Emerging designers often face a significant challenge of lacking practical experience. While many turn to online courses for knowledge in UX design, these courses typically miss a critical component: feedback. Without insights from peers and stakeholders, designers miss out on the hands-on experience they need and this gap is keenly felt by companies hiring fresh graduates who know the theory but haven't practiced it. To address this issue, and also to pursue my passion for teaching, I created a design fellowship program to bridge the gap between learning and real-world application.
Empowering the Next Generation
of Designers
Project Objective
Role: Research, Coordination, Teaching, Leadership
Planning
Market Research and Outlining
The first step was to align my team with the understanding that reinventing the wheel wasn't necessary. We began by conducting market research on existing platforms offering self-learning courses. After mapping these platforms, we identified their shortcomings and brainstormed a list of interventions to address those issues. Once we had this groundwork, we developed a format for our program.
Syllabus Formation
Our next step was to create the content we would deliver. Initially, this felt daunting because we had too much material for too little time. So, we stripped everything down to the core of what mattered most: the design thinking process. From there, we identified the most essential elements and began building out the program.
Syllabus pages from the Fellowship Handbook.
Getting the Wheels Moving
After all the planning, it was time to shift gears and start implementing our ideas. We needed fellows for our program, so we set up a publicity timeline, a registration form, and a selection process. To our surprise, over 380 people signed up. We didn't expect such a huge response for our pilot project, but it confirmed our hypothesis that people really wanted real-time lessons and feedback over self-paced courses. In the end, we chose 30 fellows because although the idea of teaching more was tempting, we wanted to start small to refine our program for the future.
Publicity Timeline.
Execution
Selection and Onboarding
Once we had our fellows selected, we organized an orientation to break the ice and get to know each other. During the orientation, we provided a handbook to guide the students through the entire process.
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Pages from the student handbook.
Student Assignments
One thing we worked on concurrently was the assignments. We didn't want standalone tasks that simply tested students' knowledge. Instead, we wanted them to apply their learning to real-life projects and see how their knowledge could be used practically. So, we developed a flexible assignment structure where students could choose from a selection of projects. Each week, they received a prompt to apply to their projects, along with some reading material and feedback on their previous work. This all led up to a final presentation, where our team role-played as stakeholders, and the students showcased their work and process.
Assignment structure brainstorming.
Insights and Reflections
Feedback
At the end of the fellowship, I distributed an anonymous feedback form to gather insights on various aspects, such as the program itself, the content, the instructors, and my role as a design director. The responses were overwhelmingly positive, with students praising the fellowship and expressing a desire for it to continue in the future. Although I have since left the organization, the success of last year's program has led the team to launch a second installment of the design fellowship. Below are some of the responses we received from the feedback form.
Zainab's approachability and desire to engage in open discussions impressed me. Her encouragement and openness to different points of view definitely helped in creating a healthy learning atmosphere.
The design fellowship gave me with hands-on project experience, mentorship and guidance, collaboration and networking, exposure to tools and technologies, and design thinking lessons.
During the design fellowship, the most valuable aspects for me were the friendly and engaging instructors who provided thorough and effective teaching. Their support and guidance enhanced my learning experience, helping me develop valuable design skills and insights that I can apply to real-world projects (i am currently applying it too).
The interactive classes were 10/10, having only a small group of students because that really impacts the overall environment and the friendliness of instructors.
[What stood out to me was] her empathy, ability to foster a comfortable environment in class, constant reassurances that there was no wrong answer, determination to keep the energy levels high, creative attempts to keep us engaged outside of classes, enthusiasm for Miro templates and her belief that we could make them too, candidness about her own experiences and her generosity in sharing them, punctual updates and reminders, tasteful Slack emote usage, immediate facilitation of 1:1 sessions when we all were stuck on an assignment, various pointers for career development, encouragement of nearly everything we chose to do, receptiveness to feedback, clear communication of all details that needed to be communicated, book recommendations, and feelings checks.
Key Learnings
Before I mention the key learnings, I want to share how wholesome and humbling this experience was for me. There’s no better feeling than helping someone else become a better version of themselves, and I’d like to think that I helped these students become better designers. I can’t wait to see what all my students achieve next.
As for my learnings, the biggest one was understanding how each student is unique. Creating a fellowship that celebrates these differences while also fostering a collaborative learning environment was essential. I also learned how to communicate effectively within an established power structure, striking a balance between being fun and effective. This project not only made me a better instructor but also a better human.
