DEV Community: Moe

Why I ❤️ the Web: Interests, Accomplishments, and Goals 🎯

Moe — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 13:32:05 +0000

I love the web because it gives me access to resources that further my ambitions. Right now, I'm learning French and I really want to immerse myself in the language by living in a francophone country. Using the web, I can not only pursue a career that I love, but I can work from anywhere I want! 🏖️

The web gives people freedom of choice. This is why User Experience (UX) and Accessibility are important. Everyone regardless OF disabilities should be able to equally enjoy the web and get access to its resources.

UX is Exciting!

UX is about making decisions based on the need and feedback of users. For the past couple of months, I have been deep diving into fundamentals of UX. And I love it!

I feel like having this user-centered mindset has really made me a better and happier developer. I went from trying to crank out a lot of features to trying to have the most positive impact on the users. If you ask me, the latter is a better success metric 😀.

Past Year Accomplishments!

This is the section where I brag about my past year successes!

1. I was able to transition an internship into a full-time gig!

After I graduated from college in January 2017, I spent 5 months self-teaching myself web development and looking for jobs. After that, I landed a front-end development internship and did that for 7 months. In January 2018, I was offered a full-time position at the place I interned at! My official title is UI Developer (front-end dev).

2. I initiated and implemented Responsive Design into a project at work.

I convinced the product owners to allow time for me to build in responsive design. This major change opened up more opportunities for this project to be of more use to the users.

3. I increased UX awareness in my team.

In my article You're Doing UX Unconsciously 😴, Now Let's Make It Conscious ⏰ and Intentional 💪, I talk about how I found out I was already applying UX principle without even knowing and then introduced it to my team. This led us to be more intentional about our user experience. (Please read the article, if you want to know more about this!)

4. I leveled up my design & dev skills by helping out the #CauseAScene movement.

Before this project, I never worked with Wordpress, php, fonts or designed a site from scratch. With the help of various online and offline resources, I was able to iteratively create a site for #causeascene CONF. This site is now being used to amplify and benefit the voices of marginalized people around the world! Here is the conferences page and here is the #causeascene San Francisco Conference page. (Please support #causeascene CONF when it comes to your town!)

5. My colleague and I initiated a mentorship program for the IT summer interns.

In our case, mentorship is having someone you can talk to, vent to, learn from that is not your manager. My colleague and I felt a need for mentorship during our internship the previous year. So we started a weekly program where interns could get their questions answered.

Our goal was to create an authentic, slightly informal environment were interns could ask questions without fear of being judged. We tried to answer as many questions as we could and we invited qualified guests to answer questions we couldn't.

I even got a chance to indoctrinate the interns. I gave one lecture about the JSON format and other about the Foundation of UX

Goals

1. Create UX Design Strategy for Internal Applications at my company

In my organization, there is UX and design teams on the business (customer facing) side of the organization but not for internal applications (associate facing). This leads me to my super ambitious goal of embedding UX design in our internal applications culture. To make this goal seem less overwhelming I broken it into smaller steps:

Learn more about the business side, our application users, and customers.
Survey and identify opportunities where UX will provide the most value (business and user-wise), then create a value proposition doc.
Investigate how to incorporate the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2) into the UX design strategy.
Initiate a draft or outline for a Design System for Internal Apps

2. Work towards being a UX Engineer

Right now I’m a UI developer (Front end dev) I take business requirements and implement them technologically. I want to expand this role so that I will have more part in making sure requirements and designs bring value to application users.

3. Speak at a Conference

I never spoke at a tech conference before, So I can wait to have that opportunity. I currently have two proposals shipping around one about Closures in Javascript and another about Making UX A Team Effort.

Endnote

I wrote this article because of its performance review time and I have been thinking about my accomplishments and goals. I thought writing this publicly would help with self-accountability.

Secondly, Aaron Gustafson @aarongustafson is accepting mentorship applications. // Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-1029801875284131840-40'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1029801875284131840&theme=dark" } I plan on submitting my application along with this article. If you are looking for a mentor in tech and qualify (please read his article to find out if you do), I encourage you to apply also!

All in all, using the web as a tool has given me so many opportunities! I'm very proud of my accomplishments and I'm excited about the future!

You're Doing UX Unconsciously 😴, Now Let's Make It Conscious ⏰ and Intentional 💪 ! (Video + Blog)

Moe — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 15:24:21 +0000

UX is a vast field and understanding what it is and why it's important can be very daunting. However, it may be the case that you are already doing UX without realizing it!

First Encounters with UX

I know now that User Experience (UX) is about the experience a product or service creates for the people who use it. But before Revolution Conf this year (2018) I had no idea what UX was!

My very first session at RevConf, I went to was “Focusing on Focus” by Chris Demars. One thing he said made an impression on me.

“20% of people have a disability, so accessibility is a MUST even for internal apps.”

My next session was “UX for Developers” by John Athayde. Two phrases stood out to me.

