"It would be an understatement to say that AC4D has had a profound impact on my life. If you are looking for a path into design or to grow yo..."

Video transcript: Hi everybody, my name is Adam and I did AC4D's one year immersive. I graduated in May or April 2019 and I just want to share a few things about it. So first, AC4D influenced my career path and approach to design by essentially giving me a process that I really needed in order to be inspired in my work. I essentially had been an educator and working for public facing clients, mainly state government agencies, sometimes for advertising agencies, sometimes in a public health research capacity. And I love the work, I love the clients, but I never believed in advertising as sort of a medium or a method. So AC4D gave me a way, gave me a design process to stick to that was very tangible and accessible even when I didn't consider myself a designer at the start of AC4D and it allowed me to get an awesome job at Deloitte as a UX designer. And I was definitely overwhelmed right at the start designing digital products. But I had had this experience in the public sector working with clients, managing projects, leading where I was needed, and AC4D gave me that process to stick to when times got tough, especially at the start of the Deloitte job. What's one takeaway or transformation you experienced during the program? I think one of the things you are encouraged to do and learn is to handle conflicts, especially with teammates and on projects in the most upfront, transparent way in order to find a way to work together. This is a place where you're not going to only learn a process of design, you're going to learn a process of just troubleshooting and problem solving with people, including your own teammates. But AC4D provides a path for you to do what you want, whether that's in a team or whether you want your particular project to be individual. 2. Favorite moment what was your favorite moment, project or lesson? One of our major projects in a about a three month course, or actually it was like a four month total course between two courses was how research was formed. Back then the research course, our real life client was a bookstore here in the city of Austin called Recycled Reads. It still exists. You can look it up. It is a city owned bookstore that's part of the Austin Public Library system. I'd love this store for years. Paperbacks are 2 bucks. Sorry, paperbacks are 1 buck, hardbacks are $2 and they get donations from the public if they're good enough they get on the shelf. They also get stuff that's run through the library system that's still popular or in demand and put it on the shelf and sell it for cheap. And that was our location for our research project and our research courses. And we did, we learned a lot through our research. We talked to customers, we talked to volunteers, we talked to their full time staff members. Right. And learned all sorts of interesting details about how the weeding process works, how the library system works, all that. But the fun part was we delivered our insights. Great. We actually got paid a couple hundred bucks, which we did not think was going to happen from the city. Many years later, I returned to AC40 and they have changed the entire layout of the store essentially to what we had suggested. I have no idea that our research presentation actually did that right one to one or A to B, but just the fact that somebody over there reached the same conclusions that we did in terms of how to arrange their space, how to communicate to their customers. It was, it was pretty impactful advice for future students or workshop attendees. What advice would you give someone considering AC4D? Obviously, if you're looking for a design process, an introduction to design, big design with a big definition, all right. Where you can use it in many different jobs and industries. I would say give AC4D a shot in terms of advice while in courses. I would say become more confrontational if you were anti confrontational like me, to solve problems early, especially when it comes to teammates, problems, potential clients, things like that. Be transparent, be direct, be kind and you can get things done faster. So don't, don't shy away from that. That was speaking from personal experience. I love AC40. It's done a ton for me and look out for me and reach out to me if you have more questions. Thanks.