Publishing your story with Bootcamp

Bootcamp is a publication by the UX Collective that is focused on supporting designers who are growing in their careers: tutorials, job hunting tips, career advice, portfolio tips, short opinion pieces, news, trends in the industry, case studies, and more. All for designers starting their careers or honing their skills in a particular interest.

Bootcamp also offers a more streamlined process to start publishing and reaching a wider audience. The publication receives close to 3 million views per month, and we also share the best stories on our social media channels for additional visibility.

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The feedback from authors and readers has been incredibly positive and today we have designers sharing their content consistently for Bootcamp, and many authors writing for both Bootcamp and UX Collective publications at the same time.

What we look for: Quality

With the rise of AI writing and design tools, we’ve seen a sharp increase in low-quality submissions. To keep Bootcamp a publication worth reading, we’re raising the bar — please make sure your story clears it before submitting.

• Write it yourself, in your own voice. We can tell when a story was generated end-to-end by AI — generic phrasing, no personal experience, no real point of view. AI can help you draft, edit, or research, but the final piece needs to reflect your own thinking and voice. Stories that read as fully AI-written will be declined.
• If you use AI-generated images, make them count. We’re fine with AI-generated visuals — but they need to be tasteful, relevant to the content, and add real value to the story. Generic, off-topic, or low-effort AI images (“AI slop”) will get your story rejected, even if the writing is solid.
• Write an article, not a LinkedIn post. Short, punchy, line-by-line “impact statements” work on LinkedIn — they don’t work here. We’re looking for real depth: context, reasoning, examples, and a point of view that’s been thought through, not just stated.
• Stay on topic. Bootcamp is about digital product design — UX, UI, product thinking, career growth in design. If your story isn’t clearly about that, it’s not a fit for us, no matter how well written it is.
• Don’t use us to promote a product or build SEO for a company. It’s usually obvious when a story exists to sell something or drive traffic to a business rather than to share a genuine idea. We’ll decline these every time.
• Add value to the design community, not just to your profile. We love when authors build their personal brand through writing — that’s part of the point. But the story itself needs to teach, inform, or add perspective for readers. If it reads as self-promotion with no real substance for others, it won’t be published.
• Find opportunities to add more references (links, quotes, mentions) to your article. Search extensively on our platform and on the web about the topic you are writing about and add links to all sources researched, used, or mentioned.
• Remove any promotional link, content, banner, as it goes against Medium guidelines. You can use your bio to include a link to your personal website if you wish.
• Don’t ask for claps, comments. Great content sells itself. If people like what they read, they will naturally clap, comment, and share your story with their peers.

Once you’ve cleared the Quality criteria, here are some more practical requirements:

1. Title

• The title has to be sentence case — which means that only the first word of the title is capitalized (Your title, not Your Title);
• Make sure to update the display title with your revised title as well. Click on the ellipsis menu to access this option. More info here;
• Add a subtitle with the main idea of your article.

2. Accessibility

• Add Alt Text to every image in your article, so it’s accessible for all readers (select the image, click on Alt text, describe the image);
• Don’t overuse text on images. If you have a chart or other visualization with some text, make sure the information on the chart is also included in the body of the article.

4. Structure

• Proofread before submitting it. Run your article by services such as Grammarly or Google Docs to fix spelling and grammar errors;
• Don’t overuse emojis, GIFs, memes, punctuations. Remember we’re talking to a global audience, so not everyone knows about American TV series, nor will understand unconventional punctuation;
• Use Medium’s formatting tools for the title, subtitle, and headings. Don’t use bold, italic, or all-caps for headings;
• Don’t break your content in several articles (Part 1, Part 2, etc.). Each article should work as a standalone piece.
• Add at least one image. Your article must have at least one good quality image that will be used as the cover image.

5. Submit the story to Bootcamp

• If you are not yet an author, please email a link to your article to bootcamp@uxdesign.cc
• After you have completed the steps above and were added as an author, go to the ellipsis menu again and select “Add to Publication > Bootcamp”. Confirm that the story has been submitted.

After that, we will:

• Review your article again for the 4 items above — we won’t publish it until they are addressed;
• Fix typos and minor formatting and styling issues (including updating the main image) and leave private comments for any additional edit needed;
• After everything is good to go, we publish it within the next few days; Medium will notify you when it’s live.

Once it’s live:

• Feel free to share your article with your network, and to share it in our Linkedin Group and Twitter Community as well.

Writing is a privilege. When we write, we get a lot from it — knowledge, visibility, voice. Our readers should get twice as much. Let’s challenge ourselves to do more for our design community whenever we can.

Ready? Have any questions? Email us at bootcamp@uxdesign.cc

We are looking forward to publishing your article.

Thanks!