Designlab

The DesignLab UX Foundations course is a 101-type program that sets you up very nicely for the longer and more intense DesignLab Academy. The Foundations course walks you through mostly UI basics (i.e. design principles) in a way that is easy to understand... Read More by mixing in learning modules and projects. You are matched with a mentor who, in my case, was extremely knowledgeable on the subject with a lot of industry experience. Overall, I would say that I learned quite a bit and feel confident moving forward into the DesignLab Academy program.

I come from a non-design background and designlab’s ux foundations course has helped in getting my feet wet and objectively assessing my design skills whether this path is for me. I’ve gained a lot of confidence through learning new softwares like Figma... Read More and through mentor sessions.

The UX Foundations Academy with DesignLab has been really fun and challenging to work through. As someone with little to no experience with UX/ UI design I learned a lot about what goes into creating a beautiful and easy to use website/ app. Some units... Read More were more challenging than others (auto layout too me way longer than the allotted time to figure out. However, everyone on the team is incredibly helpful.

I definitely had to have personal discipline to ensure that I put in the time to read and practice the lessons but it is very doable. The lessons are fairly clear and the discord community is there to help if you need answers in a pinch. The projects... Read More are well designed and I referred to some of them for my final 10-hour design challenge. My mentor is super insightful and asked me a lot of great questions, shared helpful resources, and took the time to talk about and explain many different concepts and ideas.

Designlab is incredibly well ran and the curriculum was easy to follow and perfect for first time designers. I loved the atmosphere and the mentorship program. Having someone who is encouraging and helpful made schooling exciting and I was excited to... Read More do the course work where I didn’t have that in traditional school. The projects were well timed and thought out for where each student was in their path.

Looking back on the curriculum / lessons / briefs / and mentor experiences, I can definitely say that I have grown as a designer. I feel more confident in Figma, and much more confident in my overall ability to understand what needs to be done, how long... Read More it might take me, and the steps to which I need to take to finish the task at hand. It was a bit of a shaky start though. I believe improvements in the orientation of the Foundations course needs improving. Although I read through all of the information, I stepped into the first few Units of work with an unclear idea as to how the overarching curriculum functions. Thankfully, my second mentor was able to answer all of those questions for me in a clear concise way and since then, I was able to see the bigger picture of the program.

Fantastic introduction course for Ux designers! Productive weekly meetings with a mentor and several, albeit tenuous, but effective assignments. Beyond the projects the lessons are structured nicely and very helpful with getting a newbie started with... Read More a design program.

I highly recommend Designlab's UX Academy to anyone looking to enter the world of UX design. The curriculum is thorough and the community and mentors are incredibly supportive. Choosing to study and learn with them was the best decision I made, and I... Read More would definitely do it again in a heartbeat! Throughout the program, it was great to have a network of people who shared my interest and journey into UX as an outsider. I was fortunate to have an excellent mentor who was invaluable in helping me improve my skills. With UX Academy as my starting point, I was able to land my dream job at an agency I love! The tools and knowledge I gained were instrumental in helping me succeed in the interview process, and I now feel confident in my ability to excel in my new role. If you're like me and need structure and accountability to make a career shift, UX Academy is the way to go. The support teams are also wonderful, and I can't thank them enough for helping me get through the program. Overall, I highly recommend Designlab's UX Academy to anyone looking to pursue a career in UX design!

The UX Academy Foundations is a great way to introduce yourself to the world of UX design. You get to learn the basics of design and apply that to different assigned projects. It’s not too difficult but the course helps you understand what it means to... Read More go into UX design and whether you want to pursue it and apply for their Academy.

Pros - This is a UX Design Course - and in that context, Designlab has designed their curriculum, site, and online school to be as fluid and user-friendly as possible. The language is direct, friendly, and at times also fun (the use of emoji's in lesson... Read More text was cute and amusing). The course is self-paced, and there are many links within the coursework that I saved for future reference and perspective on the subjects being taught (history of design, sketching and wire-framing, iconography, color, UX software, etc). The lessons are also flexible, they don't require you to finish every project proposed, but more focus on time and structured productivity (except for the final project, where it's required to submit a finished design). I was able to easily monitor my progress through different visuals on the course site (both through unit thermometer and percentage visuals), and whenever I had a question, both my mentor and academic advisors were quick to respond with help and links. I had also never used Discord until becoming a DL student, and that was really helpful in a. learning how to use and b. connecting with students so you have a sense of community and support through solo learning. I never felt like I was alone even in the moments where understanding a mechanic or lesson was tough, I always had enough resources to figure it out. I also really appreciated that they give you the choice of UX Software to use, because I couldn't use Sketch (I'm too poor for a Mac update and my Mac is too old to support the software) so having the ability to learn on Figma was a huge relief. I am surprised this is just foundations, as a freelance artist I had really learned so so much just from this course that helped me in my own work as I was taking it. My visual design vocabulary and speed with software (ie, pen tool) has exponentially been increased from all the coursework. Cons- Since this is self-taught and self paced, as someone with ADHD I found the duty of reading lessons initially challenging. The lessons are not audio (though you can use plug-ins in accessibility for read-aloud on your computer, a new thing I learned). I wanted to retain all the information, and screenshots wasn't really helping me absorb it or pay attention. I really had to find what worked for me - and what I found was taking hand-written notes as I read the lessons line-by line. They do have a lot of software tutorials in small videos, which is good. My only issue with these, though you can slow them down and pause them, the editing is still not direct/slow enough, and without a large desktop screen, all the tools were super tiny in the videos. I found myself getting really filled with anxiety when I felt the teacher was moving too fast. I would wind up expanding a lot of the Figma lessons into Youtube Tutorials, which would then take more time to learn than the lessons were supposed to be. Sometimes when we were given copy-work projects with more involved, visually challenging and varied homepages (ie, real estate, travel) it was way too many resources at once to load into Figma. I think DL needs to realize students are not as quick and experienced setting up their resources panel, and this was pretty willy-nilly and time consuming. Sometimes, when a project was supposed to be 2h, I would have taken 40 minutes just gathering things and putting them into my Figma File and getting the frames set up. Besides those personal learning curve adjustments, I feel that having UXF was a very comprehensive, important course as prep for UXA. It really helped me get used to learning online, using the software, re-learning my graphic design process, and functioning as a solo worker with time management. It's jam packed with great info, advice, and resources as an intro to UX.