Continuing Education

Growing as a Designer

I’m always eager to level up my skills and follow resources that feed my curiosity. It was a humbling experience when I went from being an expert mentor in the education field to a mentee and user experience newbie designer back in 2022. I’ve worked diligently to learn from the best and grow my “T-shape“ as a designer. In addition to my UX immersive course, freelance projects, and work I’ve done at Trustwell I spend a lot of time reading, listening, watching, and practicing in order to grow my expertise as both a designer and researcher. Here are a few of my favorite resources:

Books

I’m a strong believer that the best way to hone your craft as a designer is by practicing real design work. Nonetheless each of these books gave me exposure to industry knowledge and language as well practical advice on how to bring best practices to my own work.

Media

I get a lot of insights from listening to experts in the field and following along with videos to strengthen my Figma skills.

Courses

I’ve taken a number of online courses from a 480 immersive program to short one-off video lessons.

I earned my User Experience Design Immersive Remote | 480 hours | Certificate of Completion in 2022. I honed my design toolkit through human-centered design, design thinking, teamwork, and client relationship skills with an emphasis on collaboration and project learning.

I earned the following credentials through online learning:

Coursea

  • UX Foundations, Storytelling

  • Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate

  • Build Wireframes and Low-Fidelity Prototypes

  • Conduct UX Research and Test Early Concepts

LinkedIn Learning

  • Designing with the WCAG 2.2 Guidelines

  • Practical Accessibility for Designers

  • UX Deep Dive: Foundational Research

  • UX Research for Agile Teams

  • UX Research: Being Flexible

  • UX Research: Journey Mapping

  • UX Foundations: Research

My Approach to Work and Learning

In my professional career I’ve spent a lot of time understanding how people learn, what motivates them, and the ideal environments for both learning and collaboration. This deeply impacts the way I approach my own learning, collegiality, and design work. There a few concepts that have stayed relevant throughout my career as an educator and designer.

Mindset by Carol Dweck, Ph. D.

If you have a fixed mindset you believe that your intelligence, skills, and abilities are innate and there’s not much opportunity for changing who you are. With a growth mindset your intelligence, education, and talent can be honed and developed through continuous practice and determination.

How we think, and how we talk to ourselves (and each other) impacts our mindset. I cultivate a growth mindset environment with my own learning, with my teams, and in my former work with my students to hone my craft. For example, “This design isn’t working” vs. “This design isn’t working, yet.“ The simple addition of the word “yet” adds the mindset shift of potential. To keep iterating until the design reaches a solution.

Instructions to the Cook by Rick Fields

Working with all the “ingredients“ you have, how can you put together the best outcome? For example, if you’re working with a team member who can be stubborn and pick too many battles try finding out ways to hone their determination. Give them tasks that will require a lot of persuasion and tenacity in order to get the job done. It’s all about working within the constraints you have and finding the strengths of each moving part.

The Mindful Brain by Daniel Siegel M.D.

Through neuroscience studies and psychiatry research, UCLA professor, Danial Siegal, describes how one can cultivate mindfulness through approaching interactions and experiences with curiosity, openness, and acceptance rather than making a snap judgment. This is easier said than done, but well worth practicing.

This kind of thinking is particularly helpful in settings like design feedback sessions. Say someone makes a comment that I don’t agree with. Rather than dismissing the comment, I can approach it with more curiosity, openness, and acceptance, Now I’m better positioned to meet the feedback and problem where it is and make a clear-headed decision about how to move forward.