I just graduated from General Assembly’s UXD Immersive course (April 2022). I often get asked about my experience with it, so I put together this case study.
It is my duty to warn you that this stuff is highly opinionated and completely biased. Except for the Takeaways towards the end, those are very true, heartfelt, and inadequate.
Goal:
Transition to a challenging career track where I can effectively use my technical and creative skills to solve really complex problems.
How might I
Prepare for this transition?
Identify my strengths?
Discover ways to grow and develop my skills?
Solution:
Initial research findings: UX design track is the best fit.
Contrary to popular belief, confirmation bias proved extremely useful to gain this valuable insight: I have what it takes to transition to a new career.
Competitive research: Blatant disregard for all the clues about intense workload, some courses require 4+ hours of work outside of 8 hours of instructions. (In retrospect — area for improvement.)
Found the most challenging course. (Chose GA’s UXDI!)
Enrolled in a cohort that started right next month. (Assumption: 3–4 weeks seemed to be enough time to get things ready for the course. Spoiler: It was a wrong assumption.)
Iterative Usability Testing Results:
Planed to get things in order so that I could just dive into the course when it started. (In retrospect — life happens.)
To get pre-course work done in time in order to qualify for the course, everything else was put on hold.
Got to pre-course work, and fell in love with the design thinking approach.
Deliverables:
The first design sprint started + Life happened = Everyone rooting for the success of this undertaking went above and beyond to support me ⇒ 5 Iterations.
Outcome:
Came to terms with the fact that the answer to every question is prefaced with “It depends”.
Graduated successfully.
Side effects (Desirable or otherwise):
Started noticing opportunities to improve every. single. experience.
Strong likelihood of finding myself lost in business goals, user pain points, and/or service blueprints.
Use the words user hats, big rocks, and second pass in a single sentence.
Befriended ⌘⇧V and ⌘⌥⇧V
Let me know in the comments if you too are suffering from any of the above.
Takeaways:
It takes a village to raise a UX designer.
My village = Family + Friends + Colleagues + Instructors + Cohort + GA community + LinkedIn community
“You’re Only as Good as Your Team!” I’m living proof of this. This project could not have been possible without the support of the entire village.
"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Next Steps:
Find an equally challenging job.
Hone my design thinking skills,
Keep sharpening task-oriented analysis skills.
Try improving my creative writing skills by writing blog posts to give unsolicited advice.
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