Designlab

I would highly recommend Designlab's UX Academy course if you are planning to switch careers to UX Design. 1-1 mentorship, student community, group critic sessions, flexible class hours, career services are just few of the many amazing aspects of the program.

Definitely loved the mentorship and the group critiques. They both allowed me to come out of my shell and be more confident in my design thinking. For anyone who's looking to switch career paths, DesignLab is a great place to get into UX Design. Idid the part-time route and worked part-time at my accounting job. Once I completed the program, I was able to land an internship in a couple months, then landed a full-time job a few months after that. If you know this is the field you want to be in, I highly recommend DesignLab.

Designlab - UX Academy Foundations Review

Solid foundational course!

The best part about Designlab is the mentorship. While the massive slack community is there as a constant support, my mentorship meetings gave me the personal 1-on-1 advice I needed to help me confident in my career transition to UX. I couldn't be happier with my experience!

While thinking I needed a career change and the research that goes with it, I ran across Designlab.  After reading I wanted to move forward with the UX Academy.   I saw where they wanted you to do the Foundations course first before the UX Academy.  I thought it was a great idea (the $500 spent on the Foundations course goes towards the tuition of the UX Academy) to get my feet wet first to make sure Designlab was a good fit with me and to make sure it was worth it.  All I can say is, is it was!  The support staff was awesome and quick to answer any questions I had.  What I really love about Designlab is the mentorship aspect of the bootcamp.  I met with my mentor every week for 8 weeks (I did the part time track) and learned something ever time we met.  I would definitely recommend the Foundations course for anyone interested in moving into the UX/UI career path.  You learn a great base line of skills to build upon.   I look at it as the first step in a better direction and I am so happy I took it.

UX Academy is an affordable and effective way of getting started in UX Design.

I decided to switch careers to UX Design after multiples years in customer experience and international sales. I choose Designlab mostly for its community and curriculum. The group crits feature was one the most appealing to me, being able to study on my own but still share about my work and help others every week. The community is really great and I was able to discuss often with my peers. I always had plenty of students helping me out with my design choices or research. Designlab community was really a great experience for the overall study process ! At the end, I could easily find a UX Designer job after few months of active search.

I highly enjoyed the course curriculum and materials. 

Excellent experience with UX Foundations 

UX Academy is a great course, especially for beginners! I first joined the Foundations course in January of 2021, and month after that I enrolled in UX Academy. I learned so much about UX Design, from design systems to creating great case studies. Before UX Academy, I had no prior design experience. The only thing I had was 5+ years of sales experience. After I graduated from UX Academy, I was grateful to be able to find a job 2 months later! I would 100% recommend UX Academy to anyone that wants to make a career change a like once did.

I enrolled in Designlab's Foundations course to learn more about UX design before applying to the UX Academy bootcamp. This course went above and beyond, especially given the price tag. It was a superb introduction to the field. There was plenty of experiential learning paired with 1:1 mentor sessions. My mentor was a fantastic resource while I worked through the projects. Students have access to a Slack community where I was able to connect with other folks. It really felt like an immersive experience.

I finished the course in 6 weeks and worked full time as well. It was definitely doable! The course focused a lot on UI design and I got comfortable with learning/using the basics of Figma. The projects were challenging and uses the built on knowledge you learned during each unit. Admissions was easy to get a hold of when you have questions. The slack community also allowed me to connect with others. Overall, I would highly recommend! 

Designlab's short UXA Foundations course essentially worked as advertised. Make no mistake though, this is a UI course not a UX course, though it does bend toward UX principles which I appreciated on a foundational level.

I enrolled part-time so I could pair it with my day job, and though it led to many long nights, it never felt too much for me. Perhaps this is due to the coursework coming naturally to me because I already have some background in Graphic Design and tools like Photoshop, but also I think the time constraints they placed on projects were reasonable and enabled me to rarely ever put more than 10 hours a week into the coursework. Typically, every weekly unit contains a little reading/theory, some copywork, and a unit project to tie it together. I liked the consistency and I think it all contributed to a good predictable experience week to week.

