Hamsa also got the chance to chat about her decision with a fellow Juno alumnus, Emilia Dallman, who was introduced to Hamsa through a mutual friend. Emilia shared her Bootcamp experience and cheered Hamsa on!
"Apart from these amazing connections, I chose Juno because they stood out from everyone else," says Hamsa. "I found their website to be the most exhaustive in terms of information, syllabus, fee, and culture. The founder, Heather Payne, was also behind the non-profit Ladies Learning Code (now Canada Learning Code)."
Hamsa applied to Juno's Bootcamp and was accepted into Juno’s Cohort 8. She got her travel visa approved in the knick of time and arrived in Canada one day before it all began!
Each student in my class kicked butt! Everyone had paused their lives for 9 weeks to do this bootcamp, and it showed in everyone's progress week after week!
To her surprise, Hamsa didn't only learn how to code: "I learned a lot more than just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Lessons that were invaluable to me were those revolving around best practices in UX, keeping a check on accessibility, bettering my workflow, collaboration over Github, gulp task automation and command line tools - I didn't even know I needed some of these skills!"
Coming from a print background, Hamsa also learned how important it was to be conscious of the various possibilities and limitations of different browsers, screen sizes, and devices that she was designing for.
Life After Bootcamp
Shortly after Bootcamp, Hamsa moved back to India and began taking on projects where she could apply her design background, as well as her new web development knowledge.
“I observed a gap in Indian web companies. Most of the agencies creating websites in India were advertising agencies,” she says. “These agencies would often take a ‘function follows form’ approach to the web. I strongly felt that the practice needed more design folks like me, bringing information architecture, design principles, and intentionality to the web.”
Today, Hamsa still runs her own practice as the founder of Thoughtput, a boutique web design shop.
“My tasks still run the gamut from operations to accounts," says Hamsa. "However, there's much more focus on strategic partnerships with clients to understand their goals. I'm also trying to make time regularly for more skill development and learning, which is something you need to do in this domain to stay relevant."
Hamsa tends to learn on the job, and loves bringing in different kinds of collaborators onto projects who can share their expertise and teach her new things:
“I regularly collaborate with fellow designers, developers, project mentors, workshop facilitators, and data scientists. Despite the challenging time zones, Jessica Duarte (my Bootcamp buddy at Juno!) and I have ended up collaborating on over 5 projects in the last 5 years! We have built a great working relationship and we try to plug into each other’s work as much as we can.”
Recent launches include a website for a legal policy think-tank in India called Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Hamsa has also built features for an open-source platform called StoryWeaver, a digital repository of multilingual stories for children.
