How studying UX transformed my life from a high school student to a young entrepreneur

Only a little bit more than a year ago I was just a year 11 high school student with nothing but interest in technology, a passion for problem-solving and helping people. But now, I am a young entrepreneur working on a startup idea to help newly arrived migrants and refugees access governmental and nongovernmental resettlement services that they are not aware of.

For someone that came to Australia five years ago with no experience in business or tech, Pretty cool right?!

So everything started back in November 2017, where I attended my first lesson of my User Experience Design course at Academy Xi after winning a scholarship from a social impact hackathon (Techfugees).

Techfugees is a “non-profit coordinating the international tech community’s response to the needs of refugees, asylum seekers, and displaced people. It exists to empower the displaced with technology.”

During the intense 52 hour weekend my teammates Jasha Michelle, Eli, Hadrik and Jonathan worked extremely hard as a team. Our idea was an AI app that focused on the mental well-being of recently arrived residents. The app would help the users stay mentally healthy by tracking their mood through machine learning and observing their behaviour based on their activities on their mobile phone.

Our idea was an AI app that focused on the mental well-being of recently arrived residents. The app would help the users stay mentally healthy by tracking their mood through machine learning and observing their behaviour based on their activities on their mobile phone.

To our very surprise, we came second and were awarded the $3500 worth of credit scholarship study at Academy Xi who was the sponsor of the second prize and my teammates were extremely kind and instead of splitting the prize, they gave me the whole credit!!!! ALL THREE THOUSAND AND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!

My teammate Eli helped me pick User Experience Design course to study and never knew it would become one of the best choices I ever made in my life.

I was extremely thrilled to start my course at Academy xi but at the same time very scared. Fear of the unknown and also fear of not being able to learn because of Woa! UX design sounded so fancy and I didn’t even have a clear understanding of what it was. However, Eli assured me that the environment at Academy xi is very casual and comfortable which later was proven to be extremely true.

I am so grateful that I got the opportunity to study at Academy xi and to this day I think it was one of the best learning experiences I ever had. This was not solely because of the small intimate class sizes that provided a great learning space, but also because of the amazingly supportive community that they have provided me with.

From the beginning Academy xi, provided me with all the support they could to help me find my fit. And when I say they did everything I mean it. When I started at Academy xi, I was still going through the end of year 11 at school, didn’t know what I really wanted to do after finishing high school, did not have a clear understanding of Ux or the innovation space.

But a few months later when I graduated from my part-time course, I had all of those. All thanks to the wonderfully supportive Academy Xi community. By the time I graduated I knew what I want to do in University because I had found my passion through my involvement at Xi, what Ux and creative problem solving is and last but not least I started to find a solution to a problem I had when I was new to Australia using my Ux skills.

The support continued after my graduation from Academy Xi and it was in various forms. Being invited to Pitch X events to represent my start up (which I came third!!) , UX meet ups , innovations talks and I was even offered a Growth Marketing Scholarship by Ben that I will be starting soon hopefully!

My awesome instructors Tim and David who are industry professionals were always keen to help and taught based on each student’s learning pace.

The classes were highly engaging with a perfect balance of prac and theory along with an abundance of resources that were given to students who wished to do more in-depth learning. What I love the most about the Xi community is that they deeply care about their students and constantly provide ways for them to grow and push themselves to expand their knowledge. The course ended with a 10 minutes pitch presentation of each students Ux problem that they have worked on during the course and how they have approached solving it through the skills acquired.

The key lesson I have learnt through my learning journey at Academy xi was that empathy is one of the most crucial aspects in design and specially Ux. This is because most products and services are designed for humans and in order to curate good or improve experiences we need empathy to understand each other. There are other important lessons that I have learnt at Academy xi of course, such as the methodology of effective problem solving and creative thinking but I believe the most significant one was learning that empathy is not just a communication skill but rather an invaluable design principle.

Now I am working on my startup Directa Australia to help newly arrived migrants and refugees access opportunities of employment, education, and training that are offered by organisations that provide resettlement services that the clients of migrant and refugee are not aware of due to language barriers and not knowing how to access those services. If it was not because of my Ux skills that I gained at Academy xi and the support I received from them even after graduating I would not have been where am I today and for that, I am very very grateful.