Five things I learned from my user experience design bootcamp
I started my User Experience Design bootcamp with General Assembly on November 2, 2020, one day before the election, and finished yesterday, February 10. It has been an insane stretch of time learning so much, stressing over deadlines, working into the night, video chatting with teammates on weekend mornings, and trying to stay healthy enough to survive the brutal pace. It was worth it. Here is some of what I learned.
THIS WORK IS HARD
Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
I have to call bs here. I love UX work — I am obsessed with thinking about it, I read Medium articles nonstop, I can’t stop going back to old projects to rework them and look for ways to do more research — but I worked hard. GA predicted we’d have 2–10 hours of homework per week, but I experienced much more. When we were in the middle of a project, I worked a few hours every night and a few hours every weekend day. I had zoom meetings with classmates outside of class time to practice presentations and update Figma files.
THIS WORK IS GREAT
Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
Ok, there’s some truth here as well. Even as I was unraveling a bit towards the end of a project, trying to figure out the best way to put together a screen or the best way to present a case study, I loved the work. I’d rather be doing it than…most other things. Which is why all those extra hours of effort were worth it.
COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF IMPROVING MY OWN WORK
Every day of class, someone saw my work, and every day, I saw someone else’s. I spent a lot of time wondering how I was doing compared to others. Then I learned a little trick: instead of worrying if someone’s work is better or worse than mine, I could learn from it. Don’t tell my classmates, but sometimes I screenshot their work. Then I can look at it later and figure out what they did and maybe even why they did it. I read an article recently about copying good design as practice. Dissecting other people’s work to gain new insights. Comparison was robbing me of the opportunity to develop my own skills by learning from others.
I’M A PERFECTIONIST — FOR BETTER AND WORSE
I’ve always known I was a perfectionist. It’s not a well kept secret. It has probably annoyed many people in my life before. Still, until this course, I never really thought through what it means to be a perfectionist. Sometimes it’s a good thing. I’ll move those little pixels around until they line up precisely where I’d like them. I’ll read a dozen articles on form design to make sure I have it down before starting those wireframes. I’ll go back to old projects to see how I can improve on them, whether it’s reviewing data and insights or gathering more research or practicing using components to streamline the Figma.
Still, I’m working on turning this trait’s volume down while working on a team. I’ve learned that things don’t always have to be flawless — and, of course, plenty of my own “flawless” work has some flaws. By letting people move at their own pace and spending more time listening to other viewpoints, I’ve learned so much more than I would on my own.
BLUE LIGHT IS THE ENEMY
Towards the end of class, I started getting daily afternoon migraines. Then they started to last through the morning as well. Blue light glasses fixed that immediately. I highly recommend trying them out!
After three long months of work, my classmates and I have been set free into the UX world with a long to do list that will hopefully land us jobs in the career we love.
For now, I am focusing on continuing to learn everything I can while networking and learning from others in the industry. What comes next? I’ll let you know.
