Spicy Web Designer Interview with Teresa Watts

Teresa Watts aka “Chisa” is a web designer from Perth, Western Australia in Australia. She currently runs her freelance web design portfolio, her blog “ChiGarden” and works full-time as a Web and Graphic Designer. She has been designing since she was 16 years old and has been loving design ever since.

1. How did you first get started designing web sites?

I first started like most people do – designing a personal site for themselves. After a couple of years of maintaining my own site I became more and more interested in the design aspect, finally deciding that was what I wanted to do for a living.

2. When did you design your first website?

I designed my first website when I was 16, a manually updated blog covered in my amateur illustrations. I thought it was fantastic at the time!

3. What are the biggest challenges that you face on the projects you work on?

I think the most difficult and important aspect of projects is communicating with the client. Sometimes clients don’t know exactly what they want, or what they want isn’t really the best for what they want to achieve in my professional opinion, so it’s very important to discuss their options and ideas before getting too into it. If there’s a failure in communication at the start of the process then unless you’re very lucky you end up paying for it down the track.

The other difficult part is actually finding the clients, but as I’ve just started freelancing I don’t have a huge amount of experience with that yet!

4. Where did you go to school? And, has it helped you become a better web designer?

I studied Computer Science at the University of Western Australia, and decided half way through that I didn’t enjoy programming and wanted to design. The programming experience made it easier for me to grasp web-related scripting languages, but most of the skills I use today are self-taught. I did end up working at the university as a designer for a while after graduating and gained some other useful opportunities and contacts along the way though, so I have no regrets.

5. How has your work on “ChiGarden”, your blog, helped you gain more exposure in the web design community?

I tend to be a bit lazy with content, but as I like to redesign my blog every year I receive some exposure and praise through the design work. Recently ChiGarden has been featured in various CSS galleries and articles on popular design blogs, which is quite exciting! One of the articles I posted on my blog, a tutorial for making an Internet Explorer voodoo doll, also got a lot of attention and over a year later still brings more people to my website than anything else.

6. Would you say that you are doing what you “love” or are “passionate” about?

Absolutely – I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. I love that the web design process requires both creative and analytical skills, and there’s always something new to learn. I love that I can happily work on web design and development all day then come home and do some more work on personal projects. It seems rare, to find something that you both love doing and can make a decent living from, so I feel very lucky.

7. How do you usually price out your web design projects?

I usually have a chat with the client about what they’re after and what kind of direction they want their design to go in, and then estimate how long it will take me based on previous experiences. I then add in a safety margin and multiply it by my hourly rate, which I’ve figured out based on what other local freelancers seem to be charging and what I can live on. I’m still getting the hang of the best way to price things and estimating accurately, but tracking how long I spend on each project helps to make sure I’m charging what I should be.