How I’m growing as a designer with the Interaction Design Foundation
To design is to empathise, to design is to solve problems, to design is to make lives better. You probably know this already. I’d personally like to add another aspect to this — to design is to help others design well. I strongly believe in this, which is exactly why I’m writing this article in the first place.
This piece is designed to make sure that you and others just like you, can take one of the better routes to becoming a better designer. The route in context here, is the one so graciously put forward by the Interaction Design Foundation (henceforth, abbreviated as IxDF). For the unaware, IxDF is a platform to best gauge where you are on the path to becoming a good designer, and taking action from that point forward — with a plethora of courses on a variety of topics, that I’m sure, will be more than sufficient to satiate your hunger.
For all intents and purposes, this article will be a guide as to how you can, like myself, grow as a designer. To keep it structured, and make sure that you can not only follow along with the story, but also jump ahead to sections that most excite you, here’re the sections of this blog -
- How I decide what to learn
- How I learn
- How I organise what I learn
- How I’m growing as a designer
- And how you can too!
Also — I’ve added TL;DR pieces at the end of each section, so if you’re into that, feel free.
And now that all the pleasantries are out of the way, let’s begin!
How I decide what to learn
Learning what you do not need to, right now, is of course bad. This is exactly why many people keep learning so much around us, all the time, yet they never succeed in applying that knowledge somewhere productive. I strongly believe that deciding what to learn is a much tougher endeavour than doing the actual learning.
This is true because there is such a wide variety of things that you could be learning in the moment, but only a few of which actually deserve our undivided attention in the moment.
That’s enough chit-chat on the importance of deciding what to learn. But how to actually do it?
Well the first step is of course knowing your long term ambitions and devising short term goals to achieve those ambitions. I do not mean simply making a to-do list of things to achieve in a year. Instead, think big — think where you want to see yourself in 5 years in your career. Then think what you’d need to achieve in this year particularly, to gradually reach that ambition in 5 years’ time.
But don’t stop there! After that, plan out how the months of this year should look like to achieve that yearly goal. Then take the month you’re currently in, and map out what you’d need to do each week. You can see now where I’m going with this — the weekly goals, and then the minute daily to-do list of things.
That, is where you start.
Once you have your ambition ready, say it is to get ready for the position of a “UX designer”, you open up the courses section on IxDF, and browse through the catalog. You check for all courses relevant to your particular position of interest (“UX designer”, in this case) — and thankfully for you, all the courses have been segregated according to the level of expertise for each. This way, you don’t overwhelm yourself by starting off with an advanced course by mistake if you’re just a beginner. Similarly, if you already know the basics, and want to sharpen your skills, you don’t underwhelm yourself, and go for the intermediate or advanced courses.
At this point, in case you find that two or more courses are probably suitable for you to take at the moment, probe deeper — look into the time duration for each course, look into how much effort you need to dedicate to each course. Map these details with your monthly and weekly goals, to validate which course would be the most suitable for you. And then, dive right in!
Don’t get me wrong though — courses aren’t the only thing to learn from, you can peruse through the vast collection of blogs and articles on varied topics at IxDF. After all, only when you read more, can you begin to appreciate not only the effort of the experts who crafted the blogs, but also the enormity of the scope of UX design.
TL;DR –
- Set yearly ambitions and break them down into monthly goals and more manageable weekly/daily chunks
- Browse through the catalog of design courses at IxDF
- Pick the best course(s) to take in the moment, that align with your goals, and start learning
- Stay up-to-date with blogs and articles and similar resources on the IxDF platform.
How I learn
Now that you have decided what it is that you’ll be learning and what you want to focus on for the nearest future, it’s time to start learning. I realise that there are varied ways in which people best learn. For some, rote learning is the best path at the onset, while for others, learning with examples and analogies is the optimal strategy. Hence, I would be foolish to impose my patterns of learning on anyone other than myself.
That said, there are a few things that I’d like to share with you on this topic, based on learnings from my personal experiences.
The first point is about staying focused while doing the learning.
