Designlab

This is a really rigorous course for those like me who had little-to-no previous design experience. I enjoyed the challenge and worked much harder than I expected.

My mentor was excellent. She always responded within 24 hours, and often within 12 hours. She really pushed me to improve.

My only knock on the course would be the lessons surrounding Figma's Auto Layout and Components. I think they could do a better job teaching the concepts in smaller chunks. 

Otherwise, really really good value.

As someone with design experience from school, a lot of the curriculum seemed familiar and was a really good way to keep me engaged. The mentor played a big part in my experience with the course. I was able to enhance my design skills, learn about some great resources and start thinking about the next steps in my career. 

This course is really geared towards UI (not so much UX) and what good design is. As the name stands, it provides material to develop a good foundation for design. There is little to none in terms of job support in this particular course.

While they provide initial time estimates for an assignment, keep in mind that iterating on your work will also take up time so ensure you have additional hours during a week to dedicate to working on past assignments.

Design lab foundations course is perfect for new and entry level designers. It gives you a good understand of the principles of UX/UI design in addition to providing you with a hands on experience and get support with your mentor. 

I am new to the UX/UI field and this foundation program was the perfect start to see if I want to transition into this field. Its a great blend of working with peers, a very involved and experienced mentor, and self paced content that is very thorough and gives you resources if you want to dive into more details. 

I had heard good things about the course and although I was expecting good content, I really did not know what to expect in terms of the online modality, it is true that the platform impressed me. It is very well organized throughout the course, the way you have to interact with the mentor as well as being able to see the work of your classmates, generates a sense of community that you would not have to do a free course on youtube.

I finished the DesignLab UX Academy in August of last year (2021). While my overall experience was amazing, and I would highly recommend DesignLab for anyone wanting to invest in a bootcamp, there were a few things that were challenging. 

1. The entire program is online and self-led. There are milestones to reach each week to stay on top of your work, and the academy staff are very communicative and helpful in keeping you on track. What was challenging was that there were no live sessions outside of group critique, so it often felt like I was working in silo (because I was). Another challenge about this is that most of the content text-based. There is a great Slack community which came to my aid more than once, but you gotta be proactive about making those connections. It's worth it!

2. The career services curriculum felt like more of a burden than it felt helpful. I actually gave up on trying to keep up with it after the first few weeks, since what felt more important was focusing on applications than lessons and other deliverables. There was a period of stress because if you don't get a job within a year, you're eligible for a full refund - but ONLY if you keep up with the career services curriculum. I started to get worried that I wasn't keeping up with the curriculum, and was possibly not going to get a job within the year. Thankfully, I got a job and am starting exactly one year after completion! But this is a good thing to keep in mind. My career coaches were helpful to a degree, but there is so much dirty work that has to be done on your own in terms of networking and just getting yourself out there, that at a certain point it didn't feel like there was much that my career coach could offer me. 

Overall, I would not have been able to gain the experience, knowledge and literal portfolio that enabled me to get my first job in the industry (at a really great company with great pay!!), if it wasn't for my experience at DesignLab. Any bootcamp will have pros and cons, but I don't regret my choice whatsoever!

There was a lot of thought that was put into in the online coursework material by DesignLab. I’m glad the projects were not something you can just breeze on through. I had to put effort into each unit. I took the part time course that  was estimated to take 10 hours a week, however when you get further down the course (unit 4 and beyond) it could take much more of your time.

The other benefit of DesignLab’s Academy Foundation (8 week course) is you get to determine if you want to invest anymore of your time and money to take it to the next level by applying for their longer UX Academy course. Their foundation course was to get you familiar with the tools and basic understanding of designing User Interface. There’s also something interesting going on with how they pair up students with mentors. I suspect some students were paired up with mentors that were available to respond to your iterations more  frequently while other students had more hands off mentors that only leave feedback during their weekly sessions. I think it depends on how you fill out their survey such as your schedule and any prior design experience.

I thought DesignLab’s Foundations course was very beneficial for me because I’m coming from a completely different educational background. I had 0 design experience and after finishing the course, have learned so much and already have begun to build my portfolio. Although you can teach yourself how to use Figma or Sketch, the guidance of a mentor with real industry experience plus the projects provided, really helped me thrive and learn. I would definitely recommend!

