Designlab Reviews
Page 9
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Amy
Good start
Design lab foundations was a good start to get your toes wet to see if you actually like this field or not. I got a lot of hands on experience ok working via figma and creating landing pages and mobile apps. It was a really fun and educating course. Would recommend for anyone looking to switch careers. -
Vanessa
UX Academy
I am so glad that I decided to study with Designlab. The course was structured well with great resources which prepared me well for the real world. I really appreciated my 1-on-1 mentor sessions where I got really valuable feedback. The course set me up for creating a solid portfolio and preparing for a job. -
Garrett Grahmann
Student
Great learning experience that improved my design skills -
DaMario
UX Academy Foundations
I can not think of any cons besides the fact the courses are not in person but that is only because I am a more in-person type of student but the experience and structure was great and being asynchronous and self paced is great for those with full time jobs.
Pros, the course is thorough and gives anyone interested in learning about UI the opportunity to get an intro into the field -
Jay Rangel
UX Academy Foundations
UX Academy foundations course gave me an incredible experience in learning the basics of ux design. Each week covers different important aspects of ux design and allows the student to build up their skillset throughout the course. I worked with an incredible mentor as well who provided me honest feedback which made me more confident in my work. -
Diana DAlessandro
UX Academy Foundations
I enjoyed taking the UX Academy Foundations course. They give you a great introduction into UI visual design and teach it in a way that's easy to understand. I appreciated the mentor program option which truly helped me succeed. I would highly recommend taking this course if you have no background in visual design and are hoping to pivot into UX Design. -
Bryna Kosofsky
UX Academy Part Time
I completed Designlab Academy a couple of months ago and I will be starting a full time UX position next month! I really enjoyed my time learning through Designlab and give a huge credit to the mentor sessions that were offered. -
Kristina O
Great Learning Experience!
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Before beginning Foundations, I had no prior experience with UX and UI design. This course covered the basics and has helped me get a better understanding about the work and career opportunities. The courses is packed full of learnings and there are many hands-on experiences through copy-work, as well as creating original work. The highlights for me were working with my mentor and seeking career advice along the way. I highly recommend this course as an entry point into UI design. -
Elisa
Amazinggg!
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I'm really glad I chose to opt in to the Foundations Course even though I already had a design background. I learned a lot of new info related to product design. It was a great way to refresh my understanding and add to my skillsets. I specially loved the mentorship aspect, as every week I could get feedback both on assignments or anything related to design in general. My mentor, Leah, was great and super responsive! The readings were brief but extremely valuable in information. The courses were well divided and structured so that you knew what to expect in order to plan out your week. I would definitely recommend! -
Taylor
UX Academy Foundations Review
Pros: Mentor support, straightforward assignments, good practice opportunities
Cons: No option to do ~5 hours a week instead of 10-20. Many individuals who are looking to change careers are doing so because their current schedule, workload, and commitments are not very flexible, so the option to do 5-10 hours a week over a longer time period would be helpful! -
Natch Anan
UX Foundations
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I really enjoyed taking UX Foundations and thought the curriculum was well-structured. Being able to have 1-on-1 sessions with my mentor was extremely helpful. At first I was paired with a mentor who was unavailable but Designlab was quick to pair me with a new mentor the first week. My mentor was professional, knowledgeable, funny, and supported me all the way. This course helped me feel more confident applying to UX Academy and I recommend students to take it if they want a comprehensive intro to UI/UX. The resources included in each unit (8 units total) were invaluable (bookmarked!) and I know I will come back to them often during UXA. The curriculum had a good balance between reading materials and design application. I'm confident using Figma and know so much more about UI after only a month. Another nice thing about the course pacing is that you can go at your own speed. -
Andre
Worth It
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I just completed the UX Foundations course and I am excited to continue with DesignLab for the UX Academy. The Foundations course is more centered around UI. You learn about color and font selection, typography, hierarchy, and a few other design concepts. There is a new balance between reading material and working on projects. I feel much more confident now. There is also a lot of time spent on Figma or Sketch, depending on which design tool you want to use. -
Kelly Yuen
Foundations review
Designlab's foundations course was very helpful for me to get an idea of what UX UI was going to be. It was a great introductory course that taught a lot about UI design and as a UX Academy student right now, it helped me with learning a lot of the basics of design. -
Rachel
best UX bootcamp!