I do think the course may make or break depending on your mentor, but I had an overall positive experience with mine who was a Designlab alumni and Sr. Product Designer at Instacart. She was very genuine, helpful and easy to relate with.

The only minor complaints are that some of the articles/tutorials felt dated and in need of updating, but I think they are actually doing that in a couple months (with a slight price hike). As someone with previous self-taught design experience, I did find the projects fairly easy though they still took time to complete and the assignments did help me as a critical design thinker. If you don't have previous experience, you may find it more challenging. I have applied for the full course.

This course is awesome. Especially for those making a big decision to change their careers. It's a great way to seek education without feeling like you are making too big of a leap into the unknown.

It's paced well and gives you a little bit of everything. Bonus that the price goes to the full course as well if you decide to move on.

I had such a fun time learning the basics of UX/UI design. I was able to get the basics down and get a feel of how the course will be. I was able to meet with a mentor that would give me feedback for each of my projects.

I tried taking other short courses online to determine if the UX field was right for me, but they were boring. They included a lot of reading material, but no projects, so I was unable to get through them. This program had the perfect combination of lessons and projects to keep me engaged and make me feel like I was actually learning how to be a designer. I absolutely loved it and highly recommend for anyone looking to transition to UX. I had no design/tech experience at all prior to the course.

Pros:
- Engaging material
- Lessons that set you up for projects
- Mentor sessions
- Self paced
- Repetition in course structure
- Links to additional optional resources
- Free subscription to Figma & discounts on other design programs
- Quick response to emails

Cons:
- Final project is locked until everything is approved (not really a con, unless you waited until the last minute & you need to finish by a deadline)

I had previous graphic/packaging design experience but mostly in the print production industry only. I was looking to expand my skillsets into tech and came across the UX/UI course at Designlab. This foundations course is definitely more focused on the UI fundamentals which is necessary to help support the UX skills that will be developed if you plan to go into UX Academy. Although the UI skills I implemented are very similar to what I was doing previously in graphic/packaging design, there are many other guidelines and design systems that need to be followed and implemented when it comes to designing for web/mobile. Each unit in the course is structured very well so you have a combination of both readings and exercises/projects.

 It's all self-paced so a great deal of time management is needed. Getting assigned a mentor definitely helped too - I was able to ask any questions about the industry that I knew very little about. My mentor also helped me figure out how to network with more people which is something I struggle with often. I would definitely recommend if you're looking to develop UI skills even if you have previous background in design.

I started UX Academy as a Foundations student. Very quickly I became aware how much I enjoyed the work I was doing. The idea that I could complete a month long course to really understand if UX was for me helped immensely. 

After Foundations, I moved onto UX Academy. Being paired up with a mentor, I felt that the materials were helpful in educating online. The course was also paired with mentor sessions twice a week as a full time student, allowing me to ask all the whacky and I fruiting questions I had from reading and my own personal research. 

Overall, I have nothing but positive things to say about the DesignLab and am I credibly thankful for the aid in swapping careers!

I chose designlab's UX Academy because not only was it modestly priced, but the allure of being able to learn and work through real life scenarios through the problem with a mentor with a wealth of knowledge in the industry was something I couldn't pass up. I met some amazing students during my time and some even more amazing mentors! 

The core curriculum was vast and there was a lot to learn, and being able to gain insight from mentors while doing it was a great experience. Career services (once you complete UXA) is largely an effort you take on as a job seeker yourself, they give you supplemental materials to work through during the job search but its all about your effort. I think like most bootcamps, you get what you put into it, its all about your effort, and if you put in the effort, then designlab and everyone involved will match that effort with you.

I would largely say that my time in DL was fantastic and the skills I learned not only from the curriculum and from my mentors were major factors in me landing a position in the design world within six months.