For that all you need to do is start up the lessons on IxDF, and turn on “do-not-disturb” in not only your gadgets but also your physical work environment. And as far as staying focused in the long term is concerned, consistency is the most important. Once you start getting the lessons done day after day, and inculcate it into your daily schedule, doing IxDF courses regularly will become almost second nature to you.
The second point is about “hooking” new things that you’re learning, on to past knowledge.
What you are presented with from the courses on IxDF, is information. When you choose to use that information, to combine it with everything else that you already know, you essentially use “memory hooks” to clip this new information onto existing data. Only then can you transform the information into your knowledge.
The third point is something that I personally hold close to my heart — learning through sharing and teaching. I’ll keep this short. Basically I believe that one of the best ways to learn, is to teach others what you learn in the most lucid terms possible. This not only enforces your learnings, but also serves a greater purpose of spreading this knowledge to other people. Personally I achieve this through my blog and my podcast — both of which you can find at https://rounakbose.in
You see, it’s not just what you learn, but also how you learn what you focus on.
Often a recurring block that I face, now that I have been doing these courses for nearly three years, is sitting down to start the learning session. Often, I find myself having time to study a few lessons on IxDF, and the topic of study from a particular course laid out in my to-do list — but even then, I often procrastinate.
The answer to this, is an a rule that I impose on myself — the 5-minute rule. I tell myself, “I will sit and study for just 5 minutes now. After the 5-minute period gets over, I am free to get up and leave.”
At first glance, this might seem too lenient — but the point is, once you sit down and study for just a few minutes, the lessons in IxDF are structured in such a way, that you’ll probably get into the state of flow with ease. So don’t overthink it, just start — the rest of the study will follow automatically.
TL;DR –
- Stay focused while learning; turn on “do-not-disturb” on everything not relevant to the task, including for your physical learning environment.
- Use “memory hooks” to capture information and to connect it into the broad expanse of everything that you already know, so that pieces of data relate to each other, and can form more meaningful links of knowledge for later use.
- Try to learn in a way that if asked to teach a 5-year old the concepts that you’ve just learnt, you’d be able to convey the information.
- If you’re procrastinating, tell yourself that you’ll sit down to study for just 5 minutes, and do it.
How I organise things when I learn
“Cleanliness is next to Godliness” — not just in terms of the physical space that you live in, but also your digital environment, and perhaps most importantly — your mental space. Let’s tackle both of these one by one.
As far as the digital space is concerned, in the course-learning experience by IxDF, no stone has been left unturned in making sure that everything is well organised and readily available should you want something pertaining to the course.
From your certificates that you earn to the lessons in a course, from the catalog of all courses available to the courses that you are taking, along with your notes and annotations, IxDF has it all laid out as clear as it can be.
For your own side of things though, I have two, somewhat similar, file storing strategies that I employ on my computer. For IxDF courses, often there are written assignments and downloadable template files, and then there are downloadable certificates. So, I have a master folder called “IxDF”; then there are separate folders for each course that I’m undertaking which contain downloaded templates from IxDF as well as written assignment text files (if any). And then there is also a folder that houses all my certificates.
Pro tip: For organising all your files when doing any client work of this nature, you would do well to have everything organised well.
In these cases, I keep a master folder named after the “client-project”. Within, there are three main folders, “raw”, “master”, and “export”. As you might understand now, all initial documents, spec-sheets, and assets of all kinds get sorted and stored in “raw”. All work documents that are made during the project, and all master files created across any application, get stored in “master”. And then “export” contains all the deliverable files, that are to be shared with the client, including all final PNGs, SVGs or PDFs.
And then as far as the mental space is concerned, I’d recommend one simple trick. Before starting your course-learning session for the day, sit at ease with your backbone straight, close your eyes, and inhale deep for 10 seconds. Hold your breath for 2 seconds. Then exhales for 12 seconds. Again, hold it for 2 seconds. And repeat this for a total of 5 times. This sounds very simplistic in nature, I know — but trust me when I say, it will get you in a great state for learning.
After all, if you have your physical, digital, and mental environments all cleared and ready to start learning, the task of learning itself will be twice as effortless.
TL;DR –
- Organise your digital space to maximise efficiency and prioritise recognition over recall.
