Philip’s UX/UI Bootcamp Career Restart

Midway through his landscape architecture studies, Philip decided he needed a change. Looking for a field that combines creativity and technical work, he decided to go for a UX/UI Design bootcamp.

What made him choose a bootcamp? How did it work out? Watch the video or read the transcript below to find out.

I'm Phil, I'm 26 years old. I'm from Germany. I moved to Berlin two years ago. I wanted to change careers, and I did the UX/UI bootcamp. 

How was your experience while studying?

Actually, it was great. I had a lot of fun being here. Coaches are super nice. Mar was my coach. It was fun. The structure was nice. I mean, I came here because it's on site, which nowadays is very rare to find for this kind of bootcamps. Most of them are online nowadays.

It's great here. I like that. It's like so many people from different fields. It's a great exchange of experience. 

Also that, like other coaches from other cohorts jump in from time to time, and you can have talks with them and talk about your problems when you're designing something in Figma and some problem comes up, everyone is there to help you, and you talk to all people, and they try to engage you to work as a group most of the time, which I like. 

What are the three things you liked the most?

I would say the genuine care from the coaches on how you are doing while you have a project or a topic or something you work on. And they try really to help you with things, and try to push you to the best. 

You always have in the course, where you have people from different backgrounds, you have different levels, and they try to give you the right amount of work for your specific background you have. 

So if you're more experienced, they give you more stuff you can do. And if you have problems with like basic stuff, they also adjust and help you with this. 

The topics overall, how they structured the course, for example UI/UX is mostly focused on Figma, and Figma is changing a lot, and very quick. When there's a new update, they're gonna sit there and try to see what is new and how to bring this directly to the course, even if the update was just a few weeks ago.

What made you want to do a bootcamp in this specific field?

I was looking for something more creative than I was doing before. And I wanted something new, or, as you say, it is kind of popular. It's a new field coming up in the last few years. 

I was thinking this could be something that fits me, because it is very creative. And also the technical part about this, like using software, something I really like and enjoy. Yeah, I think the main reason is like something creative, and this really fitted my needs.

What did you do before?

I was studying landscape architecture. I worked there for a bit, yeah, but this in the end, was not creative enough for me. It was more bureaucratic, to be honest.

In the end, I was looking for something where I can have more creative days in my everyday life. In every company or every job you have bureaucracy and stuff you don’t enjoy so much. But in this particular field it was too much for me. So I was thinking, okay, maybe I can find something that can be more creative. That's the main reason. 

Why did you choose a bootcamp and not something else?

Because I already studied for a while, and I was thinking, I want a quick change, to get a quick entrance to the new career field. And I was thinking, ok, if I like this, and the bootcamp brings me somewhere I also can see in three months, I can figure out if this is something I like.  But even now, I can still say, ok, like it. I really like it, the field.

How did you hear about this bootcamp?

I was looking specifically for UX and UI bootcamps. And when you google some stuff, you will get advertised, because search engines, they advertise to you, and then this UX/UI bootcamp showed up a lot of times on social media.

And then, I think I mentioned this before, the main reason I chose it for me was… First of all, it was one of the few companies which already had a good website, which was like, ok, they have a good website, a good UI, so maybe they can teach good UI, because the other competitors… not gonna drop names… They have, like, bad interfaces – I was like, how can they offer you UI bootcamp when they have poor websites?

And what I wanted to say was, like, the main point for me was: it's on site, because when I was studying, there was a lot of Corona times for me.

So I was like, I don't want to be online all the time. I mean, we have an online day as well, which is ok, because you can still come on campus and that was what I did. I was still coming in even on online days. I was here most of the time – here in the boot camp and on site on the campus.

So the main reason was, yes, it is here on site. 

What work are you looking for now that you’ve graduated?

Mostly I would like to go for agencies, because they're very creative. Or bigger companies if they accept junior positions. 

Right now, bigger companies to get work experience – could also be an internship for the beginning just to get work experience, because, as I said before, this for me is like a shift of careers. So I need work experience in the beginning. So yeah, something in a bigger company or a bigger agency; they tend to have bigger clients, where you can be more creative. 

Something like that, to get the experience, and then I will see where it goes.