“UX debt is technical debt”
“UX is everyone’s problem”

Lastly, I appreciated “Web Accessibility: How to Be an A11y” by Aisha Blake. One quote put some things in place for me.

“Accessibility makes life better for EVERYONE”

After hearing these talks, it made me wonder:

I’m developing an internal web app now, is it accessible?
How can I improve the UX on the current app I’m working on?
How would UX design work in my team?

I was now ready to dig deeper into UX and to tell my teammates everything I learned at the conference.

The Team

My team develops internal web applications for our organization. We are a five-person team that consists of one business analyst (BA), one quality assurance analyst (QA), and one backend developer, and two front-end developers (including me :} ).

Our business analyst (BA) takes business goals and turns them into requirements. He coordinates communication about the product and collects end-user feedback. He also creates our wireframes (he does them in Microsoft Paint, and they look fantastic!).

Our quality assurance analyst (QA) uses the BA’s requirements document to create user test cases. After the feature has been developed, she manually runs through her test cases and sees if everything works.

Our developers implement the BA’s requirements using technology. Sometimes because of technology limitations, they may have to propose some modifications to the requirements.

Telling the Team About UX

When I got back from the conference, I told my team everything I learned about UX and accessibility. I also let everyone know my ambitious goal of creating a design system for internal web applications.

Not only was the team on-board with setting UX as a priority, but they were really excited! Everyone was sharing ideas on how to improve the user experience of our product. I got to hear about their previous experiences, on different projects and in different companies, solving UX problems.

Wait!!! Was I Already Doing UX?

Next, I shared my thoughts with my manager. She also agreed with setting UX as a priority. Then she noted, “You know you already been doing some UX, right?”

me: wait! whaaattt!!!

“When you worked on making the application responsive, you were doing UX,” she added.

me: mindblown

I couldn’t believe it! But It was true!

When I first started working on the project, I noticed that the view began to break down on smaller laptops and devices. Later the other front-end developer and I took the initiative and convinced the project owners to allow us time to refactor the UI into components and update the styles to allow for responsive design.

By allowing users to be able to use the application on any sized screen, we were improving the user experience. We were doing UX! This, in turn, opened up opportunities for our application to be of more use to our users.

So anytime you have ever made design decisions and improvements based on the needs and feedback of the users, you were doing UX!

Now that we are more conscious of UX, let’s make it intentional

Making UX Intentional – A Team Effort

The first thing our team did was get expert advice and help. Our team sought consultation from UX designers on the business side of the organization, where they gave us some tips and actionable advice.

This advice was especially helpful for our business analyst who creates our project’s mockups. He is now more conscious of making sure interactions are consistent and navigation is intuitive. He also makes sure the app is user-friendly by improving the wording of the error messages and tooltips.

The other front-end developer on the team focused on making content on the pages more readable. He was able to simplify the tables in the application by not showing columns that were not important. He also worked on making the visuals look organized at all screen sizes by prioritizing what’s important.

From a user perspective, we need to show relevant information as soon as possible. I noticed that the startup page would wait for all data from API requests to load before rendering. Then lead me to change the startup page so that it renders as soon a possible, then I made the API requests load in the background. This improved the user experience by allowing users to see a majority of necessary information quickly without having to wait for all the data to come in.

Our quality assurance analyst also helps to make UX intentional in our team. She now has a tag for “UX improvements/UI enhancements.” So any improvements we need are currently logged in the QA records. Observing our users, she noticed that being able to tab through the application is essential. So tabbing is now a user test case for regression test. So, we know now that if we break the tabbing, we aren’t passing QA!

Next Steps - Make a UX Strategy

In my team, we made UX more intentional by being more empathetic towards our users. This helped us make thoughtful UI improvements.

In actuality, UX is more just than making UI improvements. It's about considering the needs and feedback of users during every part of the design process. It's an objective process where users are researched and interviewed, then products are tested and adjusted based on those learnings and feedback.

My goal is to develop a UX strategy where we make use of the complete UX process. This UX strategy would be beneficial as the dynamics and projects of the team changes.

Self-Deprecation Needs to Stop 🛑

Moe — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 22:41:09 +0000

It's common for someone in the tech community to preface themselves or their accomplishments with self-deprecating remarks. For example, Stephanie Hurlburt was trying to give visibility to women who were junior coders by retweeting their technical blog posts.
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Later she noticed:
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I very much agree with this. This kind of self-deprecating behavior is ingrained in our industry. Honestly, I think it's almost encouraged because many articles downright romanticize Imposter Syndrome and the Dunning–Kruger Effect.

Self-deprecation is very damaging especially if you are part of an underrepresented and marginalized community. When you're part of an underrepresented and marginalized community a lot of times you are already being undervalued by others when you walk in the room. Your voice isn't viewed as that important. It's sad but it's true. So if you self-depreciate yourself it further weakens your voice.

