Designlab

Design 101 has taught me so much in this past month. It’s such a valuable and well structured course. The mentor session helped me the most when it came to doing the projects. What I absolutely loved about the course was that you’re able to have hands on learning experience instead of going through a lot of readings. Overall, I love it and I’d highly recommend to anyone looking for a career in design. 

Choosing Designlab was a tough one to make, but i'm so happy I went with it after lots of deliberation.  All of the course information is available up-front (without having to talk to a robotic sales rep), pricing is available immediately and they are incredibly transparent about the whole process.  From the time I signed up for Design 101, the materials, communication and interface were really user-friendly and happened quickly.  Having a mentor was the cherry on top of the cake, and being able to communicate with other students in my cohort through slack.  Also, the literature utilized to teach us was really up-to-date and easy to read and conceptualize.  I walked away with amazing experience, a better understanding of Figma and basics of UX/UI.  Highly recommend and I just got into UX Academy, so really happy to join another cohort with DLab!

 I really enjoyed the journey with Designlab. The 4-week course, Design 101, was perfect for me to dip my toes into design. I gained a basic knowledge of design principle, color theory, and typography and designed a landing page as a final project. It’s the most valuable for me to get feedback from my mentor and to chat with her once per week. The study platform also gave me chances to explore past student works and to interact with them. 

Coming into this course with no design background and very little knowledge of IX design, Designlab's 4-week course, Design101, was perfect for me and for anyone who wants to explore and learn more about the field, and gain basic knowledge of theories and concepts. The pricing is very affordable and your even get a mentor that you meet with once a week for the duration of the course. The readings and projects compliments and build upon each other, allowing students to put the readings into action. Reviewing and getting feedback on project from your mentor during one-on-one sessions was the most valuable for me from this course.

Was an excellent and comprehensive course.  I feel i gained the skills I was looking to learn. 

Had a fantastic experience with DesignLab. I have completed 2 short courses and hope to get into UX Academy

I loved the UI Design course from DesignLab. Having a lot of background in UX design and quite some experience in Digital design it was difficult to find a course that really has an intermediate to expert level curriculum.
The curriculum was a good mix between refreshing my memory on some things and teaching me new things while focussing on hands-on projects to bring the new knowledge into practice. Combined with having a mentor who is actively working in the field and therefore has a lot of practical experience, this was the perfect combination of learning & doing in order to further grow my skills. 

After graduating from college, I made the decision to pursue a career in UX design and stumbled across Designlab. It almost seemed too good to be true for the cost, with its access to group crits, weekly 1:1 mentorship, a portfolio review, career services, and flexibility around my schedule. I took the introductory Design 101 class, and I was really impressed by the quality of the curriculum and mentorship, so I made the decision to commit to UX Academy.

Pros:

• Group crits + mentor calls sharpened my communication skills and taught me how to give/receive feedback. 
• My mentor was tough, but he really challenged me to think through each design decision, communicate clearly via agendas, deliverables, and presentations, and grew my confidence as a designer. This helped me a lot when I took on my first client project, which eventually led to my first full-time job. I can't speak for everyone, but from my experience (and from other students' experiences), there are a lot of high-quality mentors at DL. Understand what you want to gain out of mentorship, and find someone who is willing to help you grow in that way!
• The Slack channel has been invaluable for connecting with other students, exchanging resources, asking questions, and receiving help on your projects. I still keep in touch with some of the folks I've met and check the channels regularly for new resources.
• Designlab support is great. On two occasions when I needed to take a break from the program, they were accommodating and quick to respond.

Cons:

• To be honest, some of the curriculum material could probably be found online for free. I think it's important to supplement Designlab curriculum with other resources, since they don't cover every research technique or tools out there.
• No opportunities to work on real client projects or group projects, unless you are able to plan something in your own time. This made it a bit difficult when applying for jobs, since most recruiters/hiring managers prefer real projects.
• Portfolio review could have been more thorough. After spending a lot of time on my portfolio, I received a one-line feedback on each section of the rubric, with some feedback using subjective terms. I didn't really understand the strengths of my portfolios, so I sought out more thorough feedback from other students.

Overall, I think enrolling in Designlab is one of the better decisions I've made. It requires a lot of work and commitment and it can feel daunting to transition into a new field, but as someone who came into this with no prior design background, I learned and grew so much over these past few months. The learning doesn't stop after graduation, but I'm glad that I came out with the skillset I was hoping to gain. Thank you Designlab for changing the trajectory of my life — happy to share that I now have a full-time job in project management and a part-time UX design internship in edtech.

My experience with Design 101 course at Designlab  was  wonderful. I started with zero experience, and for only a month I learned  a lot and was able to complete the course. All thanks to the feedback and guidance of my great mentor, and overall technical support of the Designlab team. I would defiantly recommend this course.   

