My work experience in Design at PDMS

Finn Middleton recently joined our Isle of Man office for a week of work experience with our Design team. Finn shares what he learned and how it has helped shape his future career. 

My week of work experience

During my week's work experience, I learned a variety of new things across multiple areas that the PDMS team offer. I came into the experience hoping to see where my creative and design skills could be applied to a possible career, as well as to develop some new abilities and discover what else may interest me. I'm now leaving knowing so much more. 

Design - Social Media 

At the beginning of the week, I was tasked with redesigning PDMS' social media and providing a variety of new layouts to try. I first began by looking at PDMS' current social media graphics before researching what competitors do that makes for both successful and unsuccessful content. After writing up a clear set of aims, I put together a rough guide on what I'd like to see as the outcome. 

Below is the result of my research. I achieved this using a variety of software available from the Adobe Suite such as XD, Illustrator and Photoshop. 

Design - Website

Jim and Georgia, who are part of the UX Design team and acted as my mentors for the week, were very pleased with the results from this first task. To challenge me, they then set me a more daunting task of producing a mock-up for a new 'Our Team' page for the website. 

I followed a similar process as before when planning and creating this page design, using market research and competitor analysis as a basis. From my competitor research, I found that team pages can be quite repetitive and often lack the sense of community that is necessary for big teams due to constant rows of solo portraits which become quite isolating. Therefore, I had to really think outside the box if I wanted to create something unique. 

The following image is my interpretation of the PDMS team page: 

Accessibility 

Following that task, Jim asked me to provide an extra set of eyes and review some current projects for clients. I was tasked with checking the standard and quality of the accessibility on the clients' sites before they go live to the public. During this task, I got to look at the back-end of these websites and see the effort that goes into them in development stages. 

I was also able to gain a much greater understanding of code itself and how it can accompany my creative and design-based skills. Later, I put this new knowledge to the test with some coding-based challenges that Georgia provided me with. This really helped me to get more hands-on experience and explore a new interest that can only further me in a design career. 

In summary 

Throughout my time here at PDMS, I was constantly supported and guided by the whole team, especially Jim and Georgia who I cannot thank enough. With their help and PDMS' hospitality, as well as the kindness and authenticity of the rest of the team, I have also learned what it is like to work in a healthy and successful work environment. 

To find out more about working at PDMS, visit our Careers page.