My week of work experience with Nexer, by Ben and Molly

In July we welcomed three work experience students to our Macclesfield office, joining our team for a week each. Ben explored software development, Molly worked with our design team on creative concepts, and Robyn spent the week learning how we manage our IT ecosystem.

In this blog post, Ben and Molly share their experiences from the week in their own words. A huge thanks to all three for their enthusiasm and engagement through their time with us.

Monday

Ben

On my first day, I met with Nexer's Managing Director Hilary and Dave, to discuss the work being done at Nexer and their core company message. I then met with IT Officer Tom who helped me set up the laptop that I would be using for the week, signed me into Office 365 and gave me a tour of all the facilities that the office offered.

I then met with Ryan Hill and Molly Barnes, Accessibility Consultants at Nexer. At Nexer, they take great pride in accessibility features, ensuring that the solutions that they provide for clients are usable by all. They gave me a unique insight into how someone with access needs might or might not use a website and how the company can develop it to adapt. I also had an overview of user experience design for websites.

I then met with Dave again to discuss Umbraco, one of the main Content Management Systems (CMS) that they use at Nexer. I gained an understanding about how a client can use a CMS to customise their website without having to delve into the deep code and understand the syntax. I was also given my task for the week to try and use Umbraco to develop my own webpage.

Molly

On my first day, I was introduced to the team and shown around the office while learning about company attitudes and values. This immediately felt like a welcoming and friendly environment to work in. Following this, I met with IT Officer Tom who got me set up with a company laptop and gave me a brief overview of the systems Nexer uses e.g. Teams and Outlook.  

Later in the day I had a few meetings with various members of the team. This included an accessibility meeting with Ryan Hill and Molly Barnes who are both part of Nexer’s accessibility team. This provided me with a new outlook on user experience which I had naively never thought about before – the way in which many websites and apps are inaccessible to disabled people. At Nexer one of their goals is creating the best user experience for everyone, so it was shocking to learn how many people are disadvantaged by systems not designed for them. 

Another meeting I had was with Kam Chaisuwan and Isabel Lyons, who gave me an introduction to UX. They are part of the UX (user experience) design team responsible for the overall feel and functionality users have when interacting with products. This meeting was useful in allowing me to gain an insight into different digital design careers which I previously hadn’t thought about. It was useful to be introduced to Kam and Isabel prior to starting my project as I would be working alongside them throughout the week. It also helped me understand their role within the Nexer team on a deeper level. 

Tuesday

Ben

On my second day, I first began installing all of the systems that I would be using to develop my website including Visual Studio Code as my IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and installing .NET SDK on my machine so that I could install Umbraco and begin locally hosting a webpage and begin developing it.

I then met with James Cross, Practice Lead for Development at Nexer and learnt about what the day-to-day activities of a developer at Nexer are. James walked me through the ticketing system that they have in place to ensure that each dev knows exactly what they have been assigned to do based on their expertise.

During my downtime in the day, I began to develop my webpage on Umbraco, aiming to produce something that not only looked professional but also incorporated the accessibility and usability features that I had learnt are so key at Nexer. Working with HTML and CSS was a challenge at first due to it not being my typical programming language of choice (that being C#), however I was quickly able to pick up and understand the basic fundamentals of programming in Umbraco due to the support and resources that the team had provided me with, finishing the day with a basic webpage with a heading, subheading and image.

Molly

On day 2, I met with Cat Cutmore (marketing and events manager) to learn about the project I would be working on over the following week. We first had an introduction meeting where she explained a bit about herself and her role in the company as well as showing me the brief and what it entailed. My project was to design concepts for Nexer’s anniversary celebrations – Nexer’s 20th and Camp Digital’s 15th. To help me gain understanding of these events she gave me an overview of Nexer’s goals and history as well as explaining the significance of Camp Digital and its success. This allowed me to start reflecting on possible ideas for my project. 

This was followed by a meeting with Cat, Kam and Isabel where I was shown how to use Figma – a tool I was able to use to store my thoughts and inspiration on throughout the week. It was useful learning new software as it allowed me to progress my skills in digital design, giving me good experience for the future. This meeting gave me a good starting point where I began to create mood boards featuring my initial ideas using inspiration from sites such as Pinterest. 

