Build and Launch Products with Low Code/No Code
This month’s guest Mr. Christian San Jose, discusses his successful journey of using low code/no code tools to create great products and services from great ideas. He is a UX Expert and Entrepreneur. He is the CEO and co-founder of the UX+ Conference and UX+ University. He talks about his innovative 16-week UX Designing program which can help learners of all skills and backgrounds to get started on their own UX journey.
Christian is on a mission to help UX learners succeed on their UX journey. As a self-taught UX designer, he knows exactly how challenging this journey can be. During the meetup, he talks about his own background as a designer. He has extensive experience working as head of design at First Circle; Co-founder and Managing Director at a UX company Make, by Saatchi and Saatchi; head of innovation and Technology at Ace Saatchi and Saatchi; and head of the digital at MullenLowe Group among others. He has also worked extensively on website branding and logos for different clients including people like Usher and the late Kobe Bryant.
Despite such success as a designer, he found himself drawn to the world of no code. He discusses what inspired him to use no code. For him, the central idea was building a startup without hiring an engineer. His latest project, the UX+ University helps learners start their UX learning journey without having to pay a front for their tuition fee. What is most exciting about this is that learners can opt for an income share agreement and pay for the tuition only after they get hired. The university has partnered with several startups and companies including Paymaya, Globe, Gcash, Eduction.ph, and Sendit. The educational platform distinguishes itself with its main goal of helping learners get hired.
His Inspiration
Talking about the inspiration for this idea, Christian elaborated on how his own background in UX motivated him. Earlier, he had already been conducting workshops on UX learning. This motivated him to spread his teachings to others who shared his fondness for UX through a prerecorded platform that would offer learners a feasible and affordable option. But as he applied to Y Combinator, he realized that the idea of prerecorded courses would not appeal to investors. Y Combinator looks at scalable startups and filing out his application prompted him to think about the bigger vision of something that would actually get investment.
Meanwhile, he learned about lambda school, several engineering boot camps, and cohort-based courses. This process really pushed him to think about the big problem, which he wrote about on Linkedin. His post caught on fire with over seventeen thousand views. The post was about the problems with UX education in Southeast Asia.
Especially in the Philippines, he observed a clear misalignment between the opportunities for UX learning and the salary that designers get. For Christian, this presented an extremely engaging problem.
While researching the existing online sources, such as SkillShare and Udemy for learning UX, he found that these only showed a 67 percent completion rate. Christian then set out to investigate the workings of the UX community. He also thought about his personal experiences with UX teaching. Prior to this development, Christian had been giving five-hour courses to groups of twenty to thirty people. With such crash courses, it wasn’t possible to engage in meaningful or outcome-based education. Christian thought about what kind of outcome he wanted from his UX courses. It wasn’t just a design on the screen: it was enacting meaningful changes in peoples’ lives. It was to solve problems for people who came to learn. He also observed that several people who participated in the UX + Conference were not UX experts or practitioners. A number of these people were looking to either get introduced to the UX community, or transition to UX as a new career path.
To take UX learning beyond mere learning.
He wanted to make it about community, mentorship, and accessible education. He wanted to make it about hands-on learning which provided constant feedback and improvement. For him, it was about career opportunities, about marketing learners’ skills to help them become successful practitioners. Christian had already dipped into no code. He was interested in the interaction between different apps which prompted him to think about how to eliminate the role of an engineer.
He then decided to blend together all of these ideas and create a scalable business by connecting applications together. He first applied for a no code fellowship at On Deck and got a scholarship. He then began engaging more and more with the no code community and learned how to run cohort-based courses. This eventually developed into his final idea. It aimed to help learners through multiple loops of learning and learning, and learning and failure.
In the session, Christian explains in detail how the university’s setup works and how it makes learning not only easy but also fun. It helps integrate students into the UX community instead of leaving them to learn passively.
The Registration and Participation Process
The UX+ university is powered by Zappier. The CRM used is Air Table. This helps with connecting processes seamlessly and facilitates the university’s work. The registration process starts with filling out a form powered by Typeform. The form asks a series of simple questions about the learners and their future plans/ expectations from the course. All of this information ends up in Slack and the application information database. After this, Videoask is used to allow learners to introduce themselves through a video message. After a learner has registered, they can set up and log in through Memberstack. Webflow is key to all these processes which helps learners participate in the course and interact with the community. Discussions are assisted by Circle.so, a community platform. Here learners can re-watch classes and teaching materials. Convertkit also helps teachers and mentors connect with learners. Apart from this, the university also offers guest lectures and other perks such as discounts and goodies, etc.
Christian’s demonstration also showed how no code works. While it requires the concept of code, it doesn’t require the actual process of coding. In the near future, the University plans to launch a job board that will help connect partners, hiring parties, and those looking for UX jobs. The company itself is registered as a US company on Stripe Atlas to ensure funding and smooth operations.
The Q&A session of the event is not included in this article. You can start listening to it through this link or jumping to the timestamp 1:01:35.
Do you want to get involved in the Philippines’ Product Management community? Check out Product PH at Meetup or on Facebook to learn more.
