Becoming a Thought Leader in UX/UI Design

When California-based User Experience Designer Brendan McWeeney was figuring out what was next for his career back in 2016, he had “no intention of going back to school.” However, after seeing “Northwestern University School of Professional Studies” pop up a few times in his social media feeds, he decided to take the hint and explore his educational options. It was then that he found our online Information Design & Strategy (IDS) master’s program. Brendan shared that the “program spoke to me. I felt like it was created exactly for me. It was the things that I had already been doing throughout my career, plus a few things that were outside of it—like data analytics.”

When he started the program in fall 2016, Brendan was thrilled for the opportunity to gain skills and knowledge to help him stay relevant and become a thought leader in his field. And according to him, the program did not disappoint. Brendan choose to specialize in the program’s Data Science and Analytics specialization which he said gave him “deeper theoretical and academic knowledge of what I’ve been doing.” On top of that, it taught him strategy, better methods of communication, and data analytics – all skills that he wanted to “expand and grow within myself to help further my career.”

While in the program, Brendan was recruited by LinkedIn’s San Francisco offices, where he currently works as the User Experience Design Manager. Brendan explained that “showing [LinkedIn] that I had that growth mindset and the desire to learn and get better, I think that helped.” He further emphasized that during the interview, “having the knowledge that I was gaining from the program helped me speak more intelligently about the craft and how I worked as a designer and a manager.”

Now an alumnus, Brendan’s advice for prospective students is: “You have to set your expectations. I was driven to get as much out of it as I could. I didn’t want to just finish this, I wanted to absorb every possible thing, so I made a conscious choice to complete one class per quarter, so that I could get everything out of it that I possibly could.”

Check out the SPS website to learn more about the Northwestern University online Master’s in Information Design & Strategy program.