Having no prior experience in UX design and with an abundance of bootcamps out there, I decided to go with DesignLab and can safely say that it was the best decision made! The curriculum was well organised and made studying enjoyable. I have learnt alot during foundations and looking forward to take on UX academy! -
F Wong
UXA Foundation Review
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Overall I really enjoyed doing this foundation course, I did this in order to qualify for UX Academy. I am very happy with my completed coursework and will start to build up my portfolio using these.
I did not find this course hard, but it is very time consuming.
Pros
- Really flexible, the only 'set' thing are your mentor meetings, but you schedule this based on yours and your mentor's availability.
- I enjoyed the course content
- Extremely happy with my mentor, he is super helpful and supportive
- Relatively low cost
Cons
- The website is a little hard to use on mobile. There isn't an app, so I use it on the browser, it's hard to see everything clearly
- It can be hard to find what you need from the discord servers since there are so many channels and new messages popping up all the time
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Amanda Freitas
Ux Foundations
I really enjoyed this course and learned so much. I started the course without any design experience and can now produce simple desktop and mobile pages. I feel confident going into the full UX Academy course. -
Erick
UX Academy Foundations Review
Good 4 week intro to UI Design course.
Most useful part is the 1on1 meetings with a Senior Design Professional who is available to help critique your coursework and answer any questions you may have. -
Matt Garrido
UX Academy Foundations
Great course to learn the basics of visual and UI design. The only issue that I had was coordinating with my mentor in Australia but he was fairly responsive to email. -
Jenny Ngo
Graduate
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Pros:
-Everything is well structured. The Foundations course is broken up into 8 units, with 1-7 being learning based. In those units everything is broken down by time and it's really nice that they encouraged you to upload work even though it's not finished.
-You get a mentor and there's a dedicated discord community you have to join when you start Design Lab. It's full of love and support.
-On top of reading for knowledge, you get to do tutorials, and most of the unit is project based
Cons:
-Very few (probably just one) of the video tutorials is not up to date (I'm looking at you auto layout tutorial) which made it really difficult to learn.
- I feel like I spent way more time to finish a few of the final projects in each unit. I definitely spent long hours/ days on some of the copy work projects but this is where "it's okay not to finish comes in"
*I am not going to put a rating for "Job Support/ Assistance" because it's not applicable for the foundations course. Foundations give you a snapshot for design work. You definitely need to take the Academy Bootcamp to get access to their Job Support services. Would highly recommend! -
Jordan Tempro
DesignLab's Foundation Course is PERFECT
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When I discovered the world of UX Design I remember I was flooded with feelings of intrigue, curiosity, and excitement. You mean I get to work in tech making creative impacts based on logic and best practice? Wow! It didn’t take very long for me to understand: I want to be a UX Designer. The Foundations course at Design Lab has tripled my excitement about transitioning into a career in UX Design. Having just graduated, I feel empowered to not only design and collaborate, but also to keep learning as I take the next steps towards my career goal. My time in Foundations has been priceless. I’ve been heard, supported, and also challenged…consistently, all in an effort to ensure I have the best possible experience. My favorite parts of Foundations has been chatting with my peers in the robust Discord community, as well as my time with my amazing mentor, Amandreo! To be honest, I really don’t think I could have asked for a more perfect mentor match. Amandreo was present, straight-forward, and immeasurably insightful. Foundations has been the perfect first chapter in my story as a UX Designer, and DesingLab as a whole has watered my intrigue, curiosity, and excitement more than I expected. -
Stephanie Domingo
Foundations is alright in conjunction with other paid instruction
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I found the course adequate. Not great but alright. I do fear the experience will be similar with UXA but I know what to do going forward (to take other classes simultaneously since the level of instruction is poor). My first mentor didn’t work out so I was flailing about for a bit until placed with someone new. It worked out in the end because I had extra time to perfect with final product with my mentor. The DL support team is top notch. Rudi is the best! -
Tasheem Brown
Mentoring Is Key
More than anything, I feel that while you are learning many UX/UI Fundamental at the same time I felt that the material could be easily learned elsewhere. hat is not to say that the material is useless or bad. Mentoring took the material to another level and especially receiving feedback from your work. My mentor was great and I enjoyed the community of people along with that/ -
Melody
Great experience
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Pros: work on your own time, get feedback from a professional, have a structure
Cons: Limited meeting times with mentor. -
Lim Huan
Great experience, perfect for someone who has no background
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I was impressed with the platform they use cos it made everything so easy and smooth to locate and find. You do your lessons there, checkout other students submissions and see how they're doing and also schedule your mentor sessions there.
