1. UX Academy Foundations

Great learning experience that improved my design skills

I had a lot of fun and learned quite a bit in my 8 week Foundations course.  It was both challenging and rewarding.  I was able to pick up a lot of skills and learn how to implement my artistic inclinations in the world of UI design.  My mentor was very nice and helped me to reach my goals.It is self-paced, so be prepared to be self-motivated.  But you do get one hour weekly sessions with someone in the industry, so it's well worth the price for that alone.

This bootcamp was meant to be a short introduction to UI design. For someone like me who had no prior experience with designing, I found it extremely helpful. There are short lessons, easy to follow tutorials, and projects that really test your skills. Within each lesson, there are tons of additional resources given.  The mentorship program was something that I picked this course for specifically. You get eight lessons to go over work, ask questions, get advice, and whatever else you need. It's a very well thought out and organized program. The only thing is the discord is still a little unorganized but that's because they just switched over from Slack. 

The curriculum was awesome, but a lot of the experience depends on your mentor. If they are engaged, you'll learn tons from them. If they are unresponsive or you don't click, you might be a bit underwhelmed.The learning material was very thorough and had good emphasis on UI and visual design. The projects were also very good practice, and enjoyable to complete.

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 

I joined DesignLab as a student referral. The student went through this course and was able to get a new career path in Product Design. I took a leap of faith and applied to the UX Academy Foundations to give it a try. I have no professional background in UX UI Design so this foundation coursed helped a lot. You are set up with a mentor for 1-no-1 meetings and get personal advice from people who are leaders and senior in their field. I was able to work based on my pace and got through it well. DesignLab had a lot of recourses that I couldn't keep up with using and there were so many students you can network with. I'm very excited to have completed my foundation's courses so I can move forward to their other courses.

My experience with Designlab overall was enjoyable.  I loved the fact that the course were online and being able to have these one-on-one sessions with a mentor was a great way for me to able to communicate my progress without having distractions.  My mentor was wonderful and patient, even when I was sick for a week, he was understanding about my situation.  I had previous experience with graphic designing, but studying in UXA Foundations helped renewed my old skills as well as learn new skills with new programs such as Figma.  I can't wait to take on UX Academy in the near future. 

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. 

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. 

Taking the UX Foundations course was beneficial for my UX journey.

Had a great experience in the program. Material was easy to digest, projects were fun an challenging, and had a great mentorship program as well! 

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. 

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!

Pros: Mentor support, straightforward assignments, good practice opportunitiesCons: 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!

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. 

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. 

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.

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!

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 costCons- 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

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.