After realizing immigration law wasn’t right career for her, Rachel Millman returned to her hometown of Richmond, VA, to ponder her next move. She started several passion projects, one of which was a cooking website called Sear & Simmer. An avid home cook and self-described “adventurous eater,” Rachel had initially started an Instagram page to share photographs of her home-cooked meals and her best recipes, before morphing it into a complete brand along with a companion website. “Eventually, I realized I was doing UX design, and I started looking into how I could make it more than just a hobby,” she said. After completing Springboard’s UI/UX Design Career Track, Rachel landed a full-time product design role at Bonterra and is using her new design skills to reboot Sear & Simmer with a revamped design. Recently, Rachel also became a design mentor with ADPList, a global community of mentors and learners.
Before Springboard, my career path was pretty undefined and confusing, to say the least. After college, I worked in immigration law in D.C. for a while. I was helping people and solving problems, but I didn’t get to be creative in my work. When the pandemic hit, I realized law might not be the right path for me. So I moved back to my hometown and I built a cooking website as one of my passion projects.
I love sharing the gift of food with my friends and family. I created my website to show that anyone can cook, and to encourage and uplift people.
My day-to-day role hasn't been totally defined because I'm still getting situated in the role and getting to know the product. Bonterra is a technology company that provides technology solutions to nonprofit organizations. I will be working on improving their online fundraising tool. I really enjoy the beginning stages of the visual design process–doing research, running initial tests, interviewing users and translating that into a low-fidelity prototype.
My day-to-day role hasn't been totally defined because I'm still getting situated in the role and getting to know the product. Bonterra is a technology company that provides technology solutions to nonprofit organizations. I will be working on improving their online fundraising tool. I really enjoy the beginning stages of the visual design process–doing research, running initial tests, interviewing users and translating that into a low-fidelity prototype.
I worked with a company called Gardenstead based in Toronto, Canada. They provide an all-inclusive gardening platform for gardeners of every level. I was on a team with three other designers. The company already had a substantial Facebook following. Our goal was to create a product or service that would encourage existing followers to visit the website and convert to paying customers. The company had a vision to offer video content and online courses about gardening. But when we started talking to users and examining the data, we realized this wasn’t the best approach. We worked as a team to propose a different kind of platform based on the research we’d done.
It was intimidating at first, but as soon as I got started, I had a whole support network including my mentor, career coaches, and student advisors. I had a clear curriculum that I could move through at my own pace.
She was seriously the best mentor I could have asked for. She was down-to-earth and always had actionable advice and feedback. She was always very present in our calls. As a product designer herself, she had a lot of experience and knowledge in the field.
Yeah, definitely. We stay in touch over email and on LinkedIn.
My first capstone project was an iOS mobile app called Boiled Down. The idea was to create a gamified app like Duolingo to help people learn how to cook. I gave it the tagline: “the home cook’s handbook.” A lot of people feel like they can’t cook or don’t like cooking, which is a missed opportunity. This was truly an end-to-end project where I started by defining the problem, doing user research, visual design and prototyping, and getting ready to release a minimum viable product (MVP).
Yes! I chose to present this project in a slide deck during the interview for my current position at Bonterra. I’m really proud of this project and cooking is something I’m very passionate about, which definitely showed during the interview.
The first thing that comes to mind is the peer network I built throughout this process with the other students in my course. Beyond that, I learned how to network with design professionals. I still keep in touch with my mentor and some of the career coaches I worked with at Springboard, and the team I worked with during my Industry Design Project.
I don't want to sound super cheesy, but you have to believe that you can do it. You will have a support system and resources available to you, but it’s a leap of faith. You just have to start. I know it’s so much easier said than done, but it's possible.
