Episode Transcript

Ethan:

Hi, this is a Responsive Web Design Podcast, where we interview the people who make responsive designs happen. I’m your host, Ethan Marcotte.

Karen:

And I’m your other host, Karen McGrane.

Ethan:

And this week, well, Karen and I couldn’t be more excited to be joined by Nicole Dominguez, who’s an independent product designer and front-end developer. Nicole, thank you so much for joining us.

Nicole:

Thank you for having me.

Ethan:

So for our listeners, we are kind of continuing this series of shining a spotlight on people doing interesting development and design work kind of in the area of responsive design. And Nicole, we couldn’t be happier to have you here. So in that spirit, could you maybe just introduce yourself to our audience, tell us a little bit about what you do, and just kind of how you think about working on the web?

Nicole:

Yeah, sure. Like you said before, I’m an independent freelance product designer and front-end developer, so that means that I mostly work with small tech companies and start-ups, working on their front-ends and their UI design, kind of being an integral for-hire team member. I’m also a digital nomad, which means I’m usually outside of the country, traveling and working at the same time.

Ethan:

That’s awesome. There were so many things in that introduction that I want to kind of touch on. Let’s maybe start with your website, NicoleDominguez.com. You’ve got this wonderful tagline at the very top, talking about how you’re an empathetic, curious human passionate about delightful human experiences made possible by great reusable and scaleable code. Tell me a little bit about how empathy and scaleable code go what and-in-hand. I’d just love to hear a little bit more about what you value in a good web experience.

Nicole:

Definitely. This kind of goes back to the travel. Since I started traveling more and more, I’ve kind of developed even more empathy as a designer, because it kind of showed me firsthand that not everyone has great internet connections, or can even access great internet connections, or even have devices that will display the best, latest web trends. So, all of that kind of showed me that we aren’t doing a good enough job as web professionals in catering to everyone on the web, making sure that everyone can access the work that we do. So, generally though, as a designer, I think empathy is super important because our job is to cater to users, and our job is to make sure that the users get the best experience possible. So, if we aren’t doing things that are paying attention to accessibility and things of that nature, then they really aren’t getting the best experience possible.

Ethan:

I think that’s beautifully said. One of the reasons I wanted to reach out to you for the podcast is you wrote this really wonderful article at the end of last year, I think the title was “The Internet is for Everyone.” I was wondering if you could maybe recap that article briefly for our listeners who might not be familiar with it, because I think it pairs nicely to some of the things you were just saying.

Nicole:

Yeah, definitely. So, in browsing the web just generally on a day-to-day basis, I would run into issues where let’s say the entire scheme would be blank and no content would load, and I would have to put on my developer hat and look into the console and see what was going on. In addition to that too, just on regular connections in the US, on my MacBook Pro, websites would load really slow, right? So in a lot of these instances it just really frustrated me, because if someone like me, who builds for the web and is on a decent device and decent connection can’t access the web as it’s made, then what about people who don’t have the luxury of having a MacBook Pro or good internet speeds? Then what do they do?

So, I think my article kind of went into detail in explaining scenarios that people generally wouldn’t be exposed to or think about in their development process. Like slow internet speeds. Even JavaScript errors—I’ve had instances where banking web applications just don’t load because of a silly JavaScript file not loading or having an error. Why is it that that one error completely shuts down your entire web application? And something like banking is a thing that we use quite often, and it’s really important to our lives in paying taxes and all these things. These are super important things, so to have these things not working is a big issue. It’s an issue for me and it’s issue for so many other people as well who maybe don’t have the vocabulary to speak to why it’s an issue or even be able to understand where to go, what the next step is, and why this thing is broken.

Karen:

Nicole, you’ve been coding since you were a teenager, and I’m always curious to speak with people who might be described as “natives on the web.” How has your perspective on the web and what you do changed as you’ve taken it from being maybe a hobby that you were excited about as a teenager to having it be something that’s a job?

Nicole:

Yeah, this is super interesting to me. So, from how it changed… Like as a kid growing up, my first sites were kind of like teenage angst-y blogs and weird web experiments with glitters and tables and the like. But as I kind of started to just get older and have more context around the web and understand this is a huge industry, I kind of grew up reading articles on Envato, and NetTuts, and CSS-Tricks, and these things kind of became big pillars for me. So, having that context then later on, growing up, I was able to learn more about working on web design, and Photoshop and all these tools that we use every day in our web development careers, and I kind of got obsessed with it, and I just never stopped learning. It was super exciting me just to be able to communicate with these people online, like on Twitter and through blogging and being involved in that community. But also just being able to be part of this industry where the “big guys” lived as a teenager. Because I was living in Florida at the time and there really wasn’t tech in Florida—there still is very little tech in Florida—so just being a part of the community kind of helped me grow my career and feel like, Okay, I’m part of this big cool thing that all these awesome people are doing too, as well.

Ethan:

I’d love to hear a little bit more about some of the other work that I know you’re pretty passionate about, which is mentorship and teaching. Can you tell me a little bit about how you got into doing some of that work?

Nicole:

Yeah, definitely. I think the reason why I’m passionate about sharing my knowledge is because growing up I had a few select people I know I could email and they would respond to me, and they were obviously more into the web than I was at the time. That kind of helped shape who I am now. But I didn’t have a traditional one-on-one mentorship, and I think that if I had more of that, it could have changed my career in a lot of ways. In addition to that though, being self-taught in general, if we don’t share information and if our tools aren’t open source and if our code isn’t open source, and things of that nature, then there’s a huge learning experience that’s just not there, right? So for me, sharing what I create on the web and sharing my advice and thoughts is super important because I think that the next generation growing up has to see representation, has to see people who look like them and come from where they come from be successful on the web.

