Designlab

I loved the DesignLab Foundations course. It taught me all the basic of UX/UI Design and how to build and create nice, clean webpages and app screens. The pros to the Foundations course includes: 1) Assigned mentor: You have a mentor there that you can used for 8 sessions to schedule appointments with for feedback and additional help. 2) Saved Coursework: You are able to review your peers coursework in the Designlab website for inspiration. This helped me a lot when I got stuck with trying to design things. Also, if you need to look back on your work and edit it, it will stay on the course website. 3) User-Friendly: The Designlab courses are user friendly and extremely easy to navigate. Although there are a lot of pros, there is one con that I can think of for the DesignLab course. For example, the content is strictly online only and you have to teach yourself. There are no distance learning or in-person courses. Read less

After many hours of research, I chose Designlab to kickstart my UX design education. There are so many choices, but I had a good vibe from their site, and reviews online. I couldn't be happier with my choice. For real. 
I'm not a typical student for this course. While I have decades of graphic design experience, my interactive experience has been mostly as an entrepreneur, developing my own interactive-based businesses. I knew I had the underlying skillset to become a proficient designer and content creator. Most of my career has been in television development and production. 
After answering questions about the kind of mentor might be a good fit for me, I was assigned the ideal person. On the first call he asked me my goals, and understood that I wasn't a young person seeking a digital design career. He tailored his approach, interactions, and reviews perfectly.
And Designlab's platform is solid, well-designed, and a pleasure to work on. 
The coursework has been obviously honed over years, and thousands of hours of students' studies, and updated to be relevant to today's tech and trnds. The structure of each unit was ideal, and each unit built on the previous lessons. My mentor was always available for questions on Slack and weekly video and screen-share calls. 
I'm starting my next course, Designlab's 15-week intensive Academy, in a couple weeks!  Read less

I really liked Designlab’s foundation course because of how fun and relaxed it is. The staff is awesome. There are many features to their program such as being able to explore your peers’ work, an open comment system for feedback, your own mentor, and group crits. It was a pleasure logging on because of how clean, fun, and easy their interface is! 

There aren’t any complaints on my end other than a few “could be better” moments with my mentor. Sometimes my mentor didn’t understand what I was asking, didn’t go into much detail about critiquing my work at times, and didn’t initiate the convo in most of our meetings. 

There were some moments where the projects given totally reformed, revamped, and improved my designs and I also learned how to design on Figma!

I would recommend this course for people who have never taken design and depending on your previous design experiences, this program could be a breeze for you yet still be of great value :)



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I am a captain in the united states merchant marines currently working for a tugboat company in san francisco bay. However, I am considering a transition into a ux/ui role and this course was incredibly helpful for someone who knew nothing about what goes into becoming a ux/ui designer. The course was great and I learned a lot but where the real money is, I believe, is the one on one mentorship. I got along great with my mentor and feel like I have a strong foundation to build further on. I told him to be tough on me and he was fair about everything I turned in. Not only was this helpful for completing the course but we also got to talk about his experience in the industry, how he started out, mistakes he made and anything else I could think of. I would definitely recommend this to a friend. Read less

I really enjoyed taking this course. The presentation of the coursework was well organized. They offer 1-on-1 mentorship which I found to be the best aspect of this course. After completing this course, I felt I learned a lot. I'd highly recommend this course to anyone looking to get into UX.  Read less

I just completed the UX academy foundations course. I absolutely Loved it. I finished it within 2 months. The overall course was well planned out, every week i was definitely learning something new.  I started with no knowledge of design and now i look at websites and think " I could recreate that". ( The simple websites) but more than i could when i started. I met up with my mentor once a week and went over my course work. The reading material and the projects are great exercises.  As the course went on i looked at the upcoming projects i had to do and i was so intimidated by them, but once I got to it i knew exactly what i was doing. The support from my mentor and the slack group was great, and there's always something going on weather it be webinars, fun projects, and just if you need help with something somebody is always there to respond. As I said coming into the course I didn't know what I was doing if I was going to proceed into the academy, but i really enjoyed the course and I've applied to get into the academy and see what more I can learn. I would highly recommend this course for somebody trying to break out and try something new the foundations course will give you a taste of what more you can learn.  Read less

DesignLab has a good starter system for people who wants to change their career into UX/UI. I am a student who decided to change my career after I have graduated with a BA in Consumer Science. I wanted to share my experience with anyone who might in the same situation. During my search for a UX bootcamp, I found DesignLab to be the most beneficial in terms of projects and hands-on work. I thought it would be a good idea since I wanted solid projects on my portfolio in the end. I have only taken the Foundation course and it has been a great experience. I am in the process of applying for their UX Academy program. 

I have had a few issues regarding the system and my mentor, but DesignLab's team has always been super helpful and accommodating. The Foundation course is absolutely beginner-friendly, I would recommend this to anyone who is new to design and wanted to get more practice with tools like Figma or Sketch. The curriculum is easy to digest and understand while having the best results in projects. Meeting with mentors might be awkward, but I think they are super helpful in getting the student where they want to be. 

I guess the only cons that I could think of is the number of sessions you get with your mentor. Students are only provided 8 sessions and the first one is an introduction meeting to know more about your mentor. I do understand that the mentors have their own schedule, but limiting the sessions to 8 might be too little. I was able to fit everything I wanted into the 8 sessions, but I wished I had more. 

