Today we’d like to introduce you to Natalie Kozlowski.
Natalie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My story begins as an undergrad at Michigan State University with a bachelor degree in Professional Writing. Many are surprised to hear that, and ask me, “Professional Writing? Huh? But aren’t you a web developer?” Yes! I may have found web development through a round-about way, but my major definitely helped me get to where I am today. Within my major, there were three tracks, “Creative Writing”, “Editing/Publishing” and “Digital/Technical.” I started in my major with the Creative Writing track, thinking I would one day become the next J.K. Rowling and write inspiring fiction novels. I took one “Introduction to HTML” class in the Digital track, though, and that was all it took for me to be hooked on writing code.
The coding class itself was very basic, and my major didn’t offer many other classes on web development, so after that class I self-taught myself how to code by doing articles/tutorials online, and by getting as many student internships as I could as a junior web developer during my four years of experience. My major taught me many invaluable skills that I still use today, such as how to write good content for the web, how to create captivating user interfaces, and how to craft unique user experiences for the web. Those classes, combined with my drive for learning code in my downtime, turned me into a Front-End Developer by the time graduation came along. I couldn’t wait to get into the “real world” and begin working on web apps full-time.
My professional career as a Developer began at a startup called CodeGuard. I moved to Atlanta, GA (a big change from my small hometown in Michigan!) and took on the responsibility of leading front-end development work, as well as all of the UI/UX, and Graphic design needs of the company. After four great years there, I decided to pursue growing my skill set for a different kind of application and became the Front-End Developer of Simple Booth.
At Simple Booth, I work closely with the other designers and developers to enhance current features and innovate new ways to ‘wow’ our rapidly growing customer base every day. Some of the exciting things I have worked on include mobile design, development, and optimization across our website and application. Inside the customer dashboard, I have also worked hard to enhance the overall user experience, and provide new and exciting analytics with graphs and charts for customers to monitor their account activity. Developing solutions for unique front-end challenges in the web-app, as well as designing custom user interfaces for Simple Booth is what I currently do today, and I’m very excited about it!
Has it been a smooth road?
I think my biggest challenge starting out came from self-teaching myself how to code. A lot of my early creations (while I was still an undergrad student) came to life from a lot of trial and error. Looking back on some of the first pieces of code I wrote makes me cringe! It was hard for me back then to figure out the “best” or “most efficient” way of coding something when at times I was just trying to learn how to make something work at all.
I had more than enough passion for web development, though, to work through the struggles of self-teaching, and learn how to develop for the web. That passion is something that I still have today, and it drives me to always continue learning new tools, new technologies, and be the best developer I can be.
Has there been people or an institution that has played a pivotal role in your career?
During my time at Michigan State University, there were a few people that were instrumental in my growth. Professors Karl Gude taught me how to use Adobe Illustrator, and opened my eyes up to the power of data in content design. He is one of the reasons that I love working with graph-driven displays and D3.js (a powerful JavaScript library for building graphs and charts on the web) today! Professor Michael McLeod gave me the opportunity to work on building a fully-functional mobile app during an Independent Study, the app was called RideStream. It was a tool for cyclists to track their journey on a ride across Michigan that happened every year. As a student, I was allowed to be on the development team under his leadership and I learned so much about development and design for the web during that time. Professor Danielle Nicole DeVoss was my advisor in the Professional Writing program. She was very inspiring and taught me about the power that digital rhetoric has in writing content for the web. She also taught me many valuable things about document design that I still use today. Mike Joseph was my boss while I worked at the State News in the Online Design and Development department. The State News was the school newspaper on campus, and in my department, we worked on creating new pages for the website, and creating new templates for the custom content management system we sold to other student newspapers. I owe so much to Mike Joseph, for bringing me onto his team. My web development skills grew so much due to that job, and I will forever be thankful as a student I was able to have that opportunity.
Do you have a favorite type of client or project?
There are two things I’m most excited about today. One is designing and building data-driven displays. I love working with JavaScript, and graph-building libraries like D3.js. When an opportunity comes up to design or build a new dashboard for an application, I love thinking of new and creative ways to show information, that is also easy to understand and use. There is so much that can be communicated through data, charts, and graphs. I love finding the best ways to do it from a programming standpoint and design.
The second type of project I really enjoy working on is mobile website optimization. I love taking a website that has 100 HTTP requests and bringing it down to under 15. I like combining and minimizing resources so that initial load times go down, making the page faster. Learning new techniques about how to better leverage caching, minimize redirects, and reduce file sizes gets me excited. I also love cleaning up a code and running it through validators so that documents are properly written in valid HTML/CSS. All of that may sound pretty boring to some people, but I really enjoy speed and optimization work for the web! I especially enjoy it when it comes to optimizing for mobile design/development.
What do you know now that you wish you knew when you were just starting out?
It’s true, I probably found my career as a front-end web developer through an indirect path than most, but I learned so many valuable lessons and skills along with that path. My Professional Writing background definitely helps me succeed today, so I don’t think I would change majors if I could do it all again. Maybe I would start out in the Digital & Technical Track within that major from the get-go, instead of switching to that Track a semester into the program, but all in all, I feel very lucky about the opportunities and experiences I’ve had along the way.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://nataliekozlowski.com/
- Email: kozlow47@gmail.com