So, I’ve done some of that through things like hosting Django Girls workshops. Django Girls is this international organization where, in a one-day workshop, we show women how to build and deploy their first web app in a day. So, it’s super exciting, and I’ve done that in New York and the like. And currently I’m actually mentoring at this online boot camp called Bloc, which is super exciting because I get to talk to my students multiple times per week and kind of guide their careers.

Karen:

Nicole, talk to me a little bit about being a digital nomad. I think you’re doing something that a lot of people probably wish they could do—take some time to travel around. Can you talk about how you decided to do that?

Nicole:

I was living in New York for about four years at the time, and I was kind of just over the whole New York scene and how expensive everything was. And at the time, I had just transitioned to being an independent designer, and you just don’t get paid the same, necessarily. So, it was hard to afford living in New york, as well. I had a few friends who I was living with who were photographer. They would travel a lot all around the world, like Asia, Mexico, all over the place. So, I kind of took that as, “Oh, you know, I could do this too if they can do it.” So, I kind of just started to make all these plans where I’m going to sell all my stuff, I’m going to not renew my lease, I’m going to just live out of my suitcase. So, it started happening for real and it was super exciting. In August of 2016, I left New York and I set up shop legally in Florida, where I’m from, and then from there I went to Mexico and just kind of started traveling around, working. My mom is also a designer, and she’s independent and she doesn’t have to go to any kind of job, so we do a fair amount of traveling together, which is kind of awesome because not everyone’s mom can be a nomad and a designer at the same time, and it’s like the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.

Ethan:

That is fantastic. And maybe that kind of segues into my next question, which was going to be I’d love to hear a little bit more about how that digital nomad lifestyle may have changed some of the work that you take on, or the way in which you collaborate with some of your clients.

Nicole:

Yes, it did change things. So, generally, especially with my Bloc mentoring, I kind of have to schedule meetings and communication with clients on certain days. And all of my clients know that I’m remote, they know that I’m traveling, so it’s not like a big deal if they don’t hear from me immediately, but I always make sure to get back to them as soon as I can. So, I have to dedicate certain days for just traveling. So, wednesdays, for instance, or fridays, are my days where I don’t schedule things so I have the ability to take the flight if I need to, or take a train or whatever to kind of get around to my next location. But other than that, Slack is a huge thing in just basic communication with my clients. I try to get some of them on Trello or other product management systems, that way we aren’t relying on just emails back and forth to know when work is done or what’s happening.

Ethan:

That sounds great. I’d like to maybe just circle back to something we were talking about earlier, which was actually trying to install a sense of empathy and resilience in the experiences that we design to make sure they’re as broadly accessible as possible. How do you do that with some of the clients that you work with? How do you get them to actually care about making sure that things aren’t just beautiful or really richly interactive, but also as accessible as possible?

Nicole:

Yeah, this is interesting for sure, because it kind of changes with each client. This kind of why I prefer to work with development teams and people who kind of get what we do. But other than that, I try to make the case for accessibility just by talking to them as a human would, just expressing, “If we build this feature, then maybe not everyone will be able to use it,” or, “If we build this feature, it will take me more time and I can make it in a way where everyone will be able to get maybe a certain piece of the pie but maybe people in older browsers won’t be able to and we’ll have to be okay with that.” So, just expressing clear boundaries and guidelines based on what the budget will allow, but also having their expectations be in the right place. And sometimes they have to change. I haven’t run into any big issues. Sometimes they’re let down, sometimes they’re excited about me being excited about accessibility, which is awesome. It just depends on the client and the project.

Karen:

Is there anything that’s particularly exciting you right now? Anything happening on the web that you might want to share your enthusiasm for?

Nicole:

Yeah, so right now I’m kind of really interested in getting into CSS Grid. I’ve kind of done some work with Flexbox. My personal website now uses Flexbox; it was exciting to kind of dive into that. But Grid is becoming a bigger thing, so I’d love to learn more about that. I’m also starting to learn about Vue.JS and React. As a front-end developer, it used to be where you didn’t have to do tons of fancy JavaScript, but now in 2017 you have to do tons of fancy JavaScript to be able to be hired or considered as a front-end developer. So, I’m trying to catch up there and just learn about the cool things that these frameworks and libraries can do in a way that is accessible and doesn’t completely break the web.

Ethan:

Nicole, this has been a fantastic chat. But before I let you go, I’ve got to ask, do you have any advice for our audience on things that you’ve learned or things that you’re especially passionate about right now? Like if somebody’s about to start their next big development project or their next big responsive redesign, what’s one or two things that they might keep in mind?

Nicole:

So, I think progressive enhancement is super important. If we decide to use any fancy new tools, let’s make sure that anyone and everyone can access our content, and let’s make sure not to hide it behind any walls or bury it in JavaScript. Be kind and considerate to the fact that not every user is using the internet of a tech start-up on a fancy machine.

Karen:

Nicole, this has been such an enjoyable chat. I really find it fascinating to get a chance to talk to you a little bit about your work and your perspective. So, thank you so much for taking some time to be on our show today.

Nicole:

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Karen:

Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of a responsive web design podcast.

If your company wants to go responsive but you need help getting started, we offer a two-day onsite workshop to help you make it happen. We also offer these workshops to the public, so please go to responsivewebdesign.com and see when we’ll be in a city near you.

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Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back next week.