Welcome Aboard 👋

Happy first day of Foundations - the skill development portion of UVA and Radify’s Career Accelerator!

We’ll use our first day as an introduction to the program meant to put you in the correct mindset, and get you accustomed to this type of online learning environment.

Today we really want to get the point across that, for the next 4 weeks, we’re all on a mission to learn these skills and create awesome projects.

This program isn't going to be easy - Andy, Allison, and all of our coaches are going to work super hard and we expect equal effort from you all. We’re going to need everyone’s help to make this a successful mission 🚀

Every day for the next 4 weeks, you'll have a few to-dos.

The to-dos will fall into two main categories:

• Personal skill development
• Group project work

Personal Skill development

This curriculum will include learning relevant tools and software used in your track's industry. Don’t expect to be spending a lot of time watching boring tutorial videos, our curriculum is very video light. We believe in having students get hands-on experience as quickly as possible. Even when you first start learning a tool, you’ll be doing that learning while working on small projects!

Skill projects

After you've strengthened your skills, we'll put you into small teams that you’ll be working with to complete 2 projects. Through these projects, you'll get a taste for what professionals in your track do on a day-to-day basis and how they operate within a team while at the same time creating projects that you can put on your portfolio.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I do the work on my own time?

You can do your daily assignments at any time during the day, whenever is the most convenient for you. When we get to the group projects, you will have to work with your group members to find times that work best for all members to meet.

Can I just wait until the weekend to complete everything?

No! While we do realize some days can be busier than others, we ask that you try as hard as you can to stay on track with the daily assignments and never get more than 3 days behind schedule.

Can I work ahead?

Every Monday we will release the content for that week. You are free to work ahead through that week's curriculum as much as you would like to.

Is this really 100% online?

Yes! Everything you do with Foundations will be online. Once we get to group work, you are free to plan to meet in person with your group but that’s not required, Google Hangouts make meeting remotely very easy.

Why do I see multiple tracks on teachable?

We give every student access to all of our curriculum because we know you all have a lot of interests and are curious. We have each student focus on one track and remain responsible for that track’s assignments but if you ever have a spare 2 hours on a Sunday and are curious to see what students in another track are learning, you’re free to pop over into that curriculum and see!

Let's Get Started

We realize that you may still have questions but we want to get into the curriculum as soon as possible.

Getting to know Slack

Slack is a communication tool that we use a lot. By now, you of you should have gotten an invite and created an account. If you haven't yet, be sure to download both the desktop and mobile applications.

Download here.

If you have questions right now, write them down and ask them in the #uva-foundations-winter channel in Slack!

The Weekly Radify Pledge

The last thing we’ll cover today is the Radify weekly pledge. This is something we place a lot of emphasis on. Over these next 4 weeks, there may be times when you don’t understand something. It’s important to stay positive during those times and to call on the Radify community for help. We’re all going through the same curriculum at the same time and together we can make sure everyone comes out of the program knowing a lot more than when they started.  At the beginning of each week, we’ll ask you to make this same pledge, not just to us, the Radify staff, but also to your fellow students.

I will do the hard part first.

I will adopt an attitude of positivity.

I will care for the people in my cohort,

And I will be an active participant in all group projects.

I promise to use the skills I learn this week for good, not evil.

I promise that even after this week, I will keep making a ruckus, building things, and putting good out into the world.

Finally, I promise to take what I learn and pass it along to someone else who would do a lot of good with the superpowers I learn these next four weeks.

The first goal of our skill development curriculum is to make you more knowledgeable of the industry and current trends. To do that, it's important that you start subscribing to UX focused newsletters, start reading UX focused blogs, and begin to browse and play around with UX resources on the web.

Your first task is to look through these resources: subscribe to the newsletters, bookmark the blogs, and download the ebooks. Surrounding yourself with relevant and educational content is important. If you ever find yourself bored or have a few spare minutes, there will always be productive things within close reach to pass the time.

UX Companion - A glossary of UX terms

UX Design Weekly - Best UX design links to your inbox, every Monday

The UX Newsletter - A UX newsletter curated by the team at Mailchimp

UX Mastery - A UX newsletter with important news about the industry

UX Booth - A UX newsletter with the best finds finds across the web

InfoDesign - a blog about information design

Web Credible - thoughts on experience design, innovation, UX

Hey Designer - daily curated design news for UX pros

52 Weeks of UX - A discourse on the process of designing for real people

UX Crash Course: 31 Fundamentals - A bunch of short articles that go over the basics of UX

Muzli - Design Inspiration curated for you by InVision

Daily Submissions 101