My week at Nexer, by Madison

This week we were joined at our Macclesfield office by Madison. Madison is 15 and was interested to learn about the day-to-day of what we do at Nexer across development, design, marketing and some of our internal administrative work. Over the past week, Madison has helped us with lots of different tasks, and here she’s written about how she spent her time with us.  
 
A huge thank you for all your help, Madison! :-) 

Day 1 

I arrived just before 10 and met Katie (Project Manager Team Lead) Jen (Senior Business Administrator), Lisa (Senior Content Designer), Sarah (Head of Delivery), Sarah (User Researcher) and Megan (User Researcher) Soon after that I met Hilary.  
 
She was very welcoming and introduced herself and the rest of the staff who were in the office. We then went to meet Tom (IT Support Officer) to set my laptop and email up for the week. Shortly after logging in I had a call with Cat (Sales, Marketing and Events Coordinator) to discuss what I would be doing for the rest of the week.  
 
After our call, I completed a spreadsheet covering the ‘Who we are’ section of the website to make sure everyone was on there that needed to be. After that I was given the task of archiving the files of some completed projects on Microsoft Teams to help keep things organised.  

Day 2  

I got in at around the same time the next day to finish the spreadsheet and make sure people had the correct job titles. I met Chris (Head of Design), Danny (Accessibility Lead) and Dave (Head of Technology). Hilary then met me to discuss updating the Nexer Digital intranet and we spoke more about what I was interested in doing for the rest of the week.  
 
Cat called me that day to see how I was doing and help me a message on Teams to gather people’s headshots and biographies for the site. After that, I created a new spreadsheet with details of the old monitors in the office. Later in the day, I was invited to sit in on a call with Megan to learn more about the process of user research. I learnt about how the company uses people’s responses in an interview about digital products and services to further the design and development in the project. 

Day 3  

Once I got in on Wednesday I was greeted by Katy (Service Designer), her dog Willow and Andrew (Service and Optimisation Manager) Katy spent time with me discussing design and how Miro is used and I had a look at Nexer's virtual ward project, and how it is organised on Miro. I thought Miro was a useful tool to use as multiple people in a project can contribute to a single board.  
 
After that I created a new spreadsheet with details of the old monitors in the office. Tom then asked if I would like to help with the unboxing of the new monitors and putting away of the old ones which I was more than happy to do. Nexer plans on donating the old equipment to charity, as part of their sustainability commitment to making sure tech is reused and recycled where possible.  

Day 4  

When I arrived on Thursday I was greeted by Rachel (Senior Developer) who spoke to me about accessibility development and the components used. It was useful to learn about a11y and the many things that should be thought about in terms of accessibility before publishing a website. After that Tom and I finished the spreadsheet and putting away of all the monitors. I finished completing the file archiving and started deleting the old, completed Teams channels.  
 
I also tested out AI with ChatGPT which Hilary, Dave and Chris helped me set up. Hilary asked me to use the AI to create a song and some lyrics for it.  I did this with some prompts Hilary had added such as: “lyrics about a protest with the keyword phoenix and chords in the key of D minor”, I also asked the AI to auto-generate basic drumbeats and basslines.  

Day 5  

I arrived at the office and started writing my blog, which I worked with Cat to publish via the Umbraco backoffice. It was good to see the process behind sharing content like blog posts on the Nexer website.  
 
I have really enjoyed working here, especially with Hilary, Cat and Tom who have all been very nice and helpful throughout the entire week.