The unique situation of the past many months left me with some extra (and rare) free time to see if I could still learn new things. I've always had interest in design, so this past spring and summer I decided to dip my toes into some continuing education pathways.
The first, which is still ongoing, is a multi-month course in UX (User Experience) Design offered as a Google Career Certificate. It's self-paced, and I've definitely got a few months ahead of me. I had a very short-lived career as an app developer in the earliest days of the iPhone App Store (remember Tempi, anyone?) You'll hear more about my adventures in UX down the line. My portfolio project? A mobile-ordering app for a fictional local brewery.
The second big adventure, which is certainly sexier, has been a path towards VR/AR software development through a platform called CircuitStream. I finished an introductory course in C# scripting and then embarked on a 10-week project-focused course called "Interaction Design and Prototyping for XR". I completed that course successfully last month, and you'll be hearing about my portfolio project VRimba--a playable 5-octave marimba in a virtual concert hall--very soon. In the meantime, check out my cool CircuitStream badges!
Kicking out the brain cobwebs hasn't been easy. As a young person, I was always a great learner and a great student, but decades of being comfortable in my chosen profession caused some atrophy of brain cells that I hadn't needed to utilize since grad school. Relearning how to learn has been a challenge, to say the least. Decades of having my attention span eroded by the immediacy of social media and endless scrolling has really made extended periods of focused learning a challenge.
To be honest, I'm now sort of addicted to online learning, and shy of enrolling in some sort of immersive bootcamp, I keep searching out new educational pathways that can co-exist with my professional life. Whatever the outcome of any of these, I can tell you that my brain is getting a workout... and that's a good thing.
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