Student Spotlight: Ryan Collingwood

How did you find online learning and working in a cohort?

I liked how Academy Xi has gamified the online learning platform, with points collected for different tasks and projects. I could use the point system to work out how big the projects were going to be and plan my schedule around that.

At first I wasn’t sure if it would be useful to have the platform on my mobile—I thought it might encourage me to stay in bed rather than turn up to class! My cat fell asleep on my hand and because I couldn’t type, I downloaded the app on my phone. It really came in handy—I worked through modules on the train and made use of those spare bits of time.

As for my cohort, we’ve been trying to organise meet ups since graduation, but Melbourne’s been in lockdown. When I signed up for the course, I assumed that because it was taught fully online and completed over just three months, I wouldn’t spend much time talking to the other students. In reality, half the course is group work and you see everyone in your cohort on a daily basis.

One of my teammates had a lot of industry experience and suggested we have a group standup meeting every morning. It was great to keep up with what everyone was doing. Someone else suggested using Trello, so I was able to use the standup meetings to figure out who was working on what and track everybody’s progress with a task on a Trello card.

As well as the UX experience, I received lots of exposure to group work dynamics. We figured out how to use what was at our disposal and be an organised, efficient team.

Can you talk about your experience with your course mentor, Hayden?

Hayden’s such a great character – he’s really friendly, knows a lot and has had loads of experience with different companies.

You can tell Hayden loves his profession, he’s really engaged with how UX works best and the passion really shows through. He’s happy to tell you about his experiences, so you can learn from things he’s observed. Most people will just teach you the hard skills, but Hayden also helps you develop the soft skills. We learned what to expect in-industry, how to deal with difficult situations and how to talk to coworkers, managers and clients in ways that are really productive.

We had weekly one-on-one sessions at the beginning of the course – I’m the kind of student that likes to ask questions and make use of that time.

At the start, I was a bit presumptuous with the problem statements for my first personal project. Hayden gave constructive feedback through the learning platform and I decided it would be good to set up a meeting to discuss things further. I learnt so much just from that first meeting. I had a few more one-on-one sessions in the early phases of the course and then checked in with him at various points throughout the client work, including a project for high-profile pharmaceuticals company Roche.

For the client project, everything was very self-directed. Hayden played a background role, which was good for my learning. It threw me in the deep end slightly, which is the best way to learn because that’s what it’s like in the industry.

The Designer-in-Residence Program also gave me access to a professional mentor. I was paired with Rebecca, who now works with Open Cities, and we had weekly mentoring sessions. She’s previously worked as a UX designer and a graphic designer, but is now a project manager. Rebecca showed me interesting projects she’d worked on in the past, which gave me industry insight and the chance to ask questions about different ways of working. Everyone has their own methods and approaches and it’s always good to get different perspectives.