I think I fall more on the side of it being a progressive thing if you have the right approach and mindset about it.
For me personally, I push myself to really address principles of UX and UI when I do my DailyUI challenges.
For example, the work I did on day one this week:
A sign-up form sounds simple (and a lot of people treat it that way; e.g. 4 lines with placeholder text) but I made an effort to consider how it would animate, how the user connects colors, what options the user needs, how small the information sets should be broken down.
I'm not going to write this all out now, but—come an interview—I can support why I did what I did and, even if it's completely wrong in practice, it shows that I'm thinking in the right mindset to make the experience best for the user.
Also—as some others have mentioned, it exercised other skills as well, such as time management (I'm a student, adding one element today has been quite a juggle) and type setting.
And, yeah... I won't deny that I'm doing it to get myself out there more. Whether you like it or not, having an online presence is important to landing any job and giving myself something to put out there consistently will help with that dramatically. Even if I don't have a Dribbble, I've seen tons engagement on Twitter alone; even made some network connections and critiquing peers, which is one of my most favorite things about this whole thing!
Anyway, I'll stop ranting now. I can see how it doesn't help, but I don't think that's a rule, only the outcome if you treat these challenges apathetically and just do the bare minimum.
I think I fall more on the side of it being a progressive thing if you have the right approach and mindset about it.
For me personally, I push myself to really address principles of UX and UI when I do my DailyUI challenges.
For example, the work I did on day one this week:
A sign-up form sounds simple (and a lot of people treat it that way; e.g. 4 lines with placeholder text) but I made an effort to consider how it would animate, how the user connects colors, what options the user needs, how small the information sets should be broken down.
I'm not going to write this all out now, but—come an interview—I can support why I did what I did and, even if it's completely wrong in practice, it shows that I'm thinking in the right mindset to make the experience best for the user.
Also—as some others have mentioned, it exercised other skills as well, such as time management (I'm a student, adding one element today has been quite a juggle) and type setting.
And, yeah... I won't deny that I'm doing it to get myself out there more. Whether you like it or not, having an online presence is important to landing any job and giving myself something to put out there consistently will help with that dramatically. Even if I don't have a Dribbble, I've seen tons engagement on Twitter alone; even made some network connections and critiquing peers, which is one of my most favorite things about this whole thing!
Anyway, I'll stop ranting now. I can see how it doesn't help, but I don't think that's a rule, only the outcome if you treat these challenges apathetically and just do the bare minimum.