Skill Sprint Series
Skillful November 🍁
A focused 5-week mentorship program where you master one essential UX skill each week. Build your expertise systematically with expert guidance and hands-on practice.
Duration
5 weeks focused
Commitment
6-8 hours per week
Skills Covered
5 core UX skills
Vol.2
Skillful November 2025🍁
Here’s what we went through 👇
🔍 Week 1: Discovery
• We started with understanding.
• Stakeholder conversations, defining goals and constraints, planning research, synthesizing insights, and then shaping a clear problem statement.
• The goal was better questions, not quick solutions.
🎯 Week 2: Problem-solving
• We turned insights into strong “How might we” questions, explored concepts, and prioritized ideas based on impact and feasibility.
• Big thinking first, then intentional focus.
🧭 Week 3: IA, user flows, wireframes
• User stories into flows.
• Structure into wireframes.
• Making the experience make sense before making it look good.
🎨 Week 4: UI design
• Hierarchy, layout, components, and a cohesive direction.
• Not decoration. Clear, usable design choices.
🎤 Final week: Presentation and storytelling
• Putting it all together and presenting with confidence.
• Explaining decisions, tradeoffs, and the journey from problem to solution.
💭 What stood out most was the growth.
• Better questions.
• Stronger feedback.
• Iterations.
• Clearer thinking.
• More confidence when presenting.
👉 Great designers are built through practice, reflection, and community.
Huge credit to this cohort for showing up and learning out loud:
James Veale, Claudia De León, Mohamed Gamal, Mohamed Osama, Aya Omar, and Ivana Jug. 👏 👏 👏
Feel free to check the presentation deck. 😍
🔍 Week 1: Discovery
• We started with understanding.
• Stakeholder conversations, defining goals and constraints, planning research, synthesizing insights, and then shaping a clear problem statement.
• The goal was better questions, not quick solutions.
🎯 Week 2: Problem-solving
• We turned insights into strong “How might we” questions, explored concepts, and prioritized ideas based on impact and feasibility.
• Big thinking first, then intentional focus.
🧭 Week 3: IA, user flows, wireframes
• User stories into flows.
• Structure into wireframes.
• Making the experience make sense before making it look good.
🎨 Week 4: UI design
• Hierarchy, layout, components, and a cohesive direction.
• Not decoration. Clear, usable design choices.
🎤 Final week: Presentation and storytelling
• Putting it all together and presenting with confidence.
• Explaining decisions, tradeoffs, and the journey from problem to solution.
💭 What stood out most was the growth.
• Better questions.
• Stronger feedback.
• Iterations.
• Clearer thinking.
• More confidence when presenting.
👉 Great designers are built through practice, reflection, and community.
Huge credit to this cohort for showing up and learning out loud:
James Veale, Claudia De León, Mohamed Gamal, Mohamed Osama, Aya Omar, and Ivana Jug. 👏 👏 👏
Feel free to check the presentation deck. 😍
Sofija Rajković
Community Manager @ Uxcel
Last Friday was one of those days that reminded me why I care so much about community-led learning.
I joined the final presentation of a 6-week sprint mentorship program led by Sayed Abdelaal as part of an ongoing mentorship series.
A group of Uxcel learners teamed up to build a fitness booking app for Cairo.
And the scope wasn’t small:
– Design-only MVP
– Interactive prototype
– User research, strategy, design, and validation
What impressed me most wasn’t just the final output, but how they worked together.
Despite meeting for the first time through this sprint, they operated like a real product team with a level of professionalism, attention to detail, and care that felt like they’d been working together for months.
Sayed regularly runs these hands-on sprints as part of the Uxcel mentorship program. If you’re curious, I’d definitely recommend keeping an eye on upcoming ones in the Uxcel Discord (https://discord.gg/uxcel)
Huge thanks to Sayed Abdelaal, and to James Veale, Claudia De León, Ivana Jug, Mohamed Osama, Mohamed Gamal, and Aya Omar for inviting me in. It was a pleasure watching this team bring a real product to life!
I joined the final presentation of a 6-week sprint mentorship program led by Sayed Abdelaal as part of an ongoing mentorship series.
A group of Uxcel learners teamed up to build a fitness booking app for Cairo.
And the scope wasn’t small:
– Design-only MVP
– Interactive prototype
– User research, strategy, design, and validation
What impressed me most wasn’t just the final output, but how they worked together.
Despite meeting for the first time through this sprint, they operated like a real product team with a level of professionalism, attention to detail, and care that felt like they’d been working together for months.
Sayed regularly runs these hands-on sprints as part of the Uxcel mentorship program. If you’re curious, I’d definitely recommend keeping an eye on upcoming ones in the Uxcel Discord (https://discord.gg/uxcel)
Huge thanks to Sayed Abdelaal, and to James Veale, Claudia De León, Ivana Jug, Mohamed Osama, Mohamed Gamal, and Aya Omar for inviting me in. It was a pleasure watching this team bring a real product to life!
James Veale
Product Designer
Secretly, I’ve been upping my UX/UI game, in search of a new role as product designer.
UX work has a lot in common with training: progress comes less from big moments and more from consistent practice, feedback, and gradually increasing difficulty.
That mindset shaped my recent work on Hiitness, a collaborative design sprint prototype for a fitness booking app in Cairo. The problem space was clear: studios dealing with cancellations, and users struggling to discover and reliably book classes — often through fragmented WhatsApp-based coordination.
I worked on the core activation flow of the prototype — the booking experience. My contribution covered the full path from user statements → user stories → user flows → wireframes → first UI iterations, with an emphasis on identifying friction early and simplifying decision-making.
In parallel, I strengthened my UX/UI foundations: Figma (auto layout, components, responsive design), collaborative design workflows, and letting research insights — rather than assumptions — drive the experience. I also contributed to defining the UI direction through shared moodboards and discussions around colour and overall look & feel.
More than anything, this project reinforced my confidence working within a design team and contributing meaningfully across a full design sprint — from problem framing through to execution — while staying open to iteration and learning.
Huge thanks to my mentor Sayed Abdelaal and to the team Claudia De León, Mohamed Gamal, Mohamed Osama, Aya Omar and Ivana Jug for the strong collaboration throughout.
UX work has a lot in common with training: progress comes less from big moments and more from consistent practice, feedback, and gradually increasing difficulty.
That mindset shaped my recent work on Hiitness, a collaborative design sprint prototype for a fitness booking app in Cairo. The problem space was clear: studios dealing with cancellations, and users struggling to discover and reliably book classes — often through fragmented WhatsApp-based coordination.
I worked on the core activation flow of the prototype — the booking experience. My contribution covered the full path from user statements → user stories → user flows → wireframes → first UI iterations, with an emphasis on identifying friction early and simplifying decision-making.
In parallel, I strengthened my UX/UI foundations: Figma (auto layout, components, responsive design), collaborative design workflows, and letting research insights — rather than assumptions — drive the experience. I also contributed to defining the UI direction through shared moodboards and discussions around colour and overall look & feel.
More than anything, this project reinforced my confidence working within a design team and contributing meaningfully across a full design sprint — from problem framing through to execution — while staying open to iteration and learning.
Huge thanks to my mentor Sayed Abdelaal and to the team Claudia De León, Mohamed Gamal, Mohamed Osama, Aya Omar and Ivana Jug for the strong collaboration throughout.