Overall, I do believe the pros definitely outweigh the cons. To rephrase, DesignLab Foundation course is a great program for people who are new to design with no experience. The course is very informative and I think it's a great start for anyone who wants to get into the UX/UI industry. 

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Foundations was a great introduction to ux/ui and visual design. Through the projects, articles, and videos you learn valuable skills and understanding of the visual process. The course is not intense, you can easily do it as you work or go to school as you only need to spend 4 hours a day on it if you space out the units across the duration of the course. Read less

I did quite some online courses related to UX but at Designlab I had the opportunity to actually work on assignments and iterate on them based on feedback provided by a mentor. The course is logically build up in 8 units and every unit starts with theory, a copy exercise where you do a deep dive in tool functionality but also learn how landing pages and apps are structured. After a reflection you move into a design exercise where you have more creative freedom. On average every week you have a chance to talk with your mentor for an hour, you can chat about your designs, ask questions and you receive extra tips and tricks. You are encouraged to time-box your iterations to get used to an agile way of working and build confidence sharing intermediate products. The emphasis is on UI but this helps you jumpstarting the UX Academy (you loose less time on learning a tool, UI definitions and UI design). Read less

I didn't even remotely expect this level of everything: starting from the mentor assigned to me who was the best possible match and guided me throughout the way with helpful tips and pieces of advice, to insane volumes of valuable information put together in nice chunks so that its easier to digest. Many thanks to everyone who participated in organizing this course for us!!! Read less

I wanted to improve my UI design skills and learn the basics. The course is nicely structured into logical blocks and all information is easy to read with additional resources provided if needed. I loved mentor sessions and also the creative projects. There were also many "reproduce a page" projects - I wasn't a big fan of them, but they made sense to understand the components etc. before you will build your own pages. I would recommend this course for everyone who wants to get the basics of (mostly UI) design and get better with the tools. Read less

I've enjoyed taking Designlab's UX Academy Foundations course. It's a great introduction to visual design for those who are thinking about career switching and want to dip their toe in the water before making a big splash with their bootcamp. There are many great things about this course, but I really appreciated the mentorship aspect as well as the curriculum. The online learning platform is easy to navigate and they make the modules (lessons, tutorials, etc.) informative yet fun at the same time. Read less

I enrolled in this course so I can learn how to start and handover a whole design from start to finish and with this course I got exactly what I wanted and more. If you are looking for a fun course and want to learn UI design by doing; definitely give this course a try!
You will be able to work with great mentors from all around the  world with experience from top companies, learn and have access to an amazing rich content and get hands on experience by working on multiple projects.  Read less

This course was, sadly, not worth the time and money. The way the class teaches concepts is too disconnected and in-depth for any real-world application. It's very confusing. Every assignment felt like busy work – we would spend hours on a microscopic part of the research process only to zoom out and learn that it wasn't actually feasible or important to do in actual product creation. Basically, this course was all academic, and not enough hands-on real-life work was taught. Next to nothing I learned here will be useful at my job and there definitely won't be anything going in my portfolio from this calss. 

Additionally, every mentor has their own rubric. There's no standardization on what is expected on assignments, it's luck of the draw on who you get. I looked at some other student examples, and surprise – they were all over the place. Several students obviously did the bare minimum and didn't even answer the prompts, but they got approved without any critiques. It made it incredibly difficult for me to know what was expected, and I have come away from the course ignorant of what I'm doing right or wrong. 

Overall, I wish I hadn't spent the money. I would have gotten more out of teaching myself with youtube videos and creating my own projects. Read less

After years of Umm-ing and Ahhh-ing, I finally decided to make the jump from engineering to UX design. My aim was to completely change careers. 

I looked at so many different Bootcamp styled courses, Career Foundry, General Assembly, Thinkful, DesignLab, Flatirons, etc., and decided on DL because to me there was no other course out there that was offering what DL was for the same value. I'm so glad I chose DL.

The UXA course was awesome, so in-depth and the first phase really prepares you for the second phase and building capstones and your portfolio. (also, a course that delivers you to the job market with 4 full capstone projects is something not many other courses can offer). I had a great experience with my mentor and support system. and never lacked support. The inclusion of group crit sessions was also a great help during the course but also during the job search phase, having that experience of collaboration with fellow designers is huge! 

I took the course part-time and completed it on time. Some students do struggle but this doesn't become an issue unless you're solely interested in the job guarantee. Which while is nice to have, is not the sole purpose for me doing the course, and is kind of hard to stick to anyway - also for me it was a sign that designlab is going to get you a job! They also have pauses which you can take if you get behind.

I completed my course and portfolio review in March but started my job hunt 3 months prior. I landed my first UX job in March and I am 100% convinced I couldn't have done it without DesignLab. I think the average hire time is something like 3-4 months, so if you're not in a rush this is even less than an issue. 

The mentors you have access to were incredible too. My mentor for the course phase was amazing. Supportive and instructive, with over a decade of experience. My careers service mentor was great too, even though we only had one session, the knowledge experience and contacts they can bring and give you aren't measurable, and you'll be hard-pressed to find them anywhere else.

I can't recommend DL enough. If you're think of a career in UX - Choose DesignLab.   Read less