The course is broken up onto 7 units, each with subunits and the content is broken up into bite size which is easy to digest, they also provide a cheatsheet at the end of the unit for you to refer to. After the lessons, you get to do some copy work followed by designing a page based on what you have learnt. Do note that this course focus mostly on UI than UX and the content shared is concise in terms of what you need to know but if you really want to learn more you need to do some exploring and reading up on your own.
You'll also have a weekly session with your mentor, or however often you decide it to be. I did it weekly and finished the course in 8 weeks. The mentor sessions were really helpful for me to gain insights about the industry and clarify any information I'm unsure about. He's really patient, knowledge and is happy to share everything he knows.
Overall, I would really recommend this course to anyone who has no experience and is interested in learning UI design. -
Luke Petley
UX Academy Foundations
This course is a great way for visual learners to learn the world of US and UI design. It is interactive as well as being very informative! -
Anshuman K
UX Academy foundations
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UX academy foundations was, in my experience, a very fun and useful introduction to UI design. It's meant to serve as a way to get people with no experience comfortable with creating responsive design layouts for mobile and desktop web and it does that up in a very effective way.
The best part, in my opinion, is that the structure of each unit is thorough and represents a learning arc that takes you from reading to doing; by the end of each week, you're given an opportunity to essentially do a peer-reviewed project associated with a particular skill set that is part of the design process, and this happens once a week for the length of the course. I think it's an effective structure, and it has been fun (there are several boring bits when you're essentially rote memorizing through repetition, but if you have to learn a software tool inside out to be effective, like figma or adobe xd, you have to be tolerant of a certain degree of boredom).
The mentorship experience was unequivocally what made the course excellent. Working alongside or getting regular feedback from a peer with experience is pretty much invaluable for reinforcing skill acquisition, and it worked for me. My mentor was fun to talk to and easy to work with, and that was great too.
Overall, I'm quite positive about the experience, and it rates quite well compared to the many other uni courses I've taken. -
Annie
Foundations Course
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I am very happy with my decision to take Designlab's Foundations course. As someone with no design background or experience, this was a great prerequisite course for learning basic design principles. Taking the Foundations course also helped me to decide if UX design was a track I wanted to take. What I love most about the Foundations course were the projects and mentor sessions. The projects really helped me to apply my learning and get a feel for UX design, while the mentor sessions were great for refining my work and answering my questions. I also love that the course is spread out into units with projects and a reflection/quiz at the end of each unit. If you are considering a career change into UX Design and have no previous background, I highly recommend taking the Foundations course. -
bonnie lin
great mentor, reasonably challenging workload
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Laura was a fantastic mentor, i worked well with her grading style and she was very quick with uploading feedback as well as being very thorough with feedback as well. the course was easy to navigate. the workload was as expected. i wish rubrics for each deliverable had examples of what good and bad work looks like rather than a few sentences. i also wish there was more info on auto-layout as i had to learn that on my own with the help of youtube videos. maybe make it an optional but highly encouraged section of a unit. -
Erika Hickey
Fantastic introductory course for UX design!
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I initially picked Designlab's Foundations course as my first UX bootcamp to solidify that this was the career change for me. Designlab has been AMAZING - they matched me with an experienced mentor who met with me weekly and gave great feedback as well as helped me learn more difficult concepts. Designlab's foundations is exactly what it sounds like - a foundational course for those who have zero experience in the UX design industry. You have access to their whole community and collaborate often with peers. It is a great introductory course that gives learners foundations in UI design so that they can successfully navigate into studying UX design. The curriculum is detailed and you get out of this course what you put in. You can coast through this course but the more you collaborate with peers, seek feedback, and work with your mentor the more you will get out of this course. There is a lot of peer and mentor support, as well as encouragement from Designlab. -
katlyn
STUDENT
I loved the level of engagement this course had. They keep you motivated and take it at a nice pace. Having the discord community and a mentor is extremely helpful and encouraging! -
Katie Horowitz
UX Designer Career Change
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When seeking out a UX course, I did A LOT of research. Designlab stood out to me for a couple of reasons: 1. They offer an introductory course called UX Foundations that would allow me to confirm that I was for sure interested before committing to a full bootcamp 2. They host Group Critique sessions that you're required to attend to share work and provide feedback which I knew would create the community I needed in order to be successful.
