1 year later: what I learned from my UX design bootcamp
By: Julian Jensen
Tags: Bootcamp, User Experience, General Assembly, Design, Tech

Your 20s and 30s are all about growth. Growth in romance, relationships, and a perhaps deeper understanding of sarcasm. One year ago I shifted my career from advertising to user experience design, spearheaded by attending a 10-week design bootcamp at GA. Looking back, now one year later, here are the top things I can tell you about the experience.

Career pivots make for better humans.

Changing your career is not easy: it involves major risk taking, willingness to start from square one again, and an ability to embrace change in radical ways. And most of the strongest, most charismatic, and sincere people embody these characteristics. We tend to label it as having strong agility: the ability to think and understand quickly. People overcome challenges all the time, but the ability to do it over and over again is truly a life lesson. 10 weeks of doing it over and over again makes for stronger, better humans. Happier, more confident bootcamp students go into interviews with the attitude: “I got this, even if I’m still learning every day.”

Designing in a bootcamp environment mimics a real design studio space, minus corporate bureaucracy.

It’s actually the ideal environment where ideas can thrive without boundaries: collaboration, team structure, time-boundaries, and project management come together as just like in the corporate world. And the final client capstone project that my program had, actually mimics what freelance work is like. In 10 weeks you can learn user experience design front to back, and turn it inside and out. Learning design through intensive coursework, paired with strong career support, not only sounds like the future of technical schools, it is the future of education as a whole. (And I graduated with a traditional master’s degree two years before.)

The bootcamp doesn’t end at the 10-week mark

It’s 10 weeks of learning plus 10 weeks of job hunting. A career change is all about transparency and bootcamps should set this expectation for new students. When I described my bootcamp experience to friends, I always included the job hunt, because no doubt about it, it takes 1–2 months at minimum to land a position if you’re hustling hard every day. Students are also forking out thousands of dollars to pay for the course, and being honest about the timeline makes for a better sales pitch.

I slept like normal, but didn’t see friends as often.

The design bootcamp doesn’t hijack your life as some people might expect, but it does take a lot of your time. My friendships had to go on pause for a little while, because my biggest financial priority became the bootcamp and all the work that went along with. I was told early by a graduate that you get what you put into it, and so I did just that: put everything I had into it. Continue to go out on the weekends, just pick one night instead of two.

Sketch should be a prerequisite for taking a design bootcamp.

Everyone should start day one with a basic understanding of Sketch. In my cohort, the students who where already visual designers played those roles when it came to team projects, and students who didn’t have a visual background felt relegated to other roles—which shouldn’t have been the case. Visual designers can always use more research experience, and vice versa. With online courses like Sketchmaster and design templates being so accessible, anyone can be a visual designer as long as they have a basic understanding of Sketch. Some companies may want their designers to be fluent in other software, but Sketch is the universal language that all UX designers communicate in.

Recent hires are an inspiration for current students.

They should be siphoned for their wisdom early. Current students want to know to succeeded in their job hunt and pick up on knowledge that helps them secure their first job out the gate. There’s ample room for a mentoring program to be established where recent grads help mentor new graduates. Bootcamps only succeed in the long-term if students get jobs after paying thousands of dollars to attend them, and new graduates easily facilitate job referrals.

Bootcamp students need apprenticeship opportunities.

Most students spend months job hunting for an entry level position, paid internship, or any opportunity possible for that matter. Apprenticeships give students a little bit of income, real experience, and I’m not the only one to say that recent graduates are happy to work for someone right away without a job guarantee. That experience at an actual company will get them the job they’re looking for. And a rotating group of candidates establishes a strong applicant pool. It’s a win win win. How often does that happen?