interested in the development side of the tech industry, I realised I needed to find a course that covered other aspects of the industry for me to consider a potential career in.
In August 2016, I secured a place at Northumbria University in Newcastle to study ‘Information Technology Management for Business.’ This course was perfectly suited to my interests providing me with a range of modules that covered different areas of IT. Whilst a few modules did involve coding, which enabled me to gain valuable insight into the actual development of websites and other digital services, the modules that were more tailored to the actual process of delivering digital projects, i.e. project management, were the subject areas I was most interested in. Part of the attraction to this course was the opportunity to take part in a year in industry where I could apply all the theoretical-based knowledge to real-life work situations which as a result, would help to bring both breadth and depth to my knowledge, skills, and performance.
Securing a placement…
At the start of second year, I had to start searching for potential placement opportunities. I didn’t want location to determine what opportunities I could apply for so I cast my net wide to places such as Farnborough, Sunderland, Durham, Liverpool, and York. After many video, phone, face-to-face interviews, and assessment days I received a fair few rejections as well as job offers. Whilst applying to advertised placement opportunities, I thought it would also be a good idea to send out emails to local businesses (in Newcastle and Sheffield) to see if they had any potential placements — most of my emails were unsurprisingly ignored.
In February 2018, I sent what I thought would be another ignored email to recruitment@hiveit.co.uk expressing an interest in a possible (and at the time, non-existent!) placement opportunity after seeing Hive IT, a Sheffield-based digital agency, featured in a ‘Tech Matters’ event at my old school, Sheffield High School. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email back from Jonny on the same day to acknowledge my message. After a couple of months of email exchanges, phone calls, and an in-person interview at Hive, I was offered a job as Junior Project Manager for the next academic year! Whilst I didn’t let the location steer my final decision for a placement, the vibe and feeling I got whilst engaging with Hive both virtually and in-person already made me think that this was the best-suited opportunity for me… it also meant being able to live at home for the year!
My Placement Year at Hive IT…
My first few weeks at Hive consisted of developing my understanding of the company, their clients, the software used, and the team. I think I really benefited from working within a smaller company as opposed to a larger, more corporate-styled business. I loved getting to know the team on more of a personal level which I think is one of the contributing factors to the success of Hive as everyone is always so supportive of one another. From the moment I entered the office, the entire team was extremely friendly and supportive which helped me feel comfortable and settled. I continued to feel supported throughout my entire placement year; my quarterly reviews with Liz enabled me to reflect, acknowledging my recent accomplishments, and set more goals that would both benefit me and Hive for the next work quarter. Being treated as another member of the team rather than just as a university student made me feel valued and helped me feel that I had a voice that the team would actively listen to throughout the year. Monthly Show and Tells helped foster the one-team ethos at Hive — it was the perfect opportunity to involve the whole company in recent/ongoing projects or provide a new knowledge share from a course/event recently attended.
Without really realising, I was enhancing my interpersonal skills throughout the year. Constant communication across both the internal and external project teams was (and obviously still is) a huge part of my role as a Project Manager. This helped foster a good working relationship across the team and manage expectations. My placement year also allowed me to improve my written communication skills. I had to ensure that the information included in project proposals was clear, precise and to the point for the client to understand. Whilst I am the first to admit that my technical understanding is still lacking, but will hopefully develop in time as I gain further experience, sitting down with the team to put together a project plan and estimates always provided me with a scope for the project we were working on. This helped me understand how long certain tasks would take to complete and how much each of our services would cost a client — two aspects that were purely theoretical at university. Planning and time management were other key skills I developed that were constantly challenged. Prioritising tasks and creating weekly schedules for team members helped me to keep track of progress and provide clients with visibility of the work. Using new progress tracking tools such as Trello and Jira created visibility across the whole project team.
Not only did I gain and develop Project Management skills, but I was also part of many User Experience (UX) activities such as workshops involving: Defining Users, Creating Personas, Mapping User Journeys, and Card Sorting. Within my first and second year of uni, UX was not a subject area covered so I never realised how much thought goes into the design of digital products and the importance of outputs from the UX activities. User-centred design is a framework Hive is extremely passionate about and encourages clients to follow to help get them into the mindset of their users and their needs. My favourite UX activity during my placement was Usability Testing. Through observing in-person sessions, I loved watching how our User Researchers openly and neutrally questioned participants to capture feedback that could help inform the amendments to an existing product or prototype we had created, to enhance the user experience.
SPRINT, my favourite project during the year, provided me with the opportunity to follow an agile framework, a method of project management that was briefly touched upon at university. This approach enabled the team to deliver requirements iteratively and incrementally throughout the project life cycle (subject to the client’s agreement). This method created trust, flexibility, empowerment, and collaboration, adopting a one-team approach with our internal team, the client, and their stakeholders. As part of the agile framework, I led sprint ceremonies which included: sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint demos, and retrospectives. I especially enjoyed retros as it not only provided the opportunity for the team to reflect on areas we could improve upon for the next sprint but also gave us time to acknowledge and champion what we had achieved. Google Analytics was also introduced to me as a new tool for monitoring the performance of a website. I completed a ‘Google Analytics Beginners’ to help inform how we could use this tool to monitor and report SPRINT’s KPIs on a quarterly basis. This new knowledge also proved to be of great value when returning back to my final year at uni where one of my assignments was based on a very similar scenario!