Some Advice

1. Stop saying these words when describing yourself or your accomplishments. These words are now under BAN 👇

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2. Really think about the value you bring, then let everybody know.

Whether you're new to tech or experienced, have a CS degree or not, in a career change or no, YOU bring value to the table. Our unique perspectives alone are very valuable.

It's up to you to think about what other value you bring. But once you figure it out, let people know and they will believe you! You're not bragging, You're marketing yourself.

3. Be Proud of Yourself!

Being in the tech industry isn't easy. It took hard work and determination to reach the point that you are at now. Be proud of that!

You submitted a Pull Request, learned a new language/framework, fixed a bug, simplified some documentation, gave a tech talk, wrote a blog post or something else fantastic. Be proud of that!

Proudly tell others what you did! Tell everyone here on dev.to about any of your accomplishments, we will love to hear it and to cheer you on.

Need Some More Advice?

I really enjoyed the following article:

One Useful Advice To Fight The Impostor Syndrome

Elena ・ Dec 8 '17

#impostorsyndrome #advice #coaching

EDIT Another great post on this topic:

Overcoming Impostor Syndrome

Kathryn Grayson Nanz ・ Sep 29 '17

#impostorsyndrome #softskills #conference #career

EDIT I really appreciated the advice in this comment:

Judith • May 9 '18

@maurice_hayward My husband and I have this discussion a lot. I always respond with: "We teach people how to treat us." I have seen every issue you raised in your post over and over again. I am 100% sure that you're right but also, I've learned, that you can't think your way into better self esteem, you have to ACT your way into it. Change the responses when you talk about a project. Even when you don't feel like it - force yourself to simply explain it as if you were talking about something that someone else did.

Here's what I know:
It's normal to be afraid and truly courageous people get through the fear by simply doing what's right
There will always be someone smarter than me and someone not as smart as me
My projects won't always be good. They won't always be bad either.
Assuming someone more experienced can judge my work better than me is not always right.
Confidence is built with bricks made of failure.
The will of the universe will never lead you where grace cannot protect you ( my way of not being afraid)

One final thought:
Self-depreciation is a dialogue running in "my" head. Those thoughts are coming from me, not the person I'm talking to. I have no idea what the other person is really going to say or think about anything. I have the power to stop that dialogue because I own it.
And so I did.

What are your thoughts on self-deprecation in tech?

5 Blog Ideas about Javascript

Moe — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 20:16:47 +0000

Here are my 5 blog ideas:

Javascript Variable Hoisting
Javascript Scope & Scope Chaining
Javascript Closures
Javascript Document Object Model (DOM)
Javascript Event Loop

As you most likely noticed all my ideas have to do with Javascript concepts. For the past couple of months, I have been deep diving trying to understanding Javascript at a foundational level. I found that concepts like Hoisting, Scope, and Closure aren't explained very well in many articles and blog posts. So my goal is to explain these concepts in an approachable and clear manner.

What do you think of these ideas?

My Favorite Posts of 2017

Moe — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 17:51:04 +0000

"Is this the gate you want to keep?" - Hedi Waterhouse
This post helped me to appreciate the need to be humble as a developer. Being a part of tech is more than just being a developer. Other roles, such as QAs, managers, sysadmins, support, etc. are important too!

Heidi WaterhouseFollow

Heidi is a developer advocate at LaunchDarkly. She is passionate about clear communication, humane workplaces, and conference speaking. In her spare time, she sews dresses with pockets.
"Grammatically Rooting Oneself With Parse Trees" - Vaidehi Joshi @vaidehijoshi
In university, it was hard for me to understand parse trees and grammars. In this post, Vaidehi Joshi explains these concepts creatively and simply. This post motivated me to learn more about parse trees and how javascript parses source code!

Vaidehi JoshiFollow

Writing words, writing code. Sometimes doing both at once.
"But really, what is a JavaScript test?" - Kent C. Dodds
A lot of courses on learning web development or frameworks put UI testing on the sidelines. I enjoyed this post because it teaches testing from the ground up. It goes from creating unit tests to creating a testing framework.

Kent C. DoddsFollow

My name is Kent C. Dodds and I'm a Remix Co-Founder, JavaScript engineer, and teacher. I'm also active in the open source community. I like my family, JavaScript, and React.

What were your favorite posts from last year?

Any tips and tricks for code documentation? #discuss

Moe — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 15:16:15 +0000

So I'm at my first job after college, working on a mid/large frontend codebase. The initial codebase was created before I got here, and it had no testing or documentation. My teammate and I went in and created unit tests while adding requested features to the codebase. Our current feature request caused us to refactor a lot of the original code. Now I feel like we are at the point where we need to start adding documentation to the codebase. So far I have just been adding explanatory comments in front of functions in the codebase. But I feel like I have to do more.

Do you have tips or suggestions for code documentation? Any useful resources to learn more about code docs?