Tricia Okin, a UX instructor at General Assembly, teaches an immersive 10-week user experience design course in New York and London, focusing on developing practical UX skills through projects. The curriculum includes hands-on projects with real clients and emphasizes the importance of empathy, critical thinking, and understanding diverse student backgrounds. Okin aims to empower students to change careers and view themselves as designers while overcoming challenges in UX perception and confidence.

1. How Teaching UX Is One Giant
Participatory Design Experiment

2. Tricia Okin is a freelance Product/User
Experience Designer and a UX Instructor
at General Assemb.ly New York & London.
She loves learning about people, cultures,
languages and why people do the things
they do.
@papercutny
BTW, I’m American…
So please excuse my funny words.
Howdy.

3. WHAT I DO & WHO I AM

4. A Little About Me
‣ Bachelor’s in Fine Arts for
Creative Photography
‣ Master’s in Fine Arts in
Design & Technology
‣ Studied Semiotics,
Conceptual Art, Film, etc.
‣ Lean towards the
Humanities and Liberal Arts
(qualitative vs. quantitative
fields)
‣ Natural curiosity towards
people & languages
‣ Focused on building online
communities/narrative
structures

5. What I Teach
General Assemb.ly's
User Experience Design Immersive Course
*In the London & New York Campuses

6. What I Teach
‣ User Experience Design Immersive
‣ 10 Weeks of pure UX learning, 9am - 5pm
‣ 5 Projects (including 1 client project)
‣ 400 Hours of Class Time
‣ ≈ 250 – 400 Hours of Homework

7. PROJECT #1: WEEK 1
Create the foundation of an app for a fellow classmate through a lean UX process of rapid
prototyping and ideation. This project will immediately introduce you to the range of skills required
in the UX field, including:
User Interviews
Participatory
Design
Sketching Rapid Prototyping
SKILLS
PROJECT #2: WEEKS 2 & 3
Practice the fundamentals of User Experience Design by creating the key parts of an e-commerce
experience. This project will introduce you to important structural and interactive UX skills,
including:
Design &
Discovery Process
Information
Architecture
Interaction Design
Communicating &
Presenting Design
SKILLS
PROJECT #3: WEEKS 4 & 5
Create a new app/feature for an existing brand that re-imagines how users consume content on a
daily basis. This project reiterates skills used during Project 1 & 2, but goes much deeper into the
following methodologies:
Research &
Personas
Product
Management
Interface Design Business Metrics &
Requirements
SKILLSPROJECT #5: WEEKS 8, 9 & 10
Collaborate directly with a real startup to apply your UX skills to their existing product in order to
create a brand new feature or improve an existing one. During this project, you’ll apply:
Working with
Clients &
Stakeholders
Project Planning
Solving Business
Problems
Next Steps & Career
Path
SKILLS
Apply the UX design process to build out your own personal portfolio in order to display all of the
work you’ve done throughout the UXDI program. During this project, you’ll apply:
Visual Design
Fundamentals
Personal Branding
Building
Portfolios
SKILLS
PROJECT #4: WEEKS 6 & 7
Front-End Basics
What I Teach

8. Teaching Style

9. Who I Teach
junior + mid-weight UX designers in two markets
different nationalities
86
15
languages in the same room at once4–5
age range I’ve taught23–48

10. Why I Do This
‣To help people change
careers and understand
their potential
‣Change the way people
interact with the world
and consider
themselves designers
‣I consider these
students my clients

11. Why I Do This: To Watch People Change

12. WHAT DOES THIS REQUIRE?

13. WHAT DOES THIS REQUIRE?
Empathy
Listening
Taking & Acting on Feedback
JUST LIKE CLIENTS!

14. CHALLENGES TO OVERCOME

15. PERCEIVED NOTION OF UX

16. PERCEIVED NOTION OF UX
Give physical examples people can understand.
People then realize they may have been doing UX in
previous careers.
They don’t feel dumb anymore.

17. EX: Teaching taxonomy & card sorting methodology
via candy

18. PERCEIVED LACK OF ABILITY
(TO DRAW)

19. PERCEIVED LACK OF ABILITY (TO DRAW)
Teach them how to draw.
Push them to work through details beyond the first layer.
They squee like children at their accomplishment.

20. UNDERDEVELOPED CRITICAL
THINKING SKILLS

21. UNDERDEVELOPED CRITICAL THINKING
SKILLS
Guide them on how to do secondary and tertiary research
that returns to the Primary subject matter.
Help them remove their “blinders”.

22. CULTURAL FRICTION

24. CULTURAL FRICTION
Apply what they’re learning to their history & context.
(I don’t know everything.) Ask them questions about their
own kinds of friction & they begin to feel like experts.
Listen.

25. MORE HR ISSUES

26. MORE HR ISSUES
Learning How to Learn
Different Learning Styles
Different Working Styles
Languages
Age Differences
Bio Rhythms
Fears About Presenting
Daily Stand Ups
1:1 Meetings & Touchy Feely
Things
Group Meetings
1:4 Pin Ups/Critiques
Student Group Meetings
Prior to Projects
Flash Talks & Pecha Kucha

27. CONCLUSION

28. CONCLUSION
‣ Help clients (people) learn how to learn again
‣ Give them your toolset to use
‣ Use visual and physical techniques or examples
to illustrate abstract & complex ideas
‣ Remind yourself they are experts in their
own right

29. KEY OBJECTIVE(S) AGENDA
RESOURCESDELIVERABLE
EXERCISE
Prepare and run a card sort to
determine the best way to sort
5 mins
5 mins
5 mins
1. Run an open card sort with your group mates &
create categories for the candy piles/groups
2. Swap with a group next to you and try to assign
categories to their sort.
3. Eat candy/rejoice. Share your thoughts with the
Meetup audience.
Brief presentation of your
results
Index cards, Sharpie

30. THANK YOU!
Any Questions?
Tricia Okin: tricia@papercutny.com or @papercutny