Building UX Culture Through Hands-On Learning

In May 2016, we started the User Experience Lab (UXL) at Quicken Loans with a simple goal: make UX knowledge more accessible to people outside of the UX team.

At the time, UX was becoming an increasingly important part of how we built digital products, but not everyone had the same exposure to UX methods, tools, or ways of thinking. We wanted to create a space where team members could learn by doing, ask questions, and bring what they learned back to their own projects.

Learning by Doing

Every other week, we hosted a one-hour hands-on workshop open to team members who wanted to learn more about UX and the digital product space.

The workshops weren’t meant to turn everyone into a UX designer. They were designed to give people practical exposure to how UX designers think and work, and to help teams better understand how to build products with the customer in mind.

We covered topics such as Introduction to User Experience, User Insights, and Sketch UX, with UX designers and UX specialists taking turns leading sessions and sharing their areas of expertise.

The hands-on part was important. Instead of only talking about UX concepts, we wanted people to actually try the methods and tools themselves.

From Workshop to Real Work

The workshop was only one part of the experience.

After each session, we held a consulting hour where individual project teams could bring in real problems they were working through. We helped teams think through their ideas, improve alignment, and communicate those ideas more clearly.

I liked this part of the program because it connected what people had just learned to the work they were already doing. UX wasn’t something that only happened inside a workshop. They could immediately apply it to a real project, conversation, or customer problem.

Making Learning Easier to Remember

I also created sketch notes after each workshop to capture the key ideas visually.

Instead of leaving people with another presentation deck they might never open again, the sketch notes gave them a quick reference they could return to after the session. They were also another way to make the material approachable for people who learn better visually.

At the time, I was exploring how visual storytelling could make complex information easier to understand and remember, and UXL gave me an opportunity to bring that into how we taught UX.

UX Beyond the UX Team

One of the things I appreciated most about User Experience Lab was that it wasn’t only for designers.

It was open to any team member who wanted to better understand the digital space, explore UX tools, or learn new ways to approach a problem. That mattered because creating a good customer experience isn’t something a UX designer does alone.

Product decisions are shaped by many people. Giving more of those people exposure to customer-centered thinking helped create better conversations between disciplines and gave teams a shared understanding of why UX mattered.

What I Took Away From It

Looking back, User Experience Lab reinforced something that has continued to shape how I approach design leadership and community building.

UX knowledge becomes more valuable when we share it.

You don’t need everyone in an organization to become a UX designer. But helping people understand the customer, ask better questions, communicate ideas, and become familiar with the tools designers use can make collaboration much easier.

UXL was one of my earliest experiences building a recurring learning program around design. Years later, I would continue exploring that idea in different ways through programs like Skill Share and the Ops Design Summit.

The programs were different, but the idea behind them was similar: create a space for people to learn from each other, give them opportunities to participate, and make knowledge easier to share.