In end March, I happened to visit the page of Derek Sivers, and read about Launch School, which touts itself as an online school for software engineers.

So far, so normal: sounds like any normal coding bootcamp.

What caught my eye was their sales slogan, which is quite unusual: “The Slow Path for Studious Learners to a Career in Software Development”

Huh. Who focuses on the SLOW PATH??

That was so unusual that I read on further:
“Our program is about slowly building up mastery of fundamentals, so you understand how higher level abstractions truly work from the bottom up. Our goal isn’t to teach you how to use React or Rails, but to show you how to construct accurate mental representations of first principles in order to tackle fundamental engineering problems. Our goal isn’t to help you find a job, but help you launch a career. Our goal isn’t to teach you to code, but to teach you how to deconstruct and problem solve like an engineer.”

And then I found out about their focus on Mastery Based Learning, which seems like a very unusual concept.

Basically, you remove time from the learning equation. If you don’t master concept A (which is required for concept AB), then you don’t proceed further. Like this:

The other focus is on the mastery of fundamentals, rather than on the latest frameworks, etc.

The concept of Mastery Based Learning makes a lot of sense to me for software development. But I wonder if the same extends to something like interaction design. Not UI UX, but interaction design in the HCI sense.

Which in turn, makes me wonder what would a Launch School for interaction design & service design look like.