How a Pandemic Experiment Exposed the UX Industry’s Broken Learning Gap
April 11, 2025
Back in 2020, I started The Collective Studio (TCS) as a way to stay sane. Unemployment was spiking, clients vanished overnight, and the usual paths into design felt… broken for me and for everyone. So I threw a hail mary into some UX Facebook groups: “Anyone wanna do whiteboard challenges together?” and…
99 people said yes.
I wasn’t expecting that.
Turns out, I wasn’t the only one who felt like we needed to do something… ANYTHING to get out of our heads and out of a rut. Bootcamp grads were drowning in debt and rejections. Career switchers hit walls because no one would train them. And employers? They kept complaining about how hard it is to find talent while offering zero bridges across it. It wasn’t the pandemic’s fault either because we know things have gotten worse after life returned to “normal.” Welcome to our new normal of boom and bust cycles.
The Problem No One Wants to Fix
Let’s be real: UX education is a mess.
- 45% of bootcamp grads fail to land UX jobs within 6 months - 2023 Course Report
- 75% of employers struggle to fill roles - Exploding Topics
- UX has the 2nd-highest skills gap in tech - CompTIA Tech Jobs Report (2024, Page 12)
- Global tech skills gap will cost economies $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenue by 2030 - IDC
And the stats back it up— because, surprise, no one’s training people for those roles. *Cue surprised Pikachu face* I don’t wanna sound like THAT guy but, damn…. y’all got 99 problems, can we start finding solutions for them now? If you have a job and are totally resenting your junior staff right now for fudging everything up. I feel for you but the people to get mad at aren’t the newbies at work. Get mad at the right people higher up. Build better pipelines for hiring and promoting your workers. We can all be winners here.
So We Built a Different Way
TCS wasn’t a course. I never intended to make TCS a school. I wanted it to be a kinda anti-school, where the learning is in the hands of the participants. Participants get to control how deep they want to go. As a facilitator, I try not to influence too much the direction teams will go in. TCS was most certainly NOT a bootcamp. It was a workshop where people take on different roles to collaborate as a team—because the best way to learn is by doing, failing, and fixing things in real-time. Unlike hackathons, we didn’t pressure participants to come up with a half-baked idea in 24 hours or less. We had multiple sessions to ideate, explore ideas and connect them meaningfully to a problem they were trying to solve through a variety of mapping exercises and question prompts. We invited industry professionals to (politely) take apart their work to give clear tangible goals on what to iterate on next.
The result? I’m glad to say many of our participants have grown professionally from attending many of our workshops. People who’d been stuck for months finally got it. One participant from Ireland used a project she did from our workshops that got her a job. Another went on to learn how to facilitate workshops and now does it professionally at Lego. Others kept the practice going and developed a whole functional prototype with a friend they made through our sessions. Everyone found their own way of being awesome!
Science Confirms What We Observed All Along: Project-Based Learning Works
Don’t take my word for it. Check out this meta-analysis by Educational Psychology Review, on how problem-solving, peer-focused teaching improves motivation. We know it’s not the only method that works but it’s pretty effective for TCS.
The Bigger Lesson
This wasn’t about “fixing” individuals. It was about proving that the gap isn’t a talent shortage—it’s a mentorship shortage. A training shortage. A “we’ve forgotten how to grow people” shortage.
There were challenges I faced as a facilitator that led me to believe that while our workshops worked for most people. I noticed some junior-level designers who were fresh out of college struggled with our style of pedagogy. We give a lot of freedom to participants to choose how to work in teams and sometimes that can come across as a paralyzing experience even when we did our best to ensure their success would be guaranteed in our space. I noticed a pattern of participants missing out on feedback sessions, due to the painful experiences of self-doubt and self-judgement.
And honestly? It worries me for a few reasons.
We’ve got Gen Z designers who survived the pandemic remote school format, they are entering a looming recession, and AI is snatching up jobs—only to hit a brick wall because some hiring manager won’t look past their lack of “3+ years of experience.”
Do you know how that takes a toll on people’s mental health? Young people won’t take chances if they fear failure or lack of progress. Heck, I have experienced 4 years of joblessness and it did not leave me feeling super confident at all times. It’s a hard feeling to shake. It’s like Sisyphus trudging along, churning out job applications like a Xerox machine on drugs, getting constantly rejected and starting back at square one DAILY. I challenge you to have a great day after that.
Sometimes the perceived risk of failing can make individuals tap out and abandon their career goals for good. They hear ”…the industry is oversaturated…” and they feel, “What’s the point of trying?” That’s not good for our future. That’s not a mindset you want to get stuck into.
Self-doubt is normal. Don’t let that impair self-development.
Another reason for worry is some of the essential soft skills junior designers need aren’t being nurtured in traditional education. So where are they supposed to learn how to communicate in a professional setting? How will they accept constructive criticism and learn from mistakes without fearing being laid off over performance? Not everyone can develop these skills by themselves.
With the dearth of influencer-led UX courses blowing up in popularity. It’s positioned as the next best solution for job readiness for those who did not qualify or can’t afford Bootcamp. I am more skeptical of offline tutorial courses and podcasts offered by senior devs and designers looking to make passive income from passive education. I’ve met a few “design” influencers who think they have the key, the answer, the ultimate preparation guide. THE META.
This is all very nice on the surface but we all know the real answer is for companies to just bloody hire and train people (stop bailing out stakeholders with 200% salary increase, which we all know they do not deserve).
It’s not the junior designer’s fault that they didn’t buy your overpriced professional UX course that anyone could easily find on Google for free.
Let’s be more transparent and fair to juniors, let’s make this more accessible and easier on them. Share common knowledge and make it inclusive. Have you seen the cost of Eggs recently? Don’t force people to choose between affording Eggs or your overpriced UX course!
Where Do We Go From Here?
TCS closed last year, the case study’s finally done. It has taken me ages trying to figure out how to end it and summarize some of the most interesting and exciting aspects of my work. I honestly felt sad at some points because it’s hard to stop doing something you tried so hard to make work but I’m past the early phases of grief and have landed into the acceptance phase of it all. It’s not a tidy success story—we have weaknesses, we didn’t make a billion dollars or anything silly like that. We did make a difference and I think that is sufficient enough to say that it mattered.
If any of this resonates with you (or pisses you off too), give it a read.