I was fortunate to be invited to the fourth UI Design Bootcamp led by Frost Design Group’s JP De Guzman (no relation haha). It was an intense 2 weeks of getting design fundamentals done and done well while learning about Frost’s culture. It started simple enough: Sir JP instructed us to do 3 screens – a form, a list, and a table. There were some constraints though: no colors, no images, use the font Inter, make your own icons if you use them, and give the exercise our best shot.
Day 2 was when the real fun began. Sir JP went through our work and broke down the principles of space, typography, and shape and how they relate to UI Design. (My old professors will be so disappointed in me because I’ve forgotten typographical terms until Sir JP reintroduced them to me.) He also used my fellow boot campers’ work to explain how to use the baseline grid to find the vertical rhythm of the screen.
We spent the rest of the week fine-tuning those initial screens, with our instructor picking apart our work and giving constructive feedback on how to design our screens better. Sometimes it’s a matter of opening up the paddings and margins of our elements. Sometimes it’s a matter of figuring out what we want to emphasize on the screen. It was a little bit frustrating, and we weren’t even allowed to use colors yet!
Week 2 saw us finally getting a new exercise: to design the end-to-end UI of a to-do list app called Busy Bee. The training wheels were off, and we could finally use color! And any font and icon packs we want! Then, the question dawned on me: did I really know how to use colors properly?
Apparently, I still needed a bit of nudge in the right direction. I summoned some courage and asked for a critique of my work in front of everyone during Day 6 of the boot camp. I knew something was missing in my work, but couldn’t figure it out on my own. Sir JP gave some advice and tips while he made small tweaks to my work – making a font smaller or adding to the padding. He even designed a new icon for my list (I guess mine was too basic lol) and talked about how making icons is a whole other skill to teach and refine (Note to Sir JP, if you’re reading this: please make another class about iconography! I want to learn).
I spent Day 6 refining my screens – resizing to a smaller screen size and trying to get my colors right. When Day 7 came, Sir JP asked us to compare our work from Day 1 to Day 6, and to send some recognition to our fellow boot campers who we thought had improved so much. It was amazing to see how far we’ve grown in a matter of days! I felt some validation for all that hard work when I saw my fellow students put blue dots of recognition on my workspace. It felt like I was getting somewhere, finally.
At the end of the boot camp, our instructor took the time to talk to us one-on-one and get his opinion on our work. Sir JP gave my work another pass and we talked about how I was really frustrated and “gigil” to get the work right. He said it’s just a matter of time and working on more UI projects for me to get there, which I was delighted to hear.
In the end, it was a great learning experience for me. Joining this boot camp made me realize how much I love designing and that I should keep practicing my craft to the best of my ability. It also made me realize how important having a mentor, like a senior designer, who is precise in their methodology and language and gives you actionable feedback. Practice is good, but getting constructive feedback is gold.