uxdesign.cc – User Experience Design — Medium | Viba Mohan

When I first started applying to colleges two years ago, I was slightly apprehensive. I was very uncertain of my skills in design and I wasn’t entirely sure about my future as a designer.

But that’s around when I heard about IDEO and Human Centered Design.
I read about how design helped people and the environment. I learned about designing for the future and designing for a positive impact.

And what I learned then is what I hoped to explore more of in college.

So at the close of the very long summer between the end of high school and the beginning of college, I was excited, to say the least.

But that’s when reality hit me.

My classes began and it became painfully obvious that our curriculum covered close to nothing on the topics that I considered important.

We learned about materials but remained blissfully unaware of their impact on the environment.

We learned a ton about aesthetics but the bare minimum on functionality.

Our projects required a lot of money but not enough thinking.

The course structure itself seemed scattered and confused.

And to make matters a whole lot worse, we have this incredibly annoying attendance requirement- a minimum of 85%. So even if I wanted to explore more topics by myself, I couldn’t. Because I had to be at college. All the time.

Sigh.

But at the same time, I started wondering whether I was the problem. I knew it was highly likely that I had unreasonable expectations from the course. I had, after all, been thoroughly cynical about school.

I remember sitting in the last row of all my classes and reading books because I was convinced that my teachers weren’t teaching me the important stuff in the best possible manner.

Calvin & Hobbes 🙂

But back then, I had parameters to judge myself on. I may have gotten the lowest grades on class tests but regardless of what most of my classmates and teachers thought, it wasn’t due to a lack of intellect. I knew this because I still made it to the top 5 percentile in most of the important exams.

This was validation.

In college, however, it’s harder.

We’re the first batch of design in my University, so we don’t have any seniors. What this means is that we have no one to go to for advice except for our professors.

So, I did what any impulsive 18–19 year old would do. I dropped all my college work. I started working solely on projects that interested me with the kind of people I liked.

It was an experiment of sorts.

My grades dipped to their all-time low. But at the same time, it’s been incredible.

Over the last 6 months or so, I’ve worked with clients like Axis Bank and Emirates NBD. I’ve been offered a UX internship at Myntra. And I’ve had the time to explore the realm of freelance work. I’ve participated in competitions and done pretty okay in them. I’ve worked on side projects with people I like and I’ve met cool adults working in design.

I say this not to gloat but to make a point. University isn’t always the best option. In my experience, working against the course structure has been far more beneficial than working with the syllabus.

But then again this is just an opinion that is boosted my extremely bloated sense of self-esteem.

You must have a different story. So what do you say? Is university worth all the hype? Do different countries have better systems? Let me know what you think!

Design Education — is it really worth it? was originally published in uxdesign.cc on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.