Student Success Story: Maggzie Walczak
Looking back before you joined the course at Experience Haus, can you tell us a little bit about what you were up to and what led you to consider a course in UX/UI design?
Before I joined Experience Haus, I spent a long time looking for that thing I wanted to do in my life and I wasn’t finding it. I was working on yachts for 6 years as a chef and travelling, really going with the flow but I did come to a point where I thought I couldn’t do this forever. I had always been interested in design, not so much in art but in practical, beautiful things. I wanted to study industrial design but it was out of my reach as I wasn’t very skilled in painting and drawing which was necessary to get to arts school. I was always interested in psychology – I have lots of books on it. When my friends look at my bookshelves, they’re like “what do all of these have in common…nothing!” There’s economics, psychology, design, management etc.
Back in 2020, I realised I needed to do a course in something, so I started looking at different jobs and found UX and thought “oh my god, everything makes sense, this is great!” At one point I thought about doing product management as I’m very organised but as soon as I found user experience design I thought it made perfect sense. It combines everything I’m interested in: business, design and psychology.
What made you choose Experience Haus?
I did a bit of research and reading and started thinking about courses to do and your advert actually popped up on my Instagram! The school looked super cool and the people who were there seemed like people I would hang out with (although Covid didn’t allow that to happen!) I had a call with Joe and Amit and just felt they were there to listen to me and what I wanted to get out of the course. I did say from the beginning I would be asking lots of questions as I was very passionate about this. I did go to General Assembly for a presentation on their course but they said they would cover certain things during the class which they didn’t, so I found them a bit untrustworthy. They also didn’t have a proper course syllabus whereas Experience Haus did.
Thinking about your time on the course… What did you want to achieve from your Experience Haus course?
I wanted to get as much experience as possible and learn as much as possible. I was that person that always had a million questions to ask! It was important that the course had a practical element that I could then add to a portfolio. It was also really important to be able to talk to people who were actually doing user experience and knew what they were talking about, rather than just learning the theory.
What did you enjoy most about the course?
There were a number of things I really enjoyed about the course. Working on a real client brief was essential to me. Learning things by doing them is the best way and practicing constantly. It might feel like you are spending a long time not getting anywhere but then one day it’ll all click! The support I got and all the 1-1 sessions I had were amazing. I truly believe supported people support people which is why I want to now give back to the Experience Haus community. I received so much support in changing jobs from you guys, from the government, from other people I’ve met along the way and now I want to give back.
