Software Research and Analysis - Progress Challenge 04

30533a – Progress Challenge 04

By Colleen Sedgwick

Managing the design software

This progress challenge requires you to create a short report describing practices and habits you can develop to expand and improve your skills in using the design software you chose to experiment with. This report should include the following:

A description on how you plan to continuously improve your competence, knowledge and skill in using the software

At least three practices that will allow you to save electricity, disk space and paper in using the design software.

At least three practices you want to observe to ensure your software and computer life will be extended in terms of storage, logistics and handling it in an everyday basis.

TIP: Navigate to the student forum to engage in the discussion with your peers.

Answer

Keeping up to date:

Ways to keep updated include:

Blogs

In addition to https://www.smashingmagazine.com/, another design magazine I have come across (previously) is HOW Design Magazine: http://www.howdesign.com/, and it has all sorts of tips for keeping up to date with the latest technologies.

Online video tutorials

These include:

1. YouTube:  for me, it is the main ‘go to’ site for video tutorials. You can go to https://www.youtube.com/ for more information.
2. Another one for video tutorials is Adobe TV (the official video site for tutorials on using their software): http://tv.adobe.com/.  Because Adobe Creative Suite and Creative Cloud are ‘industry standard’ (i.e. I need to use them), I know I can keep up to date with the latest software).
3. Also, I use Lynda.com now, as I am a member of LinkedIn.  For a monthly fee, there are limitless courses to choose from.

Social Networking Sites:

LinkedIn: I can look out for different jobs, make connections with other people, and watch presentations on Slide Share (which is now part of LinkedIn).

Facebook: Like most people, I am a member of this site as well.

Reducing Wastage

Three ways I intend to reduce waste:

Electricity:

Turning off the power when a device (e.g. computer, tablet or mobile phone), is not in use;

Disk space:

compressing documents and/or saving to PDF, using applications like Disk Cleanup or Crap Cleaner, backing up documents to an external hard-drive or storage cloud (like Google Drive);

Paper:

Using recycled paper, using both sides of paper, not using paper unless I have to.