Andrew Smith
BSc (Hons) 2:1 Computing
Curriculum Vitae September 2005Brief History
1999 - 2005
I've been working with computers and specifcally the internet for the past six years. I started using Acorn Archimedes computers, and started designing graphics in Photodesk and Artworks, this was also when I started programming in BASIC.
High School
During my time at high school I mainly studied maths based subjects, physics and maths at higher as well as two maths sixth year studies. When in sixth year I had an unconditional place at Napier to do computing, I decided to spend my time doing other acadmic related computing projects including the intel challenge, designing the school website, and creating a multimedia CD-ROM for the Young Enterprise group.
University
I had a very successful university career achieving a 2:1 honours degree in computing, while at Uni I concentrated on learning Multimedia software as well as server side scripting, web standards, information management, UI design, and content management.
Work experience
While at Univeristy I had the opertunity to work for Jaguar and Land Rover in the Body Computer aided Engineering department. While at Jagaur I maintained and rediesigned the department intranet site, before expanding it to include the Land Rover Body CAE department. I also worked with another 5 seperate departments intranet site, although CAE's site was my priority. I also created Unix scripts in Perl programming language to improve the efficiency of the engineers work.
I have also been working as a freelance developer since I finished University. This has given me experience with designing cooporate identities and designing information architecture for real world situations.
Hopes for the future
After experiencing working as both a web administrator at Jaguar, and as a freelance designer, I've decided that working in the web development industry is my goal for the future.
I enjoyed many parts of both aspects of web design/management. The web management aspect gave me opportunities to see how visitor's use the intranet, and design it for the way that they use it. Working freelance gave me the opertunity to start every project a fresh, I enjoy desigining the user interface, and from there implementing the design. Although sometimes frustrating, working with clients was both educational and enjoyable. Trying to get as much information about what they want from the web site, and what their expections for it are, is both challenging and rewarding.
Ideally I'd like to work in an indepentant design firm with access to many different projects and learning opertunities. Working in a design firm would also give me a chance to learn more about designing for the web, for screen and for print. I'd also like to go back to University and do a design degree.