In a very recent twist of fate I've found myself back to school again. Over the last few months I've been looking for something that ties all my professional interests together in one easily identifiable umbrella and I'm super excited because I think I've found it! It's ironic because a friend of mine has been telling me for two years that she thought I'd love and be great at this "thing". And this "thing" ladies and gentlemen, is User Experience Design (UX).
I guess that, as with anything in life, you have to realise and learn things for yourself. I was investigating roles that combined technology, psychology, design and storytelling and UX kept coming up. So I took a mini leap and started doing a couple on online courses on Lynda. The more I learnt about it, the more I thought, "this is exactly what I want to be doing!". Of course I then had to tell my friend that I'd come to see the light regarding me working in UX. She was very smug and deservedly so. We both grinned a lot that day!
So here I am now enrolled on the General Assembly (GA) User Experience Design Immersive. This has been a big leap where the Lynda courses were a little leap. The GA course is a super intensive 10 week course, 9-5, five days a week. Plus homework. Lots of homework. I can say this because I've just completed week 2. I am utterly shattered. But I'm so happy! We learn by doing so, in the first week, we were immediately applying principles and techniques to a project. The week 1 project was to design a mobile app for a classmate that would solve an issue in their lives. In that week we had to do all our preliminary research, designing, prototyping, and refining. We then had to present all our findings back to the class at the end of the week. Did I say it was an intensive course? :)
As the course has literally taken over my life, I thought I'd share with you all the case study report that I wrote up for Project 1. No doubt my next few posts will also be about User Experience Design and all the exciting stuff I've been up to on my course. Enjoy!