Designing a learning environment while teaching UX/UI Design
After nearly 3 years as UX/UI Design Lead Teacher at Ironhack, the feeling is that I learnt far more than I taught. That’s why I have decided to share some thoughts here.
2 countries, ~3 years, 13 cohorts, 10 teaching assistants, 191 students… what a ride!
TL;DR
- Teaching overlaps the UX process
As an educator, I’ve used several UX design tools and approaches to improve my courses and activities. - Improving lessons: an iterative process
I could only attain better methods, materials, and storylines by embracing feedback and iterating continuously. - Measuring Outputs and Outcomes
The outputs were more visible after establishing the major outcomes (as did the prioritization of new activities). - Managing big squads
Teaching is also about Design & People Management.
1. Teaching overlaps the UX process
I personally face teaching as a Service Design Challenge: instructors are providing a service for students (lessons), aiming the outcome of acquiring a new set of skills to land their new jobs in UX/UI Design.
As an instructor, I need to be aware of their expectations and where they are willing to go next. My job is not only to be there to support and guide them to take this (big) step, but also to tackle the problems that come along.
To illustrate it better, here are some of the several UX tools I could apply into teaching context, that were game-changing:
--→ Service Blueprint
Mapping the bootcamp Service Blueprint brought an interesting visualization on how students interact with different stakeholders (teachers, colleagues and other staff members), the channels they used, tasks dependencies and so on. So with it I could:
- Spot and minimize inconsistencies and redundancies in the process;
- Define their most common pain points and emotions all along that learning journey;
- Identify experience improvements there were uncovered;
- Point out improvements for other stakeholders regarding the touchpoints out of classroom (course platform, for example).
--→ Personas
By talking, observing and following closely the students, I could create some (proto)Personas.
Those profiles synthesized the patterns of goals, needs, motivations and frustrations that students had while in the course. It helped me identify students in need faster (sometimes even anticipate it) and act accordingly.
--→ Problem Statements (and prioritization)
Teaching adults has the benefit of dealing with skilled people that already needed to solve problems once in their lives. When students were facing a problem (or had a question) I had 2 options:
- brainstorm ways to solve it (and tell the solution) OR
- ask questions to better understand it, together.
I liked to go with the second one. As researchers, the practice makes it natural: ask them more questions to better understand where the struggle is.
Very often, their real struggle was identifying WHICH problem they actually need to solve FIRST. The one that brings more impact, the one that needs be tackled firstly.
It’s as important to remember that solutions don’t need to come every time from you, teacher. Use the group knowledge to brainstorm them.
That’s how students are going to learn and to be prepared to deal with it next time, when you won’t be around.
2. Improving lessons: an iterative process
--→ The feedback loop
One of the advantages of teaching in this bootcamp is its duration. The cycles of 9 weeks allowed me to gather feedback and iterate in my lesson plans and activities constantly.
Every lesson is like a new “product” to be designed and validated. With a feedback-oriented mindset, I could test out new approaches very often, by specifying:
- what were my goals;
- what was the context (remote vs in person, cohort mood, amount of students…);
- how I could measure the goal’s accomplishments;
- what I could improve this time (from previous iterations).
After brainstorming around those topics, I’d finally prepare my lesson plan.
--→ Iterations
💡 Lessons don’t need to be lectures. How might we turn learning into a dynamic and active practice for students?
I won’t lie, it took me a while to get rid of the “lecture-mental-model”. It was through collaboration, observation and quite some extra research that I could see the power of adding more hands on activities to replace or complement some good old slides presentations.
Those activities have been proved to be more efficient, way more engaging and a plus on students’ experience.
💌 I’ll use this space to thank my dearest teacher colleagues that shared so many useful resources and ideas during this whole time!
3. Measuring Outputs and Outcomes
Iteration is only valuable if you know what you are trying to achieve.
The key questions below are some examples that guided me to measure success in an education environment:
--→ Outputs: lessons and activities
- How will students know they learnt what was needed?
- How will the teacher know the students learnt what was needed?
- How to measure the success of a lesson?
--→ Outcome: land a UX/UI Design job
- What actions bring more value to the students during the bootcamp?
- What activities prepare students better for the market?
Based on those questions, I would establish qualitative and quantitative indicators, making it possible to architect the right environment for students to learn.
Students were also asked to provide us regular feedback so we could measure the overall experience being delivered, using some specific KPIs.
So yes, metrics everywhere to support our decisions and to be student-centered!
4. Managing big squads
When you have around 19 students working on their design projects, I think it’s very fair to call it “a big squad”.
--→ Management
Most of my time in class was actually dedicated to manage groups of junior-designers-in-training. They were applying the freshly learnt UX and UI skills to tackle both fictional and real-companies challenges.
That required specific and personalized support, to respond to the context of their projects and their individual needs.
The Ironhack bootcamp was developed based on the 70-20-10 learning and development model, which states that people obtain their knowledge:
70% from job-related experiences,
20% from social interactions (like colleagues and managers),
10% from formal learning.
As cohorts got bigger, I could count with the precious support of my Teaching Assistants. Designers, most of them launching their career in UX/UI, that shared with me this vision of providing students a personalized experience.
Onboarding and managing them made me improve on how to be clear about strategy and expected achievements, so we could collaboratively plan our actions.
Besides, as teaching was also new to them, I could prepare some material and sessions to help them develop their own teaching skills.
--→ Communication & Experience
As human beings, we all have specific needs, personalities and previous experiences that shape our way of existing. Meaning, the level of attention, recognition, stress and need of support will vary from person to person.
I needed to be very attentive to their signs to adapt my communication, class exercises and project rituals to keep up with their success!
1 solution doesn’t fit all.
Students don’t apply for bootcamps just to learn. They also come for the rupture a bootcamp evokes in their lives: changing careers, establishing new professional goals, land a new job, and so much more.
They get in as students, they get out as new professionals, with a fresh network that shared and faced together the intensity of those 10 weeks!
Wrapping it up
If you’ve read this far, I hope you can see how teaching and designing are comparable. Furthermore, if you are a teacher seeking for some insights, I wish this “behind the scenes” can be of some value to you.
Wrapping up not only the text but also this journey, I can affirm that it was an intense but rewarding path. Adaptability and collaboration were key to thrive.
