Teaching

In the old days of web design, designers worked in design tools like Photoshop and Illustrator; familiarized themselves with color theory, layout, and typography; and read books by Jakob Nielson and Don Norman. At the same time, they had a key understanding of how to translate their craft into the digital space, helping to bridge the gap between design and development.

Today, the design field is not so simple: user researchers conduct research; user experience designers translate that research into journey maps, sketches and wireframes; visual designers convert low-fidelity mockups into high-fidelity interactive prototypes; and front-end developers translate those interactive prototypes into working code. By focusing only on one part of the process, designers and developers often lose sight of the big picture, essentially "dropping the ball over the wall" to the next person without a true understanding of what problem they're trying to solve and what is required to turn fiction into reality.

A big part of this mindset comes from a lack of professional education. The majority of UX designers are self-taught, with little experience in visual design or front-end development. As I can personally attest, learning on your own—especially in a restrictive corporate environment—can only take you so far.

As an educator, my goal isn't just for my students to learn a skill or new technique: it's to help them gain and ultimately apply and share their knowledge. In order to truly understand, designers need to engage with actual users and shadow industry experts, and more importantly, have real world opportunities to do the work themselves. For example, when designing for accessibility, what if training focused on the human cost and benefit of such measures? Rather than simply focusing on accessibility guidelines and design and coding techniques, what if students began by acting like a blind person for a day and resorting to having websites read to them?

Life is not a textbook or a list of do's and don'ts. Rather, life is full of twists and turns, defined in essence by experiences. While good experiences can inspire one to learn and grow, poor experiences can demoralize and discourage. Most importantly, sharing the why behind the what can open minds and doors to where almost anything is possible.

As an educator, this requires a different mindset. It requires challenging students to think outside of their perspective and to mentally—and sometimes physically—walk in someone else’s shoes. By doing so they can become passionate learners, willing to build bridges everywhere they go. For in the end, true change only happens one step at a time, but together we have the power to reimagine what is possible.

The State of UX Education