Origins

Hero origin stories are full of triumph or realisation after accidents or tragedy, and discovering superpowers, but this is a website and its origins are far more humble ...less about radioactive spiders.

What's in a name?

Ishyamo (“Ish-ya-mo”) is just the name of the website and is entirely fabricated, fused from two greek words which I've since forgotten, and has no connection to Greeks or Greece!
Honestly, I just like how the name sounds; it is as simple as that.

Conceptually, 'ishyamo' was only a name for an undecided personal project back in 2014. After researching that it wasn't a name already used elsewhere; I registered the twitter account and the domain name, ishyamo.com, and then ...the World moved on with far more serious things and ishyamo got buried.

Who is writing this though?

By the way, my name is Matt, and I'm writing this to you in the first person because that's what I do (and writing in the third person is just really odd most of the time).
Unless stated otherwise, all the content on this site is written by me alone.

Map Professional to UX Professional (hopefully)

I'm employed to supply detailed, large-scale Ordnance Survey mapping to customers, and I also provide lightweight technical support for my employer's map system as the main helpdesk/support contact. I've also been directly involved with the work on designing two map systems, and heavily revising another existing system too. Go back far enough, and you will also find I have an Honours degree in 'Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)' ...but that was a very long time ago.

Outside of work I have a strong interest in web design and used to be quite active in the Web Standards community online. Over the years, attempts to migrate to freelance web design though, while also doing a full-time job, proved unsuccessful for one reason or another. My personal website fell into an abandoned state, lying untouched for quite a considerable time and I needed a career-change, a total reboot!

My focus for web design was firmly built around the craft of design, but more than that, I cared about designing for users and their needs, after all, I'd been supporting and empathising with users for over 16 years ...this led me to User Experience (UX) design.

Fast forward to today, and I will use the 'ishyamo' site to detail my journey from Map Professional to (hopefully) being a UX Professional.

I'm not there yet, I'm definitely a UX novice in some ways, but if you want to help me get a UX role, or chat about anything, please direct message me over on Twitter.

Aside: I'll also write about numerous other things because I care about a bunch of stuff - not just UX - but yeah, mostly UX.