KICKASS UX
Redesigning UX education: An entrepreneurial journey to empower creatives
UX education was broken, overpriced, and outdated. Our mission is to reinvent UX education and empower creatives to stand out and thrive in their careers.
ROLE
Co-Founder
YEAR
2019 - Present
TEAM
Ludovic Delmas
Colton Schweitzer
→ 0 to 30 million impressions on socials
We grew our audience to numbers we never dreamed of when we first started: 0 to 30 million impressions on social, 0 to 436k website page views, 0 to 150,000 YouTube views, and 0 to 14,500 cumulative email subscribers. 🤯
→ 0 to 11,700 free course students
Educate 11,700+ people in our community with free course content—a general free UX course and another on how to pick standout case studies.
→ 900+ mentoring hours
There’s nothing I love more than connecting with designers and helping them gain confidence in themselves and their UX skills.
UX education was broken
In February 2019, I found a shared interest with Colton, my design peer at Smartsheet and future Co-Founder: Helping people create their best work, stand out, and become UX designers.
For months, in addition to our senior UX Designer roles, we cooked up a program to help creatives break into UX while shaking up the education sector.
It took interviewing dozens of UX bootcamp/university graduates to realize there was a big problem with UX education.
Most portfolios I reviewed looked the same: Cookie-cutter, process-heavy, little personality, disjointed, etc.
For the first time, my responsibilities extended far beyond my product expertise. Given our limited resources and evolving goals, I had to think strategically to drive the most impact.
Strategic vision & diggin’ deep
Starting a business is like a design project—but supersized.
We began by formulating a strategic vision. We asked ourselves core questions such as, ‘What’s our purpose, mission, and vision?’ and ‘What makes us unique?’ We framed this exploration around a broader industry context—recognizing the systemic issues plaguing UX education.
Our high-level vision was not just to create another UX course but to disrupt and transform the UX educational model itself.
To understand our audience and address gaps that no other bootcamp managed to solve, we interviewed over 50 participants looking to get into UX: creatives, teachers, and people in the computer science and medical fields.
After analyzing the findings, we picked creatives—they have strong transferrable skills that can benefit their transition to UX.
2 forces driving career change
A top priority was to understand creatives’ challenges, desires, etc.
To do so, we analyzed Reddit threads, conducted audience research on SparkToro, interviewed more creatives, and sent surveys.
The affinity map revealed vital insights:
The creative’s journey feels like death by a thousand cuts:
Decreased job satisfaction, financial instability, burnout, reduced quality of work, mental health issues, poor client relationships, loss of passion, reduced professional growth, etc.
Many have come to accept the situation, unsure of what else to do. Others are determined to start a UX career to gain the following:
Recognition, respect, autonomy, impact
Fair compensation, job security, stability
Supportive environment, constructive feedback
More room for growth, challenging work
Big bumps in the customer journey
As entrepreneurs and designers, understanding the customer journey is essential, especially the pre-purchase stages: Problem Unaware → Problem Aware → Solution Aware → Product Aware.
For the problem-unaware creative audience, the goal was to nurture them over time with top-of-funnel content like SEO, social media, and free courses.
As our audience reaches the problem-aware to product-aware stages, they're more likely to take action.
We identified three segments, each with its challenges:
All three segments are equally distributed:
That’s our audience in a snapshot!
3 pillars to shake up a stagnant market
Learning UX with cheap video courses has serious drawbacks: low completion rates, no mentor support, and a lack of community.
Bootcamps or university programs are a more viable option, but they still have limitations: high tuition fees, time-consuming (especially hard for FTEs), cookie-cutter case studies and portfolios, etc.
The market was ripe for change. To redefine UX education, we set a strategic vision focused on three key pillars:
→ 1. Standing out: Enabling students to define their unique positioning thanks to their unique strengths and goals—to stand out in a crowded marketplace.
→ 2. Real-world application: Ensuring all projects are based on real business and user problems—super vital for critical thinking and skill development.
→ 3. Community: Using a cohort-based model to foster peer + mentor support.
A departure from traditional UX education
Waves of UX grads floods the market with generic portfolios every year—over 1 million people “graduated” the Google UX certificate.
The problem is the growing number of unskilled graduates, who have critical thinking deficits, have cookie-cutter portfolios, and struggle to stand out.
Our goal was to set a new benchmark for what effective, accessible, and career-changing UX education could look like:
Cohort model: Where learning clicks
Aside from fixing gaps in UX education, we launched our product MVP with a cohort model to enhance the student experience:
Pre-recorded video lessons to allow students to learn at their own pace (essential for students who have a full-time job)
Weekly live sessions and 1:1s for accountability and structure
From a business standpoint, cohort models are non-scalable.
But we intentionally picked that model to maximize time with students, spot areas for improvement, and iterate.
4 cohorts → 1 perfected product
After running four cohorts, we gained invaluable insights, and the experience got better over time:
Dialed in the weekly assignments to be challenging yet feasible
Reworked video materials for better comprehension
Created a Figma workbook—a big turning point for student success
Updated the flow of lessons to maximize learning
Shortened the program from 30 weeks down to 22 to keep students challenged and motivated throughout the program
Patterned with Tech Fleet enabled our students to start an apprenticeship and work with a real team
The product experience leveled up:
Tech layoffs, price elasticity—ah, startup struggles.
By mid-2022, inflation and the rising cost of debt kicked in, and tech layoffs started to make the news—the negative sentiment about tech caught on LinkedIn and other mainstream outlets.
It was clear that customers got cautious. Price elasticity took a hit, and there was less demand for high-ticket programs like ours.
The business model makeover
After lots of back and forth, we pivoted to a subscription model.
Good news: Our product was battle-tested for years, facilitating the switch from cohort to subscription model.
But it was still a heavy lift as I had to entirely rethink the student experience to fit the subscription model:
Rebuilding the product experience on Circle (better subscription model fit)
Automating the onboarding process via email and product
Shortening time-to-value in the first 24 hours a user signs up
Helping students get early result quickly via a 1:1 intro call
Automatic mechanisms to gather user feedback
Offsetting lower LTV with churn rates
When shifting to the subscription model, I closely monitored churn and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) metrics.
We had 4x more students in the first 12 months, but our LTV was 3.8x lower—which we expected when we shifted away from our cohort model.
But more importantly, I led initiatives to reduce churn and drive engagement:
Re-engagement loops for inactive users
Upgrade mechanism and incentives
Rewards and experience gamification
The results:
Churn reduced by 51% in 12 months
Net MRR Churn Rate reduced by 73% in 12 months
Ultimately, the subscription model was a valuable pivot. It requires more hands-on experience with metrics and data-informed decisions.
Our impact: TL;DR edition
Reinventing UX education is an ambitious goal—we succeeded in some areas and fell short in others.
One thing is sure, we’ve accomplished lots to be proud of:
Audience growth
From 0 to 30,000,000+ social media impressions
From 0 to 436,000+ website page views
From 0 to 150,000+ YouTube views
From 0 to 14,500+ cumulative email subscribers
Mentoring & education
700+ hours of group mentoring
200+ hours of 1:1 mentoring
11,700+ free course students
1,846 guests to our educational live events
In closing & thank yous 💌
Holy crap, starting a business is one of the hardest things I’ve done. I learned so much about myself—in exciting and challenging times.
It opened my eyes to a vast world outside of design. What an adventure.
Finally, a big thank you:
To Colton Schweitzer, Laura Delmas, Lyn Wiltse, Jory McKay, Wes Bush, Katie Mikelsons, Chris Figat, Matt Barrios, our students, and community members, whose unwavering support shaped our company—thank you.
