UX Summer School at Kloster Bronnbach
Thanks to the support of KMH GmbH, I got to take part in the German UPA's UX Summer School at Kloster Bronnbach. The event is aimed mainly at young professionals and teaches the human-centered design process in a compact format.
Within just a few days, we developed our own product idea, from the initial question all the way to testing a prototype. We were guided by coaches who walked us through each step and kept explaining why we were doing something and what actually mattered about it.
Working through the process
We worked in small groups and moved step by step through the process, starting with defining a question and ending with a concrete solution.
A central part of it was user research. For that, we first worked out our own questions and then interviewed each other. Even though the setting obviously wasn't fully realistic, it showed clearly how important this step is.
What stood out to me in particular: we already had ideas in our heads very early on about what a solution could look like. But those ideas were based mainly on our own assumptions.
The interviews put that into perspective pretty quickly.
Some things we considered obvious weren't relevant to others at all. Other topics we'd barely considered suddenly became important. Without this step, we would almost certainly have developed in a different direction.
Even within a small, time-limited setting, you could feel how much a solution changes once real perspectives come into play. That made a lot of things more tangible for me that you otherwise mostly learn in theory.
After the interviews, we moved into affinity mapping and developing the solution. We structured and prioritized the insights we'd gathered and built a first prototype based on them.
That prototype was then tested again, and we got feedback from the coaches.
Recap and a small bonus
Beyond the Summer School itself, we were given the opportunity at the end to write a blog post for the German UPA. Together with another participant, I took that chance and wrote up our experiences.
You can find the full article here:
Read the blog post on the German UPA website
My takeaway
The UX Summer School was a very intense but also very helpful experience for me. Especially because a lot of the content wasn't just explained, but applied directly.
For me, the biggest realization was how quickly you drift away from actual needs if you don't actively check them.
Especially if you're getting started in UX design, or want to reassess your own way of working, I can really recommend this format. In a short time, you get a realistic sense of how the human-centered design process actually works in practice.