Pros:
-great curriculum! 
-every project prepared me really well for the final project 

Cons:
-wish I had more time with my mentor//I had a last minute mentor switch

I took this course to see whether I wanted to continue on with Designlab's UX Academy/pursue UX further - and I do! There were things I wasn't a huge fan of about the lesson material and format of the class, but overall I found it to be a good experience. Before deciding on Designlab, I did a lot of reading and comparing different bootcamps/short courses in UI/UX. Ultimately, I chose DL because of their set timeframes (to keep me motivated), strong emphasis on mentorship, and cost.
I will also note that I have a degree in design, so I was very familiar with the principles and workflow going in. There were several students struggling to learn the deign software, which seemed to slow them down at the beginning of the course. Nothing I learned was super new to me, but I nonetheless learned a lot about the deign software and felt myself improving as a designer with each project!
Another thing to note about my particular experience is that my first mentor was not responsive in week 1 - at all. I contacted the DL support team, and they matched me with a new mentor very quickly. My second mentor was a great fit for me, but because I hadn't received any feedback/assignment approvals in week 1, I was catching up in week 2. Most of the value also comes from mentor-student communication, so I feel that I didn't get everything I could have from the course because of that experience.

What I Enjoyed About Foundations:
•I was apprehensive about "work at your own pace" class structures, but it actually worked really well for me! I scheduled 2 calls a week (4 week pace) with my mentor to keep myself accountable and on track. The material is broken up into short modules and projects, so it's easy to take breaks without disrupting your flow - and, in fact, Designlab encourages this!
•Most of your time spent will be working in actual design files - on copywork and in projects - which means you get a ton of hands-on practice from very early on. I agree with other reviews that a lot of the content is similar to other (free) content available out there, but I felt like having specific project outlines and working through small tasks really locked in the lesson material for me. It's not something I would have felt motivated to do on my own.
•You lead calls with your mentor, so you can talk to them about anything you're interested in knowing (UI/UX/product design related, of course!). My second mentor catered her feedback to what I told her I wanted to improve upon and also answered all my questions about her job & experiences as a product designer.
•The Discord server is active and social. It's a great place to connect with other students/mentors and chat, share resources, ask for help, etc. There's pretty much a channel for anything you'd want to talk about.
•The support and admissions staff are great! Very responsive, friendly, and easy to get a hold of.
•You have access to the course content for life.
•I feel well prepared for UX Academy after taking this course.

What Could Use Improvement:
•Some material is outdated. For example, there is one tutorial video that tripped up a LOT of students because it featured an  outdated workflow in Figma - from like 2 years ago. You can definitely supplement information like this with Youtube videos/articles, but it detracts from the value and experience of the class, in my opinion.
•Written lessons are pretty basic info (at least for me), and I felt like I was missing out on some more in-depth learning. I'm supplementing this with my own reading after finishing the course.
•Your ability to progress/quality of feedback on your work is all dependent on how good or how responsive your mentor is. Two students might have vastly different experiences and learning outcomes because of this.

UX Academy Foundations was very beneficial and overall a fun course to take, to help me understand better what the UX design field is like. It really helped having a mentor that was able to answer any questions I had about his work, what was going on, and also just overall honest with the feedback. 

I took the UX Foundations course in March 2022 and had a life changing experience! There are 2 aspects of taking this course - first is your mentor and second is the material provided by DL and how its structured. The structure of the course is done really where you learn a small skill and get to practice it immediately in a mini project in each unit so the application helps you remember that skill better . Throughout the course, you will learn many small skills via mini projects in each unit until the final unit which is a combination of all the skills you have learnt in each unit. Overall, i love the way they have structured the material provided. Couple of things that can be improved is (1)additional video tutorials but this is a personal style of how each person learns better and (2) estimated time for each unit or task is underestimated than the actual time is takes to complete. Coming to the most important aspect of the course and thats your mentor! I was very fortunate to find an amazing mentor who was extremely quick in his feedback so i felt very motivated to get things done. He was the best role model of how a UX Designer should be in real life -  empathetic in his teaching style, provided his feedback in a very encouraging way which really pushed me hard to think and improve and get better. If not for my mentor, i wouldn't have learnt as much as i did! The one thing i will mention about Designlab 's Foundation course is that it's a great first step to explore if you want to get into UX Design. I personally am making a career change from finance to UX design and i was scared of committing to a 6 month course without having any knowledge or idea if i will like it and this course helped me to decide that! Most other schools do not have this option so i really liked this part about Designlab!! If you are scared/unsure, just do the course! I wish i took this step sooner. 

