Back in September 2014, I got the opportunity to take General Assembly’s 12-Week, Part-Time User Experience Design course, and I jumped on it. Let me explain why.

I graduated from college in 2012 with a degree in computer science and front-end web development. For those of you who have been following my career closely (hi, mom), you’ll know that after college, I stumbled into WTIA as the Administrative Coordinator, and have had a couple of promotions over my two-year stint with the company.

One of those promotions involved creating a new company website all by myself, which was incredibly daunting for someone with no real life user research, wireframing, or project management experience. After a few months, I cobbled together something that resembled a website and put it out into the world. It was an “MVP,” as CEO Michael and COO Mike called it, which I soon figured out did not mean “Most Valuable Player.” It became clear to me that I needed a bit more training in the User Experience field. Enter General Assembly.

The Project

I found out about GA through a coworker and decided to attend their User Experience Design (UXD) info session one night in August. The course would run from September to December, and be held every Tuesday and Thursday from 7-9PM, which was perfect for me as a full-time professional. They also explained that we’d leave the course with a complete knowledge of UX foundation and process, and with a fully completed project to add to our portfolios. After a short application process, I was in.

For my project, I was inspired by an issue I faced in my own life, and an issue I have heard a lot about during my time at WTIA: the elusive “mentor.” At WTIA, we’re always trying to connect professionals, and in my own life, I kept hearing coworkers talk about mentors who had provided valuable life-lessons and even opened doors for them at companies. But for me, finding a mentor seemed like a daunting task that required social skills and the ability to network without talking about my clammy hands in the first 30 seconds.

I decided that my solution, and my UXD project, was an app that would automatically match you with a mentor. Throughout the course, I conducted interviews with friends and coworkers, made personas, storyboards, user flows, and wireframes, and tested the app over and over again with classmates.

During interviews, I found four things that were key in finding and sustaining mentor and mentee relationships:

1. Job title: The most obvious question. Users want to be matched with a mentor who is in their same field.
2. Setting expectations: Do you want your mentor to help you with career development? Help you find a new career? Just want to grow your network? Etc.
3. Method of contact: Do you want to just connect via email or are you comfortable meeting in person?
4. Time spent: Are you willing to dedicate time to this person daily? Weekly? Monthly?

I used these findings to inform and create the bulk of the questions within the app, which would then give you a list of curated mentors. You can check out my final project, developed in Axure, here.

Three Lessons Learned

Reflecting back on this whole process, I can pinpoint three major things that I learned that have made me a better designer and developer:

1. Presenting | Our classes involved a ton of presenting, defending, and getting feedback on our work, which is something that I’d struggled with in my professional life. When presenting my creative ideas, it was always so difficult for me to not respond to “Why did you do what you did?” with “Because.” The answer isn’t just “because,” it’s “because I did a boatload of research.” Which leads me to my next point.
2. Research | From interviews to focus groups, card sorting to A/B testing, and so on, this class opened my eyes to the world of research. Now, when developing a new portion of the WTIA site, I know that I can and should meet with and interview the people who will be using the products.

3. 

   UX Process | This one is less about learning and more about realizing that I was doing it “right” all along. Many times during class, our teacher would refer back to this Design Squiggle, which shows that there is no one perfect design process that will lead to flawless projects. You can make a plan, but in the end you just have to work with the skills and tools you have.

And now we’re here, in May, and I’m finally writing this blog and posting it to a much better website than the one I cobbled together back in early 2014. I use the skills that I learned in the UXD GA course every day in my new role as Digital Producer here at WTIA. If you’re interested in taking the Part-Time UXD course like I did, there’s one coming up in the summer months, from June to August. Apply and find out more here.