the school - The School Of Design

Immersive hands on program, meant at shifting your career into product strategy and design

5 months online program
5 days offline bootcamp (in Transylvania)
4 real company challennges (see last year’s challenges)
Cohort of 20 selected, likeminded, passionate people
Working in teams, 4 teams in total
10-15 hours weekly workload
2 weekly calls - 1 cohort call + 1 team assignment debrief call
12 Professors
Tuition fee: 400 eur/month (2.000 in total, paid in installments)
Bootcamp fee: 500 eur (excluding food & accommodation)
Next edition starts on 19th September 2022.
Scholarships: we offer half funded scholarships for 6 "out-of-this-world" young people, below 25 years old.

At the School we’re putting all that we have, believe and know into creating an interactive and memorable learning experience.

This starts with the ‘professors’ who are making this happen, and ends with you. The School and this experience into the world of design would be nothing if we didn’t carefully select the 16 people of each class.

So here’s what you need to know:

The school curriculum and content are designed to be very much about practicing and integrating the tools, principles and developing the new skills a product and strategy designer needs to become succesful. The time spend during the 4 months, will be mostly 30% theory and 70% practice.

Here are the main chapters we’ll cover during the four months of the school:

1. Intro to design

Overview of the design process. The steps, the tools.

2. Discovery phase

We’ll look at how we uncover more about the problem space, from the business
and client’s perspective. We’ll take a system thinking approach to understanding the problem.

3. Research phase

Diving into research, we’ll understand more about the main research tools, we’ll learn and practice doing own desk research competition, trends, analysing existing client data, preparing for interviews, conducting interviews.

4. Research analysis

Once past the discovery and research, we’ll learn at how to make sense of all the data, by using understanding and practicing design tools as user journey map, personas, insights uncovering and how might we, to prepare moving to ideation phase

5. Ideation and concepts

We’ll move to generate ideas after having mapped the opportunities. We’ll learn what does it take to generate ideas, how we look at them, how we use them to move to concepts and take advantaje of the group’s creativity and genius.

6. Developing concepts

From concepts will start working on making them come true.
We’ll start with new user journeys, flowcharts, take a look at the holistic process, learn about content and information architectute as well as what it means to create simple, easy to user and memorable experiences.

7. Prototyping & Testing

Turning all the work done into an actionable prototype so that it can be tested with real customers.

8. Iterating and finalising

After testing we’ll analyze at the results, draw learnings and insights and we’ll learn how we use testing sessions to lead better experiences and products that meet client’s needs and drive business.

9. Presenting final work to companies

We’ll prepare a final presentation to the company for which your team solved the challenge. During this call you and your team will be able to show like in any real business context, the work, the proposal, the need for such a product and embed all the learnings from the school in terms of business pitching and negociations.

10. Moving further and preparing for a design career and leadership

Having finished the program, equiped you with a very practical and important experience that will help you in your future interviews and projects. Most of our involved participants land on a job or project in less than 3 months from graduation. Read some stories here ->

because design really is something.

you’ll find that design is at the melting point of several disciplines (psycology, anthropology, aestethics, technology, programming, product development, strategy, entrepreneurial spirit, business, sociology, arcitecture, and so much more)

and it will leave you wanting to know more, discover more, and follow your curiosity to wherever it might lead you next.

The school experience we’ve designed is a lot out the people involved. It starts with the people and end with the people. The ones who make this happen and the ones who are part of it.

That is why we have a selection process that aims to ensure we get a good mix of people to be part of each cohort.

Besides, we try to make sure you are the right person in the right time and also, that The School is the place for you and what you're looking for.

That’s why, our admission process has 4 steps:

1. Making sure you understand what the school is about, the content and experience you’ll go through, as well as the commitment that you need to have.
2. Submitting your application
3. A call with the someone from the school.
4. If you are accepted, we’ll block all your Mondays and Friday, and weeks. Kidding, we’ll just need to sign a contract. And kick it off.

Tuition

Price school:
400 eur/month = 2.000 eur payable in installments, or alltogether, as you wish.

5 days offline Bootcamp:
500 eur
(it does not include accommodation, food and transportation. We negotiate the prices and package, we’ll get back with the exact amount, it usually is around 350 eur)

Scholarships:

For those below 25 years old who convince us they deserve it, we have 6 half funded grants, meaning you’ll receive a 1.000 eur scholarship. The Bootcamp price is still on you.

During your time the School we’re aiming to instill in you the mindset you need to become a designer.
you will learn how to solve problems and create things - whether it’s a product, an offline experience, a digital experience, a system, a process, a gift, the design process will guide you through bringing them to life.

- we’ll start with how you go about understanding problems, context, people, behavior, emotions and situations.

- then, it’s time for research - you’ll talk to real people to understand their needs in relation to the problem your team is trying to solve.

- after that we’ll help you learn to decipher insights from the research you’ve done, and then we’ll come up with ideas and solutions that grow into concepts, products and experiences.

- Finally, we’ll move into prototyping, aka creating something to test with real clients and users, in order to validate (or invalidate) your potential solution.
After iterations and improvements we’ll move to development and implementation.

in a nuthsell, these are the main phases you’ll go through

( /our representation/ of the representations of the design process)

The school wil start on 20th September and end in on 28 th of February with the presentation of your projects to companies.

In between, we’ll meet each Mondays and Fridays, except holidays (30 Nov & 1 Dec, Christmas and first week of January) and one break in mid Nov.

Throughout everything we do at the school, we’ll look holistically through the design lens at how things are made - be it physical products, offline experiences or services.

The School’s focus will be the UX process and its tools, but by the end you’ll be able to create anything and solve whatever you decide is worth solving.

The 4 challenges the teams will have to solve troughout the 3 months will be digital experiences.

the chapters

(accommodation and transporation not included)

Yes, we’ll give you real designers roles. It going to be kind of a “learning on the job” experience also, because you’ll be given a real responsibility to come up with real solutions for problems you’ll have to discover during your interviews with real customers, etc.

So, basically, your work might be implemented and that will for sure be a first successful project in your portfolio.

Not to mention that you might be liked by someone from that company and land on a job.

We won’t be giving you the recipe, because we don’t have a list of boxes you need to tick.

It is rather understanding if this school is for you, in this moment of your life.

And also if you are a right fit among other people who apply. Because we want to create a mix of people who can best collaborate and work and learn together, it is going to be also a matter of chance and group dynamics.

So, besides the above criteria written here we’re going to look at the way you build an application, the way you tell us who you are and how you are introducing us into your world.

Mhm.

We’d like to let you know the reason why we are not for installments, altough we could: we need you to commit to this and paying this all at once is one large commitment that you.

And it’s your commitment to yourself, your time, your future, us, to the professors, to your team mates. They will need you to be there, because each one of you will have an important role, you’ll complement and contribute to eachother’s learning experience, growth and, nevertheless, to the solutions you will bring to the clients you’re be solving the challenge for.

Of course there are exceptions and we’d like to support your journey and determination. So if you cannot pay it all at once and we’ll take your word for it and vow for you in order to make this exception happen.

Join this experience!

A P P L Y