Thanks for chatting with us today, Ryan! Can you start by telling us about your career before Academy Xi?
I studied audio engineering in 2015 and worked in freelance audio and graphic design until 2019. A month before Covid in 2020, I enrolled in a Diploma of Graphic Design with RMIT and made the move from Adelaide to Melbourne. With graphic design, there are practical elements but it’s more about the visuals. I used every assignment I completed with the course as a chance to focus on the practical side of graphic design. This included a website project, which I really enjoyed, but that was such a small component of the course as a whole.
All my classmates were very artistic with brushes and pencils, but it was not the side of design that I wanted to pursue. At the beginning of my graphic design diploma, I heard this term, ‘UX’, and thought “what’s that about?”. I looked into it, found out it was focussed on the practicalities of design and realised it’s exactly what I wanted to put into practice.
So after graduating with my Diploma of Graphic Design, I started an Advanced Diploma of Interactive Media in 2021 with RMIT, with a view to learning more about UX. The interactive media course wasn’t UX focused enough for me, so after a week I left it and joined the Academy Xi UX Transform course instead.
What made you choose Academy Xi?
At first, I was thinking of doing a Bachelor’s in Design at Swinburne with a major in UX, but I looked into the course content and only up to a half, or maybe even a quarter, of the three years was spent actually learning and applying UX.
I then started looking into short courses and comparing different providers. I narrowed it down to Academy Xi and General Assembly, but the GA course costs more and doesn’t offer the same level of job search support. Academy Xi seemed to place a greater emphasis on graduates going into the job market after graduation, so I went with them.
What were the highlights of your course experience?
The client project was one of the best parts of the course—you get real-world experience, and for me, it actually led to a job with that client, Avertro. I got the job not long after graduation. There were three rounds of interviews, which started a month after the course finished. When I was completing the Career Support Program outcome report near the end of the course, I actually wanted to put the reporting on hold, knowing that I had an interview lined up.
There were twelve of us working on the project and we were meant to be split up into two groups of six, but it made sense to do things as one big team. This meant I learned about project management—I led the cohort in that group project, liaised with Avertro, and developed a rapport with the company. It was a great opportunity to think about everything needed to pull off a project and the best ways to get that done – all in a short time period. It pushed my organisational skills, my ability to prioritise and strategise, as well as my communication skills.
The group project was so valuable—it put all the skills I learned during the first half of the course to the test.