Center Centre

This week UX 24/7’s give away features Center Centre a new school founded by Dr. Leslie Jensen- Inman and Jared Spool, two veteran UX experts with over 50 years of experience between them. Center Centre’s goal is to train and produce the next generation of UX Designers.

UX 24/7 is so excited to have the chance to offer a variety of products for this give away all offered by the creators of Center Centre.

 

We have in stock:

• A bundle of eBooks by the Co- Founders of Center Centre:
  • “Secrets of Successful UX Design Teams” by Dr. Leslie Jensen-Inman
  • “The Baker’s Dozen: Thoughts on Leadership, Design and Education” by Jared Spool.
• A 14 month subscription to User Interface Engineering’s (UIE) All You Can Learn Seminars. This last bundle is approximated at a $23 a month and is perfect for UX teams. (But I will get into all that later.)

All You Can Learn

That is what we are offering – all you can learn 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you and your team can seek the advice from experts all across the UX field.

Seminar Topics include:

• Typography and Graphic Design
• Effective Design Teams
• Multi-Device Design
• “The Rise of the DEO”
• User OnBoarding
• Designing for Startups
• Responsive Workflows

I could go on, but I think you can understand how invaluable this package is for you and your team. This team of experts is as far ranging in expertise as the topics you will have at hand. Content Strategy Consultants, Interaction, Designers, researchers, design directors and on and on and on. You can scope out the list of seminars and presenters here.

Dr. Leslie Jensen-Inman and Center Centre:

Finally, Leslie from Center Centre has taken time to answer a few questions about Center Centre.

Dr. Leslie Jensen-Inman is a designer, a writer, a teacher and a speaker. She has over twenty years of design experience, and, according to a recent interview at OSTraining, she has been kerning since she was five years old. As mentioned before, she authored “The Baker’s Dozen: Thoughts on Leadership, Design and Education” and you can find more of her thoughts on such blogs as The Pastry Box , where she shares ideas about her own reflective process and the benefits of an inquiry based lifestyle, or 24ways (a web geek advent calendar) where she writes about how to do good. In regards to education in design she shares her perspectives on mentoring with Creative Bloq.

Has it been a smooth transition from Unicorn Institute to Center Centre?

“You can’t figure out where a space rocket is going by looking at a still photo. You need to see the rocket in motion and plot its trajectory. This is just as true for graduating design students. Center Centre partner companies get to see more than the list of each student’s accomplishments and a final portfolio filled with only static screenshots of projects. Partner Company Mentors work with students on real projects on a regular basis over two years. These mentors see each student’s growth trajectory as a designer and learn what each student is truly capable of.

Our partner companies see UX as good for business, and they have a growing demand for UX talent. They pay a fee to participate in our program, which offsets the cost of tuition. Many of them are “blue-chip” companies, meaning they’re at least 20 years old with a strong, stable financial track record. Blue-chip companies are often in fields like healthcare, finance, manufacturing, publishing, non-profit, government, and retail.

Over two years, partner companies and students build professional relationships by working together on projects. This means we don’t need a traditional type of internship program.

What internships do you anticipate the students at Center Centre finding/ taking? 

The goal of most internship programs is for students to demonstrate their capabilities to employers. Center Centre’s internships are different. Our partner companies already know what students can do—they’ve been working with students for two years. They’ve seen each student’s process. They’ve seen each student’s work.

Internships allow students to experience a partner company’s work environment. Partner companies have the opportunity to see if students work well with team members they haven’t met and see if students are excited about other types of projects at the company.  

Our partner company internships are less of an audition and more of a meet and greet. Because of this, our internships aren’t very long. Most internships will last three to six weeks, instead of a traditional 15-week internship. This changes everything. Students don’t need longer internships that limit their ability to take multiple internships. Shorter internships allow Center Centre students to participate in multiple internships at different organizations.

Who are the other instructors? 

We have an excellent team at Center Centre. We’re all Makers of Awesomeness, and we’re all unicorns. Creating a new type of school, from scratch, is challenging. Every day is different. We are never bored.

One of my concerns with an interface career is how much time I am spending “on the screen.” For example, I write, work, communicate, study and research online all day so I need to be intentional about turning off the screen, meditating etc. I have noticed there seems to be an attempt in the UX community to maintain a balance of mindfulness with in their careers.  Do you see that happening at Center Centre? On that note, will there be a promotion for a face to face world to counter balance the interface UX existence? 

We believe in being present and being focused. For example, at Center Centre, we are intentional about our communication. We have tech-free meetings: no laptops, no phones, nothing with notifications. Because of this, our meetings end on time, and often, our meetings end early.

We also do our best not to interrupt each other while we are doing focused work. Writing content and crafting curriculum energy-intensive, focused activities. We schedule a maximum of 90-minutes at a time for this type of focused work. This allows the person who is focusing to stay in the zone for 90 minutes—without interruption. The rest of the team knows to let the person work so they can maintain focus. Limiting this intensive work time to 90 minutes at a time signals to the rest of the team that the person who is working will be available soon. Most questions can wait 90 minutes.

We are excited to move forward with our new approach to learning.  We provide what we genuinely believe to be a better learning experience, an experience that will produce  work-ready graduates. If you are interested in joining the movement, we have opportunities for partner companies, scholarship donors, and student applicants.”

Last updated by uxjobs247 on May 14, 2015.