Bits of Good
Design Bootcamp
Product Design Bootcamp
The UX Design Bootcamp is a free 12-week course teaching students the fundamentals of user research and design.
Timeframe
Fall semester 2021
Spring semester 2022
Fall semester 2021
Spring semester 2022
What
12 week course with weekly lectures and homework, a semester-long case study project, and interactive workshops.
12 week course with weekly lectures and homework, a semester-long case study project, and interactive workshops.
Instructors
Simon Zhang (Spring ‘22)
Michelle Hou (Spring ‘22)
Kimberly Do (Fall ‘21)
Mira Dhingra (Fall ‘21)
Simon Zhang (Spring ‘22)
Michelle Hou (Spring ‘22)
Kimberly Do (Fall ‘21)
Mira Dhingra (Fall ‘21)
Skills
Leadership
Collaboration
Visual Design
Storytelling / Presenting
Leadership
Collaboration
Visual Design
Storytelling / Presenting
What is Bits of Good?
Bits of Good is a student run organization at Georgia Tech (GT’s chapter of the national Hack4Impact organization) that educates and connects students with local-nonprofits to create powerful web apps.The Design Bootcamp trains and equips students to later join Bits of Good as Product Designers where they can use design to serve non-profits✨
Why the design bootcamp?
After working as a BoG product designer, I noticed that many of my fellow GT students also wanted to become product designers but lacked formal UX design classes and resources. To help bridge this skill-gap, Mira, Kimberly, and I volunteered to lead a bootcamp covering the fundamentals of user research and design.
💡 Our goal was to help facilitate a pipeline of students equipped with design skills from the bootcamp into becoming Product Designers to work on Bits of Good’s non-profit projects.
💡 Our goal was to help facilitate a pipeline of students equipped with design skills from the bootcamp into becoming Product Designers to work on Bits of Good’s non-profit projects.
My Impact
I am passionate about breaking down barriers to design education and building community—as a Design Bootcamp Instructor, I was able to merge both of these passions! My impact included:- Delivering lectures and interactive workshops
- Providing feedback and critique on students’ work
- Communicating with execs and advocating for my students
- Organizing class bonding events (boba🧋 + protfolio jams)
- Facilitating project showcases to increase students' visibility
Learning & growing
⏰ Last minute projects
Several students waited until the last few days of the bootcamp to do the bulk of their semester-long case study project work. This case study requires user research, low-fi design, usability testing, and a final high-fi design...none of which could be effecitively rushed into 2-3 days of work.︎︎︎
✅ Multiple project check-ins
🗣 Lecture-heavy classes
A piece of feedback we recieved from students during the first semester was that many of our bootcamp sessions were too lecture heavy. After a long day of Georgia Tech classes, students are too fatigued to stay engaged for another 2-hour bootcamp lecture in the evenings.︎︎︎
✅ Engaging interactive compontents
Incorporating the student feedback into my semester planning, I decided to cap bootcamp sessions at 30 minutes of lecture time and to fill the rest of the time with critiques and hands-on activities. This intiative proved to be a huge success in increasing student engagement and allowing students to practice course concepts while recieving guidance from instructors.💬 Scattered communication
Between multiple Slack channels & DMs, Notion pages, Figma, and Bluejeans video calls, students expressed being overwhelmed about where to look for information about about bootcamp sessions, events, projects, and homework.︎︎︎
✅ Course hub

In-class lectures


Students presenting their final projects