- Optimise your mental space to give yourself breathing time (literally).
So, how am I growing as a designer?
At first glance this section might seem a bit “show-off”-y, but that not what it is intended to be. You see if someone told me that their personal “magical routine” for improving their productivity by a lot, I would be skeptical about it unless they showed me real results. And that is the precise reasoning behind this portion of the article — showing you results I’ve received in my stint with the IxDF.
Starting off, in the last 1 and a half years that I’ve been studying from the IxDF, I’ve completed around 6 courses, and I’m still studying two more I believe, as of this moment. Well how did I grow? Obviously, not only did I get to add all these certificates (some of which had the Top 10% course-taker distinction) on LinkedIn to give more credibility to my resume, but I also got to learn so many new skills and so many nuances of my trade that would otherwise probably have taken me a healthy decade or so to experience and learn from first-hand.
How more did I grow? Well, for one thing, I updated my portfolio of projects to best suit the needs of anyone visiting my website . Also, I began to apply all the new learnings to all relevant client projects, and noticed a clear improvement in my performance and a rise in the quality of not only the deliverables, but also, the overall process.
Lastly, I am growing the most with the help of all these learnings from IxDF, by sharing what I know and learn with my podcast audience, and the readers of my blog. Take all these three areas of growth together, and I believe you too can start to appreciate the impact of these learnings and this knowledge on personal growth.
TL;DR –
- Multiple certificates (many with distinctions) to prove my competence.
- Ever-expanding base of domain knowledge.
- Applying the knowledge to my portfolio, and my client work.
- Sharing what I know and learn through my podcast and blog, and learning further in the process.
And, how can you grow too?
Alright, this is what you’ve been waiting for — how you can learn and upgrade yourself constantly as a designer. I’ll keep this concise and precise for your benefit, so that you can get to the actionable-s fast, and more so because all that remains to be said at this point is roughly a regurgitation of the previous sections, reframed to your perspective.
Starting off you need to know what to learn to grow. Then you need to realise how to learn to grow. And then for best results you need to share what you’ve learnt, to be able to grow the maximum.
You see, IxDF has courses across multiple career paths and tailored for several professions. So pick out your best match and start knocking down the courses one by one. Then, once you finish all courses from your profession-based track, look up the IxDF catalog for other professions that are the most similar to yours, so that you can develop your knowledge base even further. All this, is about knowing what to learn. The how to learn segment is pretty anecdotal and self-explanatory, based on it’s section that you read previously. And then, sharing too is something that won’t need any special attention.
That said, there is a pro-tip of sorts, that I’d like to leave you with. Once you complete a particular course on IxDF, well and good! But even though you move on to the next new course, keep this course in mind. And the best way to go about this, is to redo each course after a certain period of time, like for example — re-do-ing all your previously completed courses on a yearly basis. That way, you will be able to extract even the most elusive piece of information from the vast treasury of knowledge that the IxDF has to offer.
TL;DR –
- Pick course tracks from the IxDF catalog that match your profession.
- Once completing those courses, pick the next most similar profession and get those courses done too.
- Share what you learn with others, for best results.
- Pro-tip: Re-do all previous courses, like on a yearly basis, for best results.
Who am I?
At this point, you might be wondering, who’s this guy on a rant? Well, I’m a UX designer from Kolkata, India.
I love design and I love to help people.
Starting off as a graphic designer, I had a fast transition into visual design, and gradually built up the skillset, for what I’d define my profession to be today — a UX designer. This process is where the IxDF played a crucial role in.
I love to read books — from the likes of Paul Rand, Michael Bierut, Steve Krug, Peter Morville, Ellen Lupton, Susan Weinschenk, and Donald Norman; to Seth Godin, Marty Neumeier, Simon Sinek, Jason Fried, Bill Aulet, and Alexander Osterwalder; and then again to Cal Newport, Adam Grant, Richard Rumelt, Robert Cialdini, and Roman Tschäppeler.
Oh, and yes! I also love to teach — so that I can not only help others, but also because it helps me to learn more effectively.
And as far as my other blogs are concerned, check it out at –
Cheers! 💛
