Aligning Work With Passion: Laszlo’s Road to UX/UI Boot Camp and a Career in Tech

Laszlo Kovesdi was exposed to technology at an early age. His dad was a graphic designer, so he and his brother often played around with the Adobe Suite (in lieu of toys) and figured out the tools together. When he got to high school, Laszlo started taking his design education more seriously by enrolling in classes and enhancing his skills. When Laszlo’s father passed away, he gained a new sense of determination to make it in the field. 

Laszlo moved to Orange County, pursued an associate’s degree in computer science, and gained some managerial experience at a local hospital to pay the bills. While working full-time, he took classes on the side, studying and preparing to secure a job in the tech field. “I never lost my passion for design,” he said. “But it took a while for me to get a career going. Then one day, I landed on an Instagram advertisement for a design boot camp.” 

Laszlo took it as a sign to increase his marketability with a UX/UI boot camp powered by Trilogy Education Services, a 2U Inc. brand, so he enrolled almost immediately.

Acclimating to a new environment

The first thing that struck Laszlo about the boot camp wasn’t the intensity of the workload or the material — it was the wide range of backgrounds of his fellow learners. “My jaw dropped wide open as we went through introductions,” he said. “All of these people came from all walks of life, and were now starting over and changing their careers. It was really striking.” 

The environment ended up having a big effect on Laszlo’s experience. Many aspects of the boot camp were collaborative and involved working with his fellow learners. He spent most of his time on teams and in small groups, solving problems, working through challenges, and bouncing ideas off each other. 

Laszlo was also inspired by his instructor. He felt the curriculum was incredibly well-structured and well-taught. The many avenues of support Laszlo leveraged were ultimately integral to his success.

Discovering personal strengths

The boot camp taught Laszlo what makes a piece of technology “good” or “bad” from a user experience (UX) perspective. “I would look at a website and be able to immediately understand it,” he said. “I learned to identify what pieces worked for a website’s audience and their specific needs — and what pieces were causing hiccups. This helped me wrap my head around creating an effective user flow. It’s all about thinking about who the user is, and listening to their feedback when you put something out. The audience is the ultimate determinant of good UX/UI design — not us.”

As much as he was drawn to the research side of his studies, Laszlo also naturally excelled in UX/UI design. In his final group project, he redesigned a website from start to finish, bringing together everything he’d learned about each stage of the UX/UI process — from evaluation, user testing, interviewing, and data gathering to website development and design. 

“It was awesome,” he said. “I wish there was an advanced version of the same boot camp offered so I could continue learning in this environment.” 

Making dreams a reality

For the past two years, Laszlo has been working as a product design and data engineer at CISOSHARE — a cyber and network security company in San Clemente. They originally hired Laszlo as a UX/UI consultant to fix user issues with their in-house application — but quickly discovered his deep-rooted graphic design skills. His role on the team expanded from there.

“I’ve been able to do a lot for the application,” said Laszlo. ”For the better part of two years, I have been writing the code, leading the graphic design, and adjusting the functionalities. We’ve fully rebuilt the program, and it’s finally close to going live. I’m excited to see it come to life; knowing that I was one-hundred percent part of building it is really fulfilling.”