1. UX Academy Foundations

Good 4 week intro to UI Design course.Most useful part is the 1on1 meetings with a Senior Design Professional who is available to help critique your coursework and answer any questions you may have.

Great course to learn the basics of visual and UI design. The only issue that I had was coordinating with my mentor in Australia but he was fairly responsive to email.

Pros: -Everything is well structured. The Foundations course is broken up into 8 units, with 1-7 being learning based. In those units everything is broken down by time and it's really nice that they encouraged you to upload work even though it's not finished. -You get a mentor and there's a dedicated discord community you have to join when you start Design Lab. It's full of love and support. -On top of reading for knowledge, you get to do tutorials, and most of the unit is project basedCons:-Very few (probably just one) of the video tutorials is not up to date (I'm looking at you auto layout tutorial) which made it really difficult to learn. - I feel like I spent way more time to finish a few of the final projects in each unit. I definitely spent long hours/ days on some of the copy work projects but this is where "it's okay not to finish comes in" *I am not going to put a rating for "Job Support/ Assistance" because it's not applicable for the foundations course. Foundations give you a snapshot for design work. You definitely need to take the Academy Bootcamp to get access to their Job Support services. Would highly recommend!

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.

When I discovered the world of UX Design I remember I was flooded with feelings of intrigue, curiosity, and excitement. You mean I get to work in tech making creative impacts based on logic and best practice? Wow! It didn’t take very long for me to understand: I want to be a UX Designer. The Foundations course at Design Lab has tripled my excitement about transitioning into a career in UX Design. Having just graduated, I feel empowered to not only design and collaborate, but also to keep learning as I take the next steps towards my career goal. My time in Foundations has been priceless. I’ve been heard, supported, and also challenged…consistently, all in an effort to ensure I have the best possible experience. My favorite parts of Foundations has been chatting with my peers in the robust Discord community, as well as my time with my amazing mentor, Amandreo! To be honest, I really don’t think I could have asked for a more perfect mentor match. Amandreo was present, straight-forward, and immeasurably insightful. Foundations has been the perfect first chapter in my story as a UX Designer, and DesingLab as a whole has watered my intrigue, curiosity, and excitement more than I expected. 

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.

I really enjoyed the UX Academy Foundations course! The content was laid out in a logical and easy to understand way. Each unit (1-7) consisted of some readings and tutorial videos, followed by practice exercises, then a unit project. I felt like the readings and practice really prepared me for the project. The content presented in each unit built nicely upon each other and prepared me for the 10 hour design challenge in Unit 8. By the end of the course I felt like I had a good grasp on using Figma (You can also choose to use Sketch), and the basics of UI Design. In addition to a well-thought out course, I really enjoyed the mentorship! I met with my mentor twice a week because I finished the course in 4 weeks. He offered Figma support, provided constructive feedback on my projects, and pushed my design thinking. Overall, his help and suggestions really improved my initial designs and got them to a point where I was really proud of what I had created.I'm looking forward to applying for the UX Academy!

I found the course adequate. Not great but alright. I do fear the experience will be similar with UXA but I know what to do going forward (to take other classes simultaneously  since the level of instruction is poor). My first mentor didn’t work out so I was flailing about  for a bit until placed with someone new. It worked out in the end because I had extra time to perfect with final product with my mentor. The DL support team is top notch. Rudi is the best!

More than anything, I feel that while you are learning many UX/UI Fundamental at the same time I felt that the material could be easily learned elsewhere. hat is not to say that the material is useless or bad. Mentoring took the material to another level and especially receiving feedback from your work. My mentor was great and I enjoyed the community of people along with that/

Pros: work on your own time, get feedback from a professional, have a structure Cons: Limited meeting times with mentor.                                                                                                                                           

I was impressed with the platform they use cos it made everything so easy and smooth to locate and find. You do your lessons there, checkout other students submissions and see how they're doing and also schedule your mentor sessions there. The course is broken up onto 7 units, each with subunits and the content is broken up into bite size which is easy to digest, they also provide a cheatsheet at the end of the unit for you to refer to. After the lessons, you get to do some copy work followed by designing a page based on what you have learnt. Do note that this course focus mostly on UI than UX and the content shared is concise in terms of what you need to know but if you really want to learn more you need to do some exploring and reading up on your own. You'll also have a weekly session with your mentor, or however often you decide it to be. I did it weekly and finished the course in 8 weeks. The mentor sessions were really helpful for me to gain insights about the industry and clarify any information I'm unsure about. He's really patient, knowledge and is happy to share everything he knows. Overall, I would really recommend this course to anyone who has no experience and is interested in learning UI design. 

This course is a great way for visual learners to learn the world of US and UI design. It is interactive as well as being very informative!

UX academy foundations was, in my experience, a very fun and useful introduction to UI design.  It's meant to serve as a way to get people with no experience comfortable with creating responsive design layouts for mobile and desktop web and it does that up in a very effective way.The best part, in my opinion, is that the structure of each unit is thorough and represents a learning arc that takes you from reading to doing; by the end of each week, you're given an opportunity to essentially do a peer-reviewed project associated with a particular skill set that is part of the design process, and this happens once a week for the length of the course.  I think it's an effective structure, and it has been fun (there are several boring bits when you're essentially rote memorizing through repetition, but if you have to learn a software tool inside out to be effective, like figma or adobe xd, you have to be tolerant of a certain degree of boredom). The mentorship experience was unequivocally what made the course excellent.  Working alongside or getting regular feedback from a peer with experience is pretty much invaluable for reinforcing skill acquisition, and it worked for me.  My mentor was fun to talk to and easy to work with, and that was great too. Overall, I'm quite positive about the experience, and it rates quite well compared to the many other uni courses I've taken.

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 very happy with my decision to take Designlab's Foundations course. As someone with no design background or experience, this was a great prerequisite course for learning basic design principles. Taking the Foundations course also helped me to decide if UX design was a track I wanted to take.  What I love most about the Foundations course were the projects and mentor sessions. The projects really helped me to apply my learning and get a feel for UX design, while the mentor sessions were great for refining my work and answering my questions. I also love that the course is spread out into units with projects and a reflection/quiz at the end of each unit. If you are considering a career change into UX Design and have no previous background, I highly recommend taking the Foundations course.

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. 

Laura was a fantastic mentor, i worked well with her grading style and she was very quick with uploading feedback as well as being very thorough with feedback as well. the course was easy to navigate. the workload was as expected. i wish rubrics for each deliverable had examples of what good and bad work looks like rather than a few sentences. i also wish there was more info on auto-layout as i had to learn that on my own with the help of youtube videos. maybe make it an optional but highly encouraged section of a unit.

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 initially picked Designlab's Foundations course as my first UX bootcamp to solidify that this was the career change for me. Designlab has been AMAZING - they matched me with an experienced mentor who met with me weekly and gave great feedback as well as helped me learn more difficult concepts. Designlab's foundations is exactly what it sounds like - a foundational course for those who have zero experience in the UX design industry. You have access to their whole community and collaborate often with peers. It is a great introductory course that gives learners foundations in UI design so that they can successfully navigate into studying UX design. The curriculum is detailed and you get out of this course what you put in. You can coast through this course but the more you collaborate with peers, seek feedback, and work with your mentor the more you will get out of this course. There is a lot of peer and mentor support, as well as encouragement from Designlab. 

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.