I would recommend a placement year (or even a degree apprenticeship!) to anyone who has the opportunity to undertake one. It provided me with valuable insight into the real-world of work, experiencing a 9–5 job routine — something I tried to adopt going back into my final year at university! It also enabled me to put all the theoretical knowledge I had learned during my last few academic years into practice, whilst continuing to enhance and develop key skills and an understanding of my chosen subject area. Completing a placement created a sense of direction for my future and helped improved my academic performance when I returned to university for my final year — which I explain below!
Going back to uni…
I was excited to go back to uni with the new knowledge and skills I had gained at Hive. The first thing I needed to sort was an idea for my final year project (dissertation). I was initially filled with dread, thinking I had to build a service or a product as my course sat within the Computer Science department. It was only after a discussion with my supervisor about what work activities I had been involved in on placement that he suggested focusing my research on Usability.
Usability as my chosen subject topic provided me with the perfect opportunity to build upon the skills I had learned from Hive when I was involved in various UX workshop activities. Whilst back at uni, Hive continued to support my studies when I realised I needed to use a website as a case study to support my individual research project. Hive suggested contacting Sheffield Girls’ School (SGS) as an option for my project as they were interested in usability tests. Since their site went live, no expert or representative user evaluations had been conducted, justifying a reason to use their website as a case study for my project investigation. Once SGS confirmed they were happy for me to use their website, I was able to create an investigative focus for my research project: An investigation into the usability of a school’s web service, assessing its desktop and mobile environments from the perspective of an expert and its representative users.
Leading up to the Christmas break, my research was centred around understanding usability, recommended design principles by leading experts, and evaluating the types of UX research methods I needed to consider for the practical aspect of my project. A cognitive walkthrough combined with a heuristic evaluation was the chosen expert analysis technique. As SGS had requested the assessment of specific tasks on their site, the cognitive walkthrough method enabled the tasks to be broken down into the necessary sequential steps required to accomplish each of them. Evaluating each of these steps against heuristics and the identified usability guidelines allowed me to check the site’s compliance. In-person usability tests within a laboratory setting was the chosen research technique to capture the perspective of representative users, which in this case was parents. Hive was happy for me to use their usability lab space within their old office space at Park Hill. This centrally located hub would help to attract participant recruitment.
The individual usability sessions took place across a fortnight — most were conducted in Hive’s lab, some involved a house visit to some participants who were more time-restricted. Morae was the usability software used to collect and analyse the qualitative and quantitative data recorded during each session. The software enabled each recording to be uploaded into ‘Morae Manager’ which allowed me to rewatch and analyse sessions, adding in predefined markers. Morae Manager enabled me to produce graphs of the quantitative data that was captured from the recordings and timestamps. Following the completion of my final year project report, I shared the findings of the usability tests with SGS to review, the document also included suggested recommendations for consideration.
Coming back to Hive…
I was really excited to come back to Hive. I quickly learned to adapt to the working from home routine which hadn’t affected our way of working — although I was soon missing our frequent pub visits (these were adapted to ‘virtual pub and quiz Friday’s)! I’ve actually found myself working more productively at home and I do enjoy the 10-second commute down the stairs to my desk as opposed to sitting in traffic on the Parkway!
It has been nice to get involved in new work with existing clients that I had worked with during my placement year. The familiarity helped me settle back into the routine of work. I have also really enjoyed getting stuck into projects with new clients, as these have not only allowed me to pick back up my project management skills but also take on more of a user experience (UX) role. After completing my final year project in the subject of usability, Hive wanted me to start supporting within the UX team as well as continuing to manage the delivery of projects.
My first role within UX involved presenting the findings of my final year project to SGS in person. Alongside a tech review of their existing site conducted by James, one of our senior developers, my work at university helped lead to an upgrade of their CMS whilst amending and tweaking the site’s designs based on the feedback from users. Moving on from SGS, we then had the opportunity to redesign and develop the Sheffield Mental Health Guide which I managed the delivery of. To help provide a focus to the redesign, I also facilitated remote usability tests with representative users recruited by Sheffield Flourish. The feedback we captured from the individual sessions helped inform recommendations into the redesign and development of the website which was published in May this year.
Back in April 2020, Hive provided me with the opportunity to complete a 3-day training course to become a Certified Practitioner for Usability and User Experience (UX). The course covered usability principles and guidelines that I can now incorporate into each project I am involved in. Methods of how to define the context of use of a product/service and how to capture and specify user requirements were also introduced as part of the course. I particularly enjoyed the topic of ‘Describing user interactions’ as it focused on design guidelines, dialogue principles, and heuristics. The course finished on the different approaches to usability testing and other evaluation methods I can now consider when we offer this service type to clients at Hive. I successfully passed the examination at the end of the course, becoming a Certified Professional for Usability and UX!
I am now currently just in the process of wrapping up my first project as the UX lead. This project has enabled me to put all my new and enhanced knowledge and skills into practice: creating personas, user journeys, heuristic, and competitor evaluations and facilitating usability testing sessions. The challenging aspect of this project was managing both the overall project delivery as well as facilitating the UX activities — this is something I am monitoring with the rest of the PM team to ensure I am handling my workload comfortably.
What I’m looking forward to next…
After being back a year at Hive, I am really looking forward to getting involved in more UX-based projects to allow me to continue working and learning collaboratively with the rest of the UX team so that I can further develop my knowledge and skill set. At the same time, I am keen to keep on top of my own independent learning through the use of courses and also reading around specific areas of the ever-changing UX field such as the psychology behind users’ behaviours. I am also eager to create my own bank of UX activities that I can refer to and use on different projects I will work on in the future. Whilst a lot of what I’m looking forward to next focuses on the UX side of my role, I am equally looking forward to managing the delivery of new and exciting projects so that I can also continue developing my PM knowledge and skill set!
