Your engagement with design doesn't end here. This is just the beginning! Let's map out what might be next for you. We'll discuss each of the below and the TA and I will share our experiences with each.
There are so many more design classes on campus! HCDE, the School of Art + Art History + Design, and Architecture also teach many classes, and the iSchool has many design-related electives you can take.
Perhaps you might also be interested in design-related graduate degree, such as the Masters in HCI+Design or the many other design-related masters degrees on campus. All of these degrees focus on either broadening or deepening design-related skills that are relevant in to careers in UX, product design, product management, and software engineering. There are hundreds of other design-related masters degrees around the world that might fit your interests.
Internships are a great way to get more practice at design in a business context. But getting a design related internship is a bit tricky after having only taken this one class. This class might give you enough experience to land a UX internship at a company or a design-infused software development internship, but someone will be taking a risk.
Are you fortunate enough to have spare time to work on projects outside of class and work? Design something! I think the best way to do this is to find a client: someone who has a design need that you can work closely with to arrive at a solution. This is comparable to what students will do in a capstone project, just done independently.
The dominant way for industry to evaluate your design skills is for them to review a design portfolio. Portfolios are different in every design professional, but interaction design portfolios usually focus on your process, your individual contributions, and the problem domains you've worked in. The goal of a portfolio is show off your skills, so focus all of your content the skills you applied to the problems you worked on. Most interaction design portfolios are online these days. Find a good platform and figure out the content you want to share.
To get content for your portfolio, you need to plan ahead while you're doing design work to capture assets that will be useful visual proxies for the design work you did. Capture sketches, mockups, photographs of testing you did, and other media that you'll use to portray your skills and their outcomes.
What better use for capstone then custom-designing a project that furthers your desired design expertise? Think about capstone in advance, focusing your team and your project on something that serves your career goals.
Some research projects that need design skills, especially those that involve deploying information experiences to facilitate research. Find a faculty member or doctoral student doing design research and see if you can help!
In my opinion, the best way to think about careers in design is to think about the domain and technology you want to work in. Social media, health care, internet of things, finance, transportation, hospitality, etc. all of these are different areas of expertise that employers will look for when they are hiring UX professionals. Think about the first job you want and the types of design projects you can do between now and graduation that will help you gain expertise in a domain or with a particular technology or platform.
What groups of people should you engage with to learn about their culture, values, and professional practices?
Answer the following questions.
Convert the answers above to an education plan. What can you do today to start implementing that plan?
Show me or the TA your plan for credit.