Springboard UX Design Course alum Heidi Sanders, a digital designer for Kendo Brands, talks about her transition from graphic design and details how she stayed motivated while trying to fast-track her bootcamp experience.
I decided to enroll with Springboard because I needed a flexible way to learn user experience design. it was something that I hadn’t previously learned in my university learning and I wanted to develop those skills and home in on more of a digital landscape because before I had worked as primarily a graphic designer.
I had a personal goal to finish the whole thing in two months. I really wanted to fast-track my learning and I think just because of that I had to keep on myself to just keep go-go-go-go-going.
What a mentor call looked like for me was—I kind of treated it like I was presenting to my manager or to a client. So I would present whichever the week’s tasks were—or if you were going through the capstone project it would be part of the capstone—and so I would present to my mentor, she would provide feedback for me, we would talk about where my roadblocks were and what sort of challenges I had throughout. If there was anything I didn’t understand, she was able to put it into layman’s terms for me, which was extremely helpful.
The amount of data you have to amass when approaching your project. I personally love data-driven design and I think that I was absolutely surprised at how much data you have to gather and how much digging you have to do to really make your case for changing a design or changing a user interface.
I think the experience with Springboard was really great because it was super flexible. I liked having the support of an online community where you could ask questions and you could see everyone else’s work—I thought that was really helpful. I felt like I had a great support system because if I were doing it just on my own without a mentor and without that support system, I don’t think I would have been as successful as I was.
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