What We’re Doing
As a self confessed people person and hug deprived hugger, working in physical isolation has been so weird for me. Virtual engagement is great but there’s something about a room full of like-minded people that speaks to me. So, I jumped at the chance to go back into the office last week, and thankfully so did a few others. It was absolutely fabulous to be back with the team and to be able to have a good old natter.
We also had the pleasure of working with Richard and Jordan from Artifact Multimedia who came in to capture the dynamics of the team and help us provide an insight into our company. We may or may not have been filming for an exciting reveal that’s coming your way soon… so watch this space. 👀
We’ve been working with a local school on some programmes to help young people understand the diverse range of digital careers available. We were hoping to see them in November as part of BIMA Digital Day, but were sadly unable to meet with them. However, we’re still continuing to work on our community outreach by building on our relationship with the teachers. We’ll share an update on that soon.
What We’ve Learned
When it comes to improving ourselves as a business we’ve been reminded that seizing opportunities pays off. The team has grown from strength to strength and we’ve implemented their suggestions on projects to help improve our processes. We’ve been working on our Back End/Front End development team fluidity and integration. We’ve begun adding screen grabs to Pull Requests so that, when moving between projects, the Front End team has a good overview of how the work behind the scenes affects the visuals and composition on the Front End, making the process more efficient. Listening to other ideas is very important and just because something isn’t broken, it doesn’t mean it can’t be tweaked and improved upon.
User experience and ease of use is so important to us with anything we build. Some of our lovely Front End/Design dev team, who have a keen interest in this area, have been exploring the world of UX/UI further over the last few months.
Lead UI designer & frontend developer Anneka has enrolled on a course “to upskill and further current knowledge on UX processes, and research various methods and theories implemented in other organisations.”
Another of our fabulous Front End developers Tim says: “Quick prototypes are one of the tools outlined in the course that can analyse and improve user experience. They give valuable insight into whether an idea will work or not, without having to build a full working version or design a polished interface.”
After attending the course, what were their takeaways?
“Designing a good user experience requires the designer to have empathy with the users.”- Tim
“Jump24 has already used some of the methodologies and processes covered on projects, but it is always good to learn how other designers implement them on various sized projects. As well as understanding that there is no perfect way to do this process as projects, requirements and timescales will determine the best approach.”- Anneka
Keep your eyes peeled for Anneka and Tim’s upcoming collaborative review of the course.
In Other News
Over the past few months, we’ve had a few new additions to the team who are located far and wide. That’s one benefit of a global pandemic I guess – widening our horizons. A massive welcome to Adam Cox, David Peach and Joshua Waite. You’re already part of the furniture!
We’re proud to reveal that we are one of the official sponsors of Laracon Online on 9 February. The event champions Laravel in the tech community, and it feels great that we get to help advocate something that we feel so passionately about. We’re really looking forward to all of the fabulous talks and sessions that will be taking place throughout the day, and we look forward to seeing you all getting involved.
Some of the team got together at our staff party at NQ64 Birmingham. Games, cocktails and rather tasty food from Baked in Brick plus excellent company! What could be better? It was an eye opener for sure. Tim is a bit of a mover and took to the dance machine like a duck to water. Lewis and Josh played it cool but they’re clearly seasoned dance mat extraordinaires.
Lee is a secret assassin who is far too good at shooting games. Adam plays it cool but is actually a dab hand at arcade MarioKart and a very modest winner.
2022 has started off brilliantly! We’re looking forward to seeing each other in person more and can’t wait to see what the coming months hold.