Overall, my experience was really great. I loved that the curriculum was self-guided as I am pretty good with time management and keeping myself on track. I also needed something flexible (I was still working full-time and raising two young children) that allowed me the ability to complete the work on my own time. In addition, there are tons of offered Group Critique session times so I never had trouble attending. The mentors that I had were truly wonderful outside of a bump in the road early on. I had a mentor step down but I received a new mentor pretty quickly and Designlab was supportive in the process.
I felt like the curriculum laid a really strong foundation and pointed me in the right direction when I needed additional resources or materials. The online community has been better than I realized it'd be and I've found myself staying connected with peers which has been another positive to come out of all of this.
Following my graduation, it took me between 2-3 months to land a job as a Product Designer. I really leaned on the community during this and my career services mentor. I highly recommend Designlab's UX Academy if you are serious about a career as a UX Designer.
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Maanasa
The best UX bootcamp out there!
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I really enjoyed the UX Academy bootcamp program offered by DesignLab, and it helped me land my dream role. The course is well structured, and you are paired with an experienced mentor who helps guide you through the coursework and offers advice on career switches, design, and any other relevant topics. I took the part time track and even though I found it difficult to complete course work at times, the pauses were helpful in taking mental health breaks and having time to recharge. Overall, I definitely recommend this program to anyone interested in UX Design. -
Kirsten
Excited about Design!
UX Academy Foundations was great! I started the course with no formal design training and learned so much in a short period of time. The curriculum was easy to learn and I was able to set my own pace. Having a mentor was very helpful. He helped so much during the course and guided me with my understanding and design. -
David
Great introduction to UI design and tools
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This program is a great introduction to the concepts of UI design in websites and mobile apps. It heavily focuses on training a user how to use Figma or Adobe Sketch (common tools for UX/UI design) and leveraging different techniques and shortcuts to accomplish common tasks. While using this tool (you get to choose) you then have weekly sessions with a mentor to discuss the various assignments from the self-paced curriculum. Assignments ranged from copywork of existing websites to designing your own website or app based on a certain set of guidelines.
Keep in mind that this is meant to be an introductory course that feeds into their UX Academy, which dives more into what an actual UX designer might do in their career. In short, I would call UXAF a crash course on learning Figma and some basic principles of design to lay the groundwork to further study how to become an actual UX designer. The tuition at the time of this writing was only $500 and you get to apply this to the cost of the academy should you choose to proceed. In my opinion, the mentor sessions alone were worth it because the things that you don't necessarily learn in this course you can ask your mentor. For instance, we went over a whole manner of different things a UX designer would do in their career, what he did, where you could possibly go after Designlab, etc.
I didn't give the Job Support category a ranking, might show up as zero, because it's not applicable. There's no expectation that you should be able to get a UX job after this course as it's more of an introduction to some UI principles and how to use the tool.
Designlab's curriculum format was great, easy to read and access, and generally what you'd expect from a company that is teaching you how to format web pages to be aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. As mentioned, it's self paced, but you also are warned that time management is a key element and considered when applying to the academy. My only feedback regarding the curriculum (and hopefully they're already working on this) is that it would be great if there was an app that could be directly accessed by my phone or tablet. You'll see that the content and menus are designed pretty much how an app would be, so I'd imagine it would be fairly easy to create it.
Overall, if you're interested in UX and don't have any design experience, this is a great course to dip your toes. It might not give you a full introduction to what a UX designer does, but you can supplement that by discussing with your assigned mentor what questions you might have and things you're more interested in. -
Katherine V.
Student Review
Designlab foundations is an information packed 8 week course. I do think it teaches a wide variety of topics concerning ui design. Looking at the first week and my last week of the course I've grown and learned a lot. At times it was challenging but in the end quite rewarding. I think this course is a great start for anyone looking into a career in ui/ux design. -
brittney murphy
great experience!
This course was a lot of fun and very informative. I came from zero experience and learned so much! When I struggled with some of the content, other students and my mentor were extremely helpful! I love that I could do the program around my own schedule and will continue to have access to all the information throughout the rest of my experience. -
Calista Ferreira
UX Academy Foundations
I loved this course so much, it was super informative and keeps your attention all the way through. I loved how interactive it was the whole way through, they made sure you knew what you were learning. -
Katie Marie
Foundations Review 4/5 Stars
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I took Foundations as a precursor to the full UX Academy bootcamp. Overall I give the experience 4 out of 5 stars. After it ended, I actually backtracked on my decision to move forward with Design Lab and started looking at the more expensive bootcamps. However, cost is a major factor for me so I am going ahead with their UX Academy program.
