General Assembly: User Experience Design

Sarah Sirow
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

I am going to spend a little time reflecting on the GA User Experience Design Course.

What went well…

The best thing that came out of this class, was that I started to immerse myself into the Design world and read all about User Experience and Product Design. I spend the past 3 years designing solutions and products with UX in mind, but wasn’t pulling myself into the user experience design world. There are so many articles, blogs, and podcasts out there, and I can truly say now that I am living the experience design life style.

I learned a bunch. While I always had my own design process, I am now able to speak to it and why it is so important for companies and people to consider user experience design in almost every project, product, and initiative.

I had a successful final prototype and presentation that I was proud to present and received great feedback on.

Why did these things go well…

I was committed. It really is true that you get out what you put into it. I spent almost every moment of my free time this summer reading, learning, practicing, and working on my final project.

I enjoyed it. It was never a burden to work on this project. I had a great time spending my Saturdays in the various coffee shops around New York meeting with users, researching, designing, building, and testing.

This course really validated what I had thought going into it, that this is what I was meant to do.

What could have gone better…

The one thing that could have gone better is the time I spent outside of class with my other classmates. Every student in the class was awesome and brought their own unique perspective on the topic. It wasn’t until I realized the class was almost over that I really started meeting up with classmates, and I wish I had done that sooner.

Why these things went wrong…

I got caught up in the Project and my summer activities. Don’t get me wrong, the final project was a whole lot of work. It wasn’t really until that started coming together that I felt I could focus on getting to know other students.

Action Items:

I will continue to research, design, test, and iterate on my final project. I really enjoyed what I built and would love to keep improving it.

I will be presenting what I learned to my company. I have some new perspectives on topics that apply to every role, and I need to spread the word on what I’ve learned.