31. The Missing Pieces of the UX Education Puzzle

Venting can be fun and therapeutic, but sometimes it’s not actionable.

Andrew Macdonald and I had a great conversation about the state of UX education today. Andrew brought up a lot of great points and shared a ton of insights and his feelings on boot camps and other forms of UX education.

We came to the conclusion that UX education is kind of a mess.

The problem, for many, was there wasn’t much in the way of advice on how to navigate that mess.

Listening back to last week’s episode, got me thinking about how I can expand on some things we discussed to help some people out who may be about to make a pretty big decision related to learning UX.

The fact is you’ve got a lot of options out there for learning UX Design, and it can all get pretty overwhelming pretty quickly. So this week’s episode is full of actionable advice on how to approach deciding which path to learning UX is right for you.

Topics:
• 06:33 – Comparing UX education to other professions
• 09:03 – Unlike other professions, you can learn UX in many different ways
• 10:55 – Let’s establish some key points about boot camps
• 12:46 – Let’s talk about gatekeepers
• 16:24 – If there are no gatekeepers, the only person in control is you!
• 18:00 – Ask some key questions
• 18:16 – Does this approach take into account critical thinking?
• 20:41 – Am I being taught to work in a real-world environment?
• 22:16 – Who am I learning from?
• 24:08 – Some additional questions
• 26:00 – You will only get out what you put in

Helpful Links:
• Your Guide to Becoming an Architect | NCARB
• 30. The UX Boot Camp Gold Rush With Andrew Macdonald

This week’s Book Recommendation:
Customers Know You Suck by Debbie Levitt
This is a fantastic book full of actionable models, maps, and processes to empower your team to improve the customer experience. It’s a fantastic book full of amazing, no bs insights, and I think you should definitely check it out

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