Give us a bit of background about yourself
Yo! My name is Zara and I'm based in East London. I am a human first and foremost and work as a freelance assistant/Junior producer for an artist or his life coach, depending on who's asking. It's hard to actually describe the work that I do because it entails so many different random things.
I helped build a wooden dog sculpture at one point to be put in a park to help people pick up after their dogs and at one stage we created this electronic knitting farm, hooking knitting machines to wires and knitting like 80 scarves and donating them to food banks. It's crazy but it’s lit! But you can understand why it can be hard to explain. In short, we help solve community problems using creative problem-solving.
Tell us about your time on Flipside
Flipside was an amazingly intense experience. I had so much fun learning about the industry and about myself during the programme. There were so many new concepts to learn during the programme like research, ideation, prototyping and presenting. I didn’t come from a background in product design so learning about the different roles in the agencies was enlightening, especially picking the brains of industry professionals. Learning how many of them even ended up in their professions was intriguing. Some did not even come from design backgrounds or worked in jobs and had degrees in things unrelated to the field so knowing that there were different ways to get into the industry and knowing the different roles available was refreshing.
Each week we were sent to different agencies where they taught us a concept and helped us implement the learnings. I loved seeing the differences and similarities that the agencies shared and really being in and around their studios gave us an insight into how they run, how they work and their culture. It was a great achievement learning and applying what we did in a short space of time while creating our digital product because it was HARD! But WE DID IT! It just showed what can be accomplished when you can put your mind to it.
One of my favourite weeks on the programme was the ideation week. Working in groups and chucking completely random ideas together to come up with solutions to problems was a great collaborative experience, it really showed what could be achieved in a good team, as they say teamwork makes a dream work! Recognising that it takes a team of people to come up with solid solutions, each of our projects had a part of everyone in it, whether it was asking a colleague about colour coordination or talking through a transition in a wireframe while prototyping. Collaboration is key!
Overall the time on the programme was a fantastic learning journey. I love challenging myself by getting out of my comfort zone and entering new experiences. I believe looking at these opportunities that come by in life can open your mind and shift your perspective and Flipside was one of them.
Do you have any industry insights to share with us?
- Being curious works in your favour, as there is a lot to learn and find out in order to create digital solutions for problems.
- Staying humble, being real, nobody knows everything and in order to grow you have to accept and be willing to ask the stupid questions, though I'm being contradictory, there are no stupid questions so ask them anyway.
- Know where your moral and ethical boundaries are and what you will and will not be willing to cross, you will be working with a lot of different companies and solving their problems. You need to know what is important to you and what you will be willing to give in to. If you can sleep at night knowing you have aided an ammunition company by making their website look more appealing, then go ahead. You do you!
- People are willing and in some cases eager to help, that's how the world goes around, don’t be afraid to ask for help and be willing to help wherever you can. The goodwill circle back to you one day.
- Sometimes the worst ideas can turn into the best solutions.
- Trust the process even though it might not make sense at the time.
- Don't do design if you don't like it, you will be spending the majority of your waking hours behind a laptop doing it.
During my time on the programme I spent time with my mentor figuring out the next steps in my career, using the research skills I learned on the programme I interviewed people in their line of work to get an insight into why people do the jobs they do, finding alignment in their values in their jobs, how did they get there? What drives them? Some were also product designers, head of design and project managers. Read more about my insights.