Gradually, information technologies became my primary focus and the area in which I developed most while at the Information School. When I entered the MLIS program, I had taken one introductory class on Adobe Dreamweaver, but had only learned a way of creating web pages in which there was no hand coding. In spring of 2008, I took my first technology course at the iSchool, LIS 545: Web Programming for Information Systems. Taking that class began a complete transformation of my career goals, and led me to my current job as a web designer for the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.
LIS 545 and LIS 549
In this class I learned everything from HTML to CSS to JavaScript and AJAX, and each week we created a page to exercise our skills in front-end web design and development. Previously I never imagined that I would be able to grasp technology very well, I had a perception of programming as being totally incomprehensible and difficult. Yet, in this class I enjoyed the challenge of problem solving through coding and designing web pages, and I grasped new ideas easily and quickly. I worked on this class every day for hours, and even created extra pages for my own enjoyment. I concurrently enrolled in LIS 549, a course that taught web technologies, database skills, networking, and algorithmic thinking. In that class the instructor, D.A. Clements, spoke to me about my burgeoning interest in information technology, and encouraged me to continue pursuing it.
Healia
I took D.A. Clements's advice and decided to try to develop my skills in web design further. The first step in this process came through a summer internship with a health-focused search engine, Healia.com. By working at Healia, I gained exposure to a professional web development environment, and the challenges they face relating to information architecture and satisfying business and user interests. While there, I learned about user interface design and the various standards that impact web design, and I implemented what I learned through creating prototypes of widgets. Widgets are self-contained packs of code that can be implemented on any website or on desktops. I progressed from low-fi to high-fi prototypes, and finally ended with a functioning widget for the Mac OS X Dashboard environment that served as an RSS feed for Healia.
Burke Museum and beyond
Because of my past coursework, and my time at Healia, I was able to gain employment as a web designer for the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Here, I am not only capable of creating various web pages by hand coding them, I am constantly learning new ideas and solutions relating to web technologies. Equally important is that I am learning about bridging the gap between people and technology, and contributing directly to it. One part of my job involves explaining technical things to non-technical people (such as curators), and ensuring that we can manipulate technology to meet the users' needs. Now I feel confident enough in my skills and knowledge that I frequently lead meetings at work and find that my superiors defer to my judgment. In the future, I hope to continue to do work related to this, and employ user-centered design theories from class in designing information technologies.
