Micro-conference UX-Environment №26: Design Education in Russia

On September 30, the twenty-sixth UX-Wednesday micro-conference on design education in Russia was held at the Mail.Ru Group office. Invited guests, as well as specialists from different departments of the company, made a series of presentations about their work experience and participated in the discussion. This time we had Dmitry Karpov (British Higher School of Design), Lola Kristallinskaya (Yandex), Ekaterina Yarmoshevich and Alexey Polekhin (Netology), Jonathan Briggs (Hyper Island, in writing) and me from Mail.Ru Group. The discussion was moderated by Tanya Smirnova.




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This time we had a teleconference with a Western speaker, so Jonathan Briggs , the co-founder of Hyper Island , recorded a special video about the school with Tanya Smirnova, her graduate.





We prepared in advance a list of sensible topics for discussion from the experts and alternated them with questions from the audience. About 100 people came, many of whom represented leading domestic food companies, so it was interesting to communicate both during the panel and during the breaks.





The experts presented different approaches of the companies - a more or less familiar format of education ( British and Hyper Island ), online courses ( Netology ), specialized formats within companies ( Yandex and Mail.Ru Group ). Unfortunately, Denis Mosin did not arrive from IKRA . This allowed to look at the problem from all angles. After a brief talk about themselves and the tasks of the school, a discussion began on which designers are in general in demand now and how to teach them the correct vision of the profession and necessary skills, as well as the characteristics of each approach. Here are some of the topics:

• The British offers four formats: intensives for a week and a half, which make it possible to dive into professional topics and decide whether to go on a full course; British higher education; Russian additional education; decades, so that experienced professionals can try new things for themselves. Recently launched a design course for schoolchildren and teenagers. And in addition to all this, a corporate training format is being prepared for the needs of specific companies and remote solutions. In addition, there are friendly schools on other topics - Scream School, Moscow Architectural School and Film School.
• 30 people graduated from the Yandex Design School (780 applications, 70 interviews, 32 applicants). Of these, the company hired 12, including one of the youngest domestic designers - Harry, he is 16 years old. Very cool example for everyone who is just starting in the profession. Although hiring 100% of the trained task is not - in any case it pumps the market, which helps in the long term. The preparation of materials for the school and its conduct required a huge amount of energy, in which 45 people participated. But the exhaust is strong, including the number of hired specialists. The company will publish educational materials in the public domain, and now they are great help and for pumping designers inside.
• Netology has two training formats - monthly webinars on UX / UI and web design in general , as well as a library of individual courses . As an experiment, they also launched a workshop where students, under the supervision of experts, are doing some kind of project.
• Hyper Island is sometimes called Harvard in the digital world. This is a business school that is focused on a technological approach, including design, in order to prepare companies for disruption of industries. Students work on real projects of real companies, which allows them to accumulate a good portfolio. In addition, they focus on transferable skills that are applicable in any industry to any project, i.e. trying to make knowledge universal.
• Mail.Ru Group does not have a large flow of hiring - designers are hired more precisely, so they don’t need their own school yet. But we are investing heavily in raising karma in a prof. Environment, so we do a lot of conferences - this is also a good way to gain knowledge. Another format is joint programs for IT universities (Baumanka, Moscow State University), which teach developers and managers to work with designers correctly. And the last - contests (Russian Design Cup and individual), which enable specialists to pump their skills through more or less realistic tasks and build a basic portfolio. This is a big problem for novice designers who have little practice - a portfolio can be assembled either with internships, with unsolicited redesigns, or with real projects (which are just reluctant to give). Classmates each year hire one of the winners.

But it is better to watch the video recording - there were a lot more questions and interesting discussions:





In recent years, educational formats more and more. It is a pity that Denis Mosin from IKRA could not reach us, and also failed to invite anyone from the Gorbunov Internship School - they are among the most interesting and useful. From the long-term programs, we can mention the Institute of Business and Design , the School of Design of the HSE and the Strelka Institute . The format of intensives and short-term courses turned out to be in demand - they are made, for example, #tceh and Roman Black . Selected topics offer the same bang! Bang! Education , an interface design school , not to mention regular private programs like Paul Kolodyazhny . In parallel with this, online courses are being developed for self-study - almost simultaneously they were launched by Tilda and Readymag . And this is not to mention a lot of conferences, many of which include a separate day of master classes. In general, there are lots of ways to professionally pump over, for any budget and amount of free time.

The event is open - we invite not only speakers, but also listeners from other companies. If you want to speak with us - write to me at y.vetrov@corp.mail.ru and we will choose an interesting topic of the story and a convenient date for it. You can find out the schedule and program of future events, as well as sign up for them on the micro-conference Facebook page .