Hi there! I’m James and I’m an undergraduate studying Computer Science at Warwick University, currently about to head into my second year.

Right now I’ve been at We Are Ghost for the past two weeks working alongside their web development team. Helping with managing their clients’ websites and digital assets, as well as developing new features for their upcoming, revamped Ghost site.

Since joining the studio, the friendly welcome I’ve received from the whole team has really made settling in a whole lot smoother, especially for someone who is slightly on the shyer side. While I expected beforehand that everyone would be fairly close with one another, I wasn’t expecting the family-esque element surrounding the company. With this being present both outside of work through monumental occasions being shared, or subtly hinted during more professional discussions – there’s a real, team-spirited quality which makes life here all the more meaningful.

Even though I haven’t been here for very long, these past couple of weeks have had a huge impact on me. This has been my first *proper* job which has taken some getting used to. Especially since an actual work environment feels very different to an academic one. So apart from simply carrying out my daily activities, one of my initial goals was to focus on becoming more accustomed to the kinks of working life. In terms of the work though, it’s refreshing being able to take everything I’ve learnt so far and creatively put it to use in actual projects, which gives you buzz knowing the theory in your area of interest is actively being used in real-life scenarios.

Outside of managing and tweaking content for clients calling in, I’ve been able to put my skills to the test by aiding the development of the Phase 2 Ghost website – mainly through implementing the ability to manage job vacancies. The core objective here was to always keep the design abstracted and oriented around its users – more importantly around the administrative team here – as they must be able to focus on adding, editing and viewing new vacancies without the unnecessary technical details getting in the way. All of this involved jumping between the presentation-based front-end and the more technical back-end components. While ensuring the design was fully device compatible and compilable with usability standards – there’s a fair amount of juggling to do!

Bring on next week.