Pros
- Modules: The online modules are extremely motivating because you can see yourself complete each section in real time, as it you are checking something off a list. This style makes you want to keep going and it feels like you are accomplishing something even when you only have an hour to work on the class. The modules also have a time estimate of how long it might take you to complete each section which is helpful.
- Mentor: My mentor was very nice and helpful. I don't believe she held back any feedback and she gave me some great tips as I moved through the course. I felt fortunate to have been matched up with someone with so much experience to offer.
- Flexibility: The #1 benefit of this course, besides the price, is flexibility. Other bootcamps have you chained up to a zoom all day, M-F, whereas this course is at your own pace. This means you can walk your dogs, go to a doctor's appointment, etc., and not have to worry about missing class. This is the #1 reason I ended up sticking with Designlab for the upcoming full bootcamp.
- Cost: The $500 cost of Foundations can be rolled into the full UX bootcamp afterwards so it won't be a waste of money if you decide to keep going. I also feel that you should definitely take this course if you are on the fence about UX/UI in general because it gives you a great introduction, so that you have a taste for it and it will help you decide if this is something you want to do. The full bootcamp is also about half as much as some of the other bootcamps out there (BrainStation, General Assembly, Flatiron, Columbia) however it's about the same as a few others (Thinkful, Career Foundry).
Cons
- Discord: They communicate with the group via Discord and to be honest it's not easy to use. Discord is messy, with so many channels that you can't hide and replies that come into the main room when sent to a comment. I would 100% much rather they had used Slack. You have to add friends and be accepted before you can start group chats with them and it creates a headache. If you have "unread messages" clicking on the alert doesn't take you to the actual channel, you have to go hunt and find it. It was also a huge hassle getting it set up, as Discord said I already had an account but could not claim the account and we went in circles for days until I ended up just making a totally new gmail to use for it which was a pain. For this reason I didn't spend much time communicating with my peers or trying to keep track of what was going on in there. I am not sure why they switched from Slack to Discord but it is a big downgrade.
- Downtime: There are a few points in the program where you have to wait on your mentor to progress. I had some issues with this and I don't think it was my mentor's fault, I think there was just a disconnect between the mentor's expectations about turnaround time and the expectation of someone who was going through the course very quickly (one month instead of two). But it did cause me to get stuck at a few points and that wasted some time for me during the downtime.
- Reading: I experience reading fatigue at quite a few points during the course. There weren't a lot of videos and it was a lot of written content to read through over the computer.
- Uploads: There were lots of issues with trying to upload projects. I believe the cap was 5 MB. A lot of my projects couldn't be uploaded and it was a big headache, having to split things out and take screenshots and upload multiple things as V2, V3, V4, even though they weren't different versions but just pieces of one project I was splitting into a smaller size. This needs to be increased. I spoke to another bootcamp and their upload cap was substantially larger.
- Silo: There is a bit of a silo effect in Foundations because you would look at what others have uploaded for a project and be like, wow, mine looks nothing like that. Am I on track? Are they off track? What is going on? Why are they so different? Did I missi something? Are they ahead of me? You get the idea. But this is inevitable when you are working alone in self paced course without a live cohort that you are working with. -
Samantha
UX Academy Foundations
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I recently finished the foundation course and it was a refreshing experience. I came in with a some design background so it wasn’t difficult to pick up on the sessions. It was great learning Figma and Sketch before moving on to the academy. My mentor match up was alright but it took a couple sessions to warm up to them. I did end up switching mentors and the DesignLab admissions team was very quick to help me get another. The only con I can think of is the application deadline. It’s very tight for part timers to finish on time and most have to wait for the fallowing cohort to start the academy. Overall, foundations is worth it and it offers an extra flushed out project for your portfolio. -
Erika Arias
Great Intro to UX
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I recently completed the foundations course from Designlab. It was one of the best things I’ve done for myself in a long time. I got to challenge myself and immerse myself into something new and something that links my creativity and passions together. I’m very excited to move forward with their academy and UX/UI design as a whole. Thanks to this course, I have no doubts now whether or not UX is right for me.