Attending this program had pros:
. Follow at my own pace while maintaining a timeline
. Review videos and revisit my concepts and tutorials
. Smooth transition in to concepts
. Time management was well stated and guidelines provided

Cons:
. A one on one time and attention was little short, zoom video 
. Some concepts I didn't get, I had to rely on YouTube which I expected a mentor to help out step by step since I am paying to learn and not from YouTube.
. There should have been more guidelines in the brief as to what country are we designing for, being culturally aware and inclusive.  

If you're new to design, UX foundations will definitely help! Only con about the program is that all modules are text and picture based. There are few tutorials but other than that it's mostly reading. The mentor session were super helpful and for me this was the most helpful aspect of the program. The foundations has 8 units ( 1 unit per week) but you can finish in 4-6 weeks if you can dedicate at least 5 hours everyday to the course.  

Great experience with Designlab's UX Foundations course. I learned a lot and immediately applied to their UX Academy after completing Foundations. The mentors are there to help you succeed as well as the support team. Everybody was very responsive and helpful when answering questions. 

Overall the curriculum was very well structured and informative. Each unit had a great balance between lessons and exercises, and at the end all the information we learned led to a 10 hour design challenge in which we applied this new knowledge. It was however more than the 10 or 20 hours a week (depending on whether you do a fast track or not). 

its a great course - I enjoyed it and I thing for someone that has never done design its a good initial course to follow. 

I'll write this review based on my own questions researching UX design bootcamps as I was comparing several. Before enrolling in Foundations, I reached out to UXA grads to get their unfiltered thoughts—and their experiences were largely very positive (as was my own!), which led me to decide on Designlab. Here are the topics I asked them about:

• Caliber of mentors with strong UX backgrounds. My experience: For the most part, Designlab mentors are very experienced in the field, however it's up to you to get the kind of the mentorship you're looking for and expect. One of my UXA mentors fell way below my expectations in terms of experience and mentoring, and in hindsight I should have requested a change earlier than I did. The three other mentors I had in UXA, Foundations, and Career Services were above and beyond and everything I needed and wanted in a mentor. 
• A thorough-enough curriculum to be competitive in the job search. My experience: Since I was starting from pretty much zero UX design knowledge, the curriculum felt as comprehensive as it needs to be for a relatively short period of learning. That said, I did take several months longer to graduate because I wanted to be sure I was actually grasping and retaining the concepts, as well as build a portfolio that wasn't cookie-cutter and showcases real-world experience, a thoughtful process, and a true understanding of UX. 
• Opportunities for "real-world" or industry experiences like design sprints with the cohort or an actual client—and if not, whether you felt like that would have been valuable. My experience: There are definitely plenty of opportunities to do so just from people sharing leads in Designlab's Slack channels, but this is not part of the curriculum and is not required. Personally, I 100% feel like having any real-world experience is immensely valuable and gives you a leg up (especially in interviewing), but again, it's up to you to get after the experience you want in your learning journey.
• Knowing that any program's success is largely dependent on how much effort you put in, I'm curious if you felt like you left UX Academy with a solid, competitive portfolio? My experience: I truly feel like I came out of UXA with a very competitive portfolio (granted I personally had to relinquish the tuition reimbursement to do so, but this is just my experience), as it includes client work, team work, and a passion project in the space I am now working in as a product designer :). 

Here are my personal Pros and Cons for Designlab while I was comparing other bootcamps. Happy to say that after graduating from the course, these are still accurate!

(One surprise is that the community aspect greatly exceeded my expectations! I have made lifelong friendships from meeting peers in Designlab, and I cherish this as one of the most special takeaways from my experience).

Pros + Group critiques to practice articulating design decisions and giving and receiving feedback+ Portfolio prep and up to 4 portfolio projects (can suggest real-world projects for capstones)+ Job search prep with career coach+ Most affordable+ 1:1 mentorship
+ Can switch from full-time to part-time and vice-versa
+ Allow two 1-week pauses (plus 1 week break for t-giving and 2 week break for christmas)+ Close-knit community 
Cons- Varying mentor experience- No real-world project experience 
TLDR: You might have to take some initiative to get the most out of your experience (i.e. no one will force you to do a real-world project or work with a real client), but if you do, Designlab is a great and fun environment to learn, get mentorship, and build relationships in the design community. I would recommend it for beginners and career changers!

The course ia an 8-week course designed to help build a set of basic visual design skills, including user interface (UI) design.

Overall I think this course provided a great foundation to the academy portion of this. I have some background in design but this provided me with information that I either did not learn on the job or during school. I have already gotten a lot of use out of what I have learned, like formatting, fonts, and color combinations. I would recommend this course to anyone wanting to start in UI/UX design!