Web Development and Project Management

Tell us about a typical day

As a part of the Digital Development team, I usually get my day started with morning stand-ups, a meeting style that we adopted from the tech industry where team members literally stay standing through the meeting to keep morning check-ins short and sweet. I get the feeling that sitting at home on Zoom may have affected the stand-up’s typical bouncy, “on your feet” flavor, but they’re still a great way to get aligned with the team and nail down my action items for the day. The rest of my day is pretty much self-directed, and I usually work on designing a website, organizing its design system, or writing up specifications to make designs as intuitive as possible for our software developers. Personally, I work much better when I can bounce ideas off someone, so I also spend the day in and out of huddles or impromptu meetings, brainstorming creative work or picking a developer’s brain.

What is your favorite aspect of the job?

I honestly love every aspect of being a UX Designer — except, perhaps, having to explain my job to my lola [grandmother] at every family dinner. I have always struggled to strike a balance between generative, creative work and rule-bound, highly technical work, and for me, UX Design is the perfect middle ground. It combines very methodical thinking with just enough wiggle room for creative solutions. All the challenges that exist in this area of work are exactly the type of challenges that I find exciting to work on and satisfying to solve. However, if I had to pick a favorite, I would say that user interviews are probably the best part of the job. It is always a refreshing wake-up call to see the differences in how people approach a user interface, and how much their various backgrounds and objectives can change their behavior.

How would you describe yourself as a member of the team?

Once I sink my teeth into a problem, I’m like a dog with a bone. I examine it from every angle and test out solutions in every shape and size. Thankfully the rest of my team also relates to this one-track-mind mentality when we dial into a project. It could be a part of the developer mindset or maybe just our nerdy flair, but in the absence of client work, we continue to try to “optimize our model” as a team. We experiment with different workflows, keep detailed documentation, and can spend hours theorizing about how different approaches can impact our work.

What do you think is special about FGS Global?

I was brought in almost 6 months ago now and am still continually surprised at the range of talents that exist within the company. There are so many people that make up FGS Global working in offices across the world, it almost feels like the company version of Gaia Hypothesis—we’re both a single organism and a whole ecosystem of independent organisms at the same time. There is so much knowledge and expertise to be shared between teams and across oceans. The best part is that FGS encourages this growth and gives us so many opportunities to expand our horizons and see what is out there, from the weekly Lunch & Learn sessions to the natural, interdisciplinary way that we meet our clients’ needs.

How did you begin your career in the industry?

I have always worked in design. I was originally considering art school for university, since I had done so much graphic design in high school, but made a last-minute decision to switch to liberal arts. At Vassar College, I majored in Cognitive Science and discovered a whole new way to appreciate design: through a cerebral, research-focused lens. From there, I took every opportunity I could to incorporate design thinking and UX design principles into my internships, even if my earlier roles were as a Brand Designer and a Graphic Designer. By my senior year, I was interning with Moonfarmer for course credit. I continued to work with Moonfarmer through the pandemic and a semester of Zoom, and then started full-time after graduation. Eventually we joined one of several companies that merged to create FGS Global, and I have been working as a part of the Digital Development team ever since!