Wednesday

Ben

On my third day, I met with Practice Lead for Development Rachel Breeze, who gave me an insight into back-end development. She taught me about how my current experience in development of games in C# could be integrated into a professional working environment and how accessibility features can be programmed into solutions that are delivered to clients.

I then shadowed one of the squad meetings. This gave me a good insight into how I would work as a developer in the future, working closely with a team to collectively deliver a project to the client with each member of the team delivering their own skillset. I also continued to work on the webpage that I had started the previous day, adding more styling and CSS to my webpage, making it look more professional with custom fonts and images.

Molly

By the middle of the week, I continued to add ideas onto the Figma board with a focus on research to back up my ideas. I investigated similar companies to Nexer and how they celebrated milestones as well as researching different companies’ anniversary celebrations who had a similar community feel to Nexer providing a different outlook on company celebrations. My favourite of these unconventional companies was Lego who celebrated their 90th anniversary with their ’90 years of play campaign’. This was significant as it brought a diverse group of people together perpetuating the message that Lego is for all ages, genders, ethnicities, etc. Also introducing important societal values such as diversity to people at an early age. Lego’s message closely links to Nexer’s values about inclusion – tech should be accessible to everybody. I found it inspiring that such an influential company such as Lego cared about these values as much as Nexer do.  

Later, I had an overview with Chris about his role in the company. He is responsible for Service Design – a holistic approach to user experience which integrates frontstage and backstage design. It was interesting to learn about the ‘behind the scenes’ of design, which was again a new concept I hadn’t thought about. Chris was also helpful throughout my time at Nexer helping me with ideas and inspiration for the project. 

Thursday

Ben

On the fourth day, I met with Ross Jamieson, Practice Lead for Quality Assurance, to understand why testing is so important when developing solutions for clients, and about how client information is gathered before development to ensure quality. I also met with Lee Emery, Practice Lead for Product Management. She talked me through how a professional agency structures its development into ‘sprints’; structuring development into short cycles with check-ins with clients as they go along.

I then met with Chris Bush, Capability Lead for the Design Group to discuss how the design group at Nexer works, how we can create a more inclusive design for all, and how to ensure that the products built are easily usable by everyone. I also met with Senior Optimisation Consultant Andrew, and we discussed how the analytics and data trends of network traffic are monitored to understand the effect of changes on client website.

Molly

Towards the end of the week, my project was nearly complete. For this day, I focused on bringing my ideas on the digital mood board to real life. I created pencil sketches of visual concepts I could see being utilized on the website. This included a redesign of the homepage to include a more community driven focus featuring more photographs of team members and events. Previously I felt like the homepage was more focused on the brand rather than its team so by making this change it would perpetuate the human centered values of Nexer. Additionally, I included similar concepts showcasing the companies’ anniversaries on the homepage banner to show their significance and draw viewers into learning more about the companies’ history. For the Camp Digital page, I also created some concepts for how the community feel could be more integrated visually. I made the ‘campfire’ logo the focus with speakers positioned around it. I was proud of this concept as I felt like it showcased the atmosphere of the event being a collaborative, team effort, building a community of like-minded people.  

I finished the day with an optimisation meeting with Andrew. This was really interesting as his career combined all aspects of Ben, Robyn and I’s roles – IT, development and design. 

Friday

Ben

On the final day, I started by continuing to experiment in Umbraco, trialing using a set template and exploring the flexibility and easy editing of a website built in a CMS like Umbraco. I also showed the team my own personal game that I had been developing in Unity.

By the end of the week, I felt that I had developed invaluable experience in how a developer may work within an agency and about how my professional working life may look if I decide to undertake software development. I particularly enjoyed developing a website in Umbraco and getting hands on experience in real development tools. I can't say thank you enough to the team at Nexer for making this a truly great week for me!

Molly

On the final day, I concluded my concepts uploading my sketches onto the Figma board and outlined key details from them. This was useful when I presented my concepts and ideas about the project via a meeting with Cat and Isabel. We discussed ways my ideas could be implemented into the website in the future which I was really excited about.  

Overall, I’m extremely grateful for this experience at Nexer Digital. It has helped me build my confidence, independence and develop skills in a creative field which is new to me. I enjoyed the project brief especially as it allowed me to express my creative ideas for a specific purpose, which felt like I had made a real impact, as well as working alongside an extremely supportive team. This experience has given me a useful insight into the digital design world, giving me skills I hope to use in the future, so thank you everyone for being so welcoming and supportive.