Danny has been a superb mentor.  He is incredibly knowledgeable for 20 years and one of the easiest people to talk with.  He has taken his time to give me feedback on my designs and provided a lot of suggestions to help me to be a great creative design.  I feel awesome and satisfy.  If I get the opportunity, I would love to take another course at Designlab and with Danny as my mentor! 

I came into this course with no background in digital design and I now look at it with a different perspective. The great part of Designlab courses is the amazing mentor sessions. In addition to the written responses on the course platform, you discuss your projects in the weekly mentor sessions. I was lucky to have Ajay as my mentor. He was patient and answered any confusion I have in each unit. There is also a Slack channel that students and staff can interact in. This community is very useful for an online design course. I thoroughly enjoyed this experience with Designlab. 

in the 4 weeks with designlab, I learned enough to know I want to give up my work as a copywriter and have a career in this field, even though I am color blind. I had a lot of theory and practice and my mentor Sara gave me so much advice in such a short time that I can't believe how my skills and designer's taste improved. WoW. I mean, it's just four weeks, during which, of course, I was working hard on my homework but still, it's just four weeks. I am definitely applying for UX academy and hoping they accept me

This was my first step to a career change! I plan to move forward into the UX Academy with Designlab. 
This course was a great tool to get started in UX! You learn everything you need to know before jumping into a longer and more expensive course! The best part is your mentor who is beyond helpful throughout the entire course! You get plenty of time to work with them and they offer great notes and suggestions on your projects!

I would absolutely suggest this course to anyone getting started or even interested in UX! 

Overall great experience with DesignLab on Design 101 course! I've decided that this would be the year of changing careers into UX Design (yes, 2020 out of all years!), but as a complete newly to the design world, I needed to gather some basic knowledge before moving forward with my studies. I've went through the lectures during the 4 weeks of the course quite effortlessly, they seem to follow a consistent rhythm, demanding effort from you with at least 4 deliverable projects per week, but not overloading you with work that makes you feel overwhelmed and unmotivated (of course that being stuck home quarantining all the time also helped). 
The nicest aspect of it all, besides having a project to make you look forward to lessons and advancing on building your own results, I also really enjoyed the experience of having a mentor that would go through my improvement every week through video call sessions and help me analyze  if I'm making the right decision on moving to Design, how the market and the work look like, tips of resources and references to help me kick things off... Besides, of course, evaluation of my work and making comments on what I'm nailing and what I could improve. I graded it as not 100% helpful on Job Assistance because, as it sets out to be, it is a  Design course designed (aha!) to gather basic principles and not sure if you can really consider yourself a full-on designer after this 1 month of online course, but if you want to learn more about the job (either for fun or for longer-term planning), I definitely recommend the course and the school after my really pleasant and easy experience!

Great design course for those new to the design! I really enjoyed working with my mentor, learned a ton of new staff! Highly recommend! 

I came into this course with absolutely zero design experience and finished feeling like I could call myself a designer. The course offers excellent content and mentorship and exceeded my expectations. A strong commitment and motivation are required, but there was so much to gain and to me it was worth the time and price. Highly recommend especially if you do not have much (or any) design experience and plan to get into UX! 

I came into this course knowing absolutely nothing about design, and I came out of it as prepared as I could have ever hoped to be. It really teaches you the basics of design from a completely blank slate, and does so in a manner that's easy to understand. The projects are wonderfully tiered so that they really build on each other and allow you to learn in a hands-on manner. The mentor calls were an invaluable resource for feedback. Having someone to bounce ideas off of or to answer general questions really allowed me to learn "how things are" in the real world that only serves to supplement the course. I could not recommend this place enough.

I would definitely recommend the Designlab's Design 101. Although I wasn't originally planning on taking it, it's a pre-requisite for enrolling on their UX Academy - and so worth it! Lots of good, useful information, the course material is interesting and easy to digest, the platform is visually appealing and intuitive, and my favorite - excellent mentoring.
On a side note, I wasn't a fan of their file upload limit (I had to find a file compressor online), and the estimated time for completing lessons and projects is way off - it took me almost double the time to complete, if not more.

Overall it was a great experience to go from no design background to building a project of my own that I'm proud of!

I greatly enjoyed this course! The content was well organized and beneficial to my learning. My mentor was great. She provided timely feedback on my work which was great. I would recommend this course to anyone with a penchant for design.

I did a lot research before deep diving into a bootcamp. Glad I chose Designlab. What set this bootcamp apart for me aside the price was the helpfulness of having one on one mentorship meetings weekly to go over material and the career services portion after graduation has been better than my college career services when I received my bachelors.