I fell into running workshops after visiting General Assembly (GA) in NYC to look at their co-working space. A chat led to a dinner in London as GA was about to open here and shortly thereafter I taught my first class with them. Fast forward five years and I’ve taught around 50 classes with them, run workshops at large conferences like UX London, organised my own including in person UX courses and run training with various companies and teams. Throughout the years my love for passing on what I’ve learnt and help others develop their skills has only grown.
I used to chuckle and nod along somewhat to the old saying “Those who can’t, teach, those who can do”, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, at least in my case.
I left my last permanent job as I wanted to do more hands-on work rather than be stuck in meetings and be too involved in politics. To this day I still love to do the hands-on work and not just read about but also be practically involved on in keeping up with what’s happening in our industry. Something I also consider important, particularly if you’re going to teach and coach others on how-to go about the various challenges that we’re now facing in UX.
The thing that drives me to start my own UX school is that I genuinely want to give back and help as many people as I can to get into and become better at UX. Besides personally thinking it’s one of the best jobs in the world, we’re all increasingly affected by technology in our lives. As online and offline gets more intricately linked, everyone involved in creating these kinds of experiences carries the responsibility to help ensure that we’re designing, building and providing great, or at the very least, good experiences that have a positive influence on people’s lives rather than cause frustration and more noise.
I also want to make UX training more accessible and affordable to the many and what I’ve set out to do is develop a UX school that focus as much on the thinking and soft skills that are needed as it does on the hard skills, like how to do a wireframe or sitemap. Whilst all my courses and upcoming classes are very hands-on and practical, the thinking and soft skills are such a big part of the work that we do and without those skills, we cannot be great UX designers, or do our work properly, whatever form or shape that takes.
My first two courses are focused on startups/ startup founders respectively those who want to learn more about/ make a shift into UX and work in an agency, client side or for a more established startup. Both courses are the equivalent of about a week full time each, with the introduction to UX course being slightly longer than the UX for startups course. There will be options of one-to-one coaching as well as group session, something I’ll share more about in the next couple of weeks.
The school launches on April 17th and I’m incredibly excited about finally making this long-time in the making plan a reality and would love to get any feedback and answer any questions you might have. If there’s anything you’re looking to learn more about when it comes to UX, let me know and I’ll do my best to ensure there’s a class in the near future that covers it. My first name at uxfika.co is where you’ll reach me, or I’m on Twitter if you so prefer.
Oh, and both of my courses are 50% off until this Friday!
