My lonely journey of GUXDCC_3 (newbie only part 1)
GUXDCC may (NOT) be the Design Sprint to Quick Fix your career problem.
This is the third chapter of my personal user experience review of GUXDCC (Google UX design certificate course), and it may sound a bit discouraging to someone who is new and interested in taking GUXDCC. After reading the first part, you may not even care about reading part 2: what is Design Sprint in Course1 Week 3. Nevertheless, let’s start complaining/venting as a user first.
Part 1: Is it worth it?
This question is the most frequently asked question in FaceBook groups, along with ‘which is the best course/bootcamp for UX’ and everyone came up with an answer based on their personal experience. To determine whether this product meets the user’s need, we need to find out what is the user’s need first. You need a UX job, so what are UX entry level job requirements?
From another online UX course competitor- Careerfoundry’s website, I found a worth-watch video titled ‘get into UX design: a full 7-step guide’ https://youtu.be/1PHnzrhAnfw which gives good snapshots of how she went from newbie to entry level designer, not just with a certificate from Careerfoundry but with a lot other experience from different resources and fields.
If you have no previous work experience and just want to spend minimal time on GUXDCC for the sake of Google endorsed certificate, you won’t be able to break into the UX industry with that piece of paper and a portfolio only based on your study cases. After a long period of total rejection and even no response, you start to panic and ask for help online. If some experts who self-claim that they broke into the industry with little effort, offer to mentor you with their secret tactics, be aware of scamming!
So, GUXDCC is useless, what should I do? Find another course or bootcamp or mentor?
After reading this CF promoting article Google UX Certificate vs CareerFoundry UX Design Program: Which is Better? and more professional blogs bashing about the uselessness of GUXDCC, I didn’t rush to cancel my 7-day free trial before it ends tomorrow. Because I know I have gained a lot from the course, not literally or figuratively but intuitively.
Google is a prestige teacher who doesn’t really care about you. It dumps a basic overview of the curriculum on you then off you go, while some teachers, for example Careerfoundry, may give a bit more detailed curriculum along with some support from their mentors. Bootcamps may let you have a few weeks/months hands-on experience but it may still not be enough, and they are more expensive than online courses. (Price comparison can be found in this post. Comparing UX Courses & Why I chose Designlab | by Joyce Isleta | Medium)
So my way of cracking into the industry is to be a proactive student first, no matter who my teacher may be, or even without a teacher.
Snapshots of my daily learning activities:
- Study GUXDCC course 1 week 3: Design Sprint
- Read book and articles about Design Sprint
- Write and sketch down the knowledge just learnt on study journal
- Reflect my learnings and thoughts on Medium for my blog
- Read interesting posts on FaceBook UX groups or Medium about real experience in job hunting, portfolio and interview, experts’ blogs too
- Comment ‘how is my portfolio/design’ questions on FaceBook groups using the UX knowledges learnt and collect others’ feedbacks as collaborative design
- Think about how to use design sprint for my volunteering project
- Fiddle with Figma and learn how my UX designer teammates using it
If you watched the video I recommended you may point out there are some common activities we both did, such as activities to improve communication, collaboration, and networking. Those are the soft skills required for any job market, and you can transfer some of your experience/skills in work or even in school towards UX design (how to transfer will be covered in Part 2).
One thing I disagree with the video is making the portfolio as the last step. In my opinion, to maximize the efficiency of your time, money and labor on learning UX, you should think about it from the very beginning of your UX journey. It’s the most powerful tool to crack the door open besides your personal network. Start with finding a user problem in your life, follow the design thinking framework, create a case study in your head along with your desktop study. Every time you learn something about UX design, apply it in your hypothesis case study. If you can find a volunteering project, even better.
Oh my, that’s harder than my current job or I can’t be bothered with all that extra.
Well, maybe you should stay put with your current job or find something easier to break into. That’s my sincere advice to newcomers. It’s a competitive job market for entry level UX designers, especially when you are facing competitors from around the world because of the remote working flexibility.
Now, I hope you have a better idea whether you want to pursuit GUXDCC or UX job in the future. To keep my Medium read ratio from dropping to zero I have to pause here. Part 2: Design Sprint and how can I use it as a beginner will come soon in the next chapter.
PS: big thanks to my first two followers and love to all the readers who read my babbles. The reason that I haven’t received any clap or response in Medium must be another bad UI design: those two small icons are at the very bottom of the article, since I always blame the bad UI, not the bad content ;)
Now Part 2 is available.
