1. UX Academy Foundations

I can speak highly enough about my experience in the UX Academy Foundations course. From my initial enquiry all the way through to the end, whether through emails, webinars or calls, everyone I had contact with at Designlab was super helpful and super friendly. This Foundations course took me eight weeks to complete as I was balancing another course on web development at the same time. You can however choose to finish the course over four weeks if your schedule allows. The course content itself is well structured and builds up upon itself as you progress through the units.One of the best things about the course is having a mentor. It was excellent having someone go through your work, chat about design/UI, give you advice. My mentor gave me honest and encouraging feedback that made me enjoy the work and want to do even more.Designlabs - a great team of people, a good course and an awesome attitude overall! 

Design Lab offers good structure, light reading and interesting coursework to work on each week (something that I look forward to!). The mentor program is definitely useful for someone who has no UI/UX background. Over the 8 weeks, I can certainly see progress from my deliverables and I would recommend this to anyone who's interested in kickstarting a UI/UX career! 

I took the UX Academy Foundations course this summer and am very satisfied. I came from a background with no design experience and now have a grasp of basic design principles and feel comfortable using my design tool of choice, Figma. I really enjoyed having a mentor who I could meet with after each unit to discuss any questions I had along with my project work. 

I really enjoyed my experience taking the Foundations course. I found the curriculum and projects manageable yet challenging (in a good way). The best part of the program was working one-on-one with a mentor that is a successful designer. Designlab also has a really active Slack community, and I found that to be a great way to connect with other students and stay in the loop on any updates regarding Designlab, including frequent webinars that they hosted about various topics (they were all really well done and valuable). Overall, I think this class is a great introduction to UI design and serves as a great pulse check before you commit to a full bootcamp. It helped me understand if I would like to learn on an online platform and assess how much time commitment it would be. I'd definitely recommend this course. 

I'm reviewing the UX Academy Foundations (4-8) introductory course.This was a really solid course. I learned a ton about visual design, UI design, color, and typography. I also found the mentor sessions really valuable. My mentor was great: supportive, insightful, and helped me many times along the way. The course is broken into eight units, with multiple readings and projects in each. One thing I really liked about the course was the teaching style. Most units involve a few readings to learn about basic ideas and concepts, then a project where you copy as closely as you can a successful website doing that concept, then you get a prompt where you are making the creative decisions yourself. I really liked the copywork where you're learning both the mental skills and the technical Figma/Sketch skills to make various things happen before you then start making the creative choices yourself.There were one or two projects that were a little frustrating, but my mentor and the Slack community helped me out a lot.I was able to complete the course in 4-weeks, putting in about 25-30ish hours each week.

I had a great experience with Designlab and highly recommend it. 

This program was honestly a great experience. I'm an extremely honest person and I wouldn't write a review unless it was really good, or really bad... haha. I really did learn quite a bit when it comes to UI design standards. I also learned my chosen design software (figma) to a good extent as well. The projects seem to heavily focus on getting comfortable with the software which is what I needed. I found that the reading was a bit dense at times but there were some great resources and concepts that I learned from them. The projects were a bit vague at times but I liked that because it leaves room for creativity and interpretation. It was a great start into my career switch and really is designed for students like me with no prior design experience at all. On a personal note I want to share that I experienced the greatest loss of my life by losing my mother and grandmother while I was taking this course. The staff was exceptionally understanding and flexible to my needs.My critique would have to be being paired with a mentor who is on a completely different page then you. Having strong design skills and a passion for design doesn't necessarily make you a great mentor.  I'm sure there are provisions and accommodations if you really don't mesh well with your mentor, but since it's a short course I would recommend just buckling down and bearing through if you're not a fan of your mentor. But that was the only part of the course that didn't sit entirely well with me. 

Designlab was an amazing experience! I really enjoyed the self-paced readings/projects. My mentor, chris, was really incredible and informative and guided me so well through the course! The projects were great experience!

A really great experience. The foundations course is just that with a great mix of both lessons and hands-on activities, I feel confident, after this course that I want to move onto the academy and start my career.

I attended this course to help me get to understand what UX/UI design is and to affirm that it was a good idea to shift my career to this field.I have a biochemistry background and have always loved tech. I wanted to shift to tech and specifically to UX Research and design so as I can be able to use my skills and love for tech to solve daily problems affecting our society.I got this from the UXA Foundations course. It opened up my view on solving problems and how to approach a challenge.I learned UI Skills, including color & Typography.The last 10-hour design challenge was so wonderful and I enjoyed administering my learning skills to execute the project.Thank you the DesignLAB team for your help and My Mentor for guiding me through the course.I am definitely going to join the UX Academy Bootcamp with DesignLAB so as to continue my journey in UX/UI design.This course will definitely help you decide if you wanna continue in UX/UI design.

I really enjoyed UX Academy Foundations. After researching various bootcamps to learn more about UX design, I chose Designlab because I liked that it was self-paced which worked well with my busy schedule. Although it was self-paced, the material and lessons provided were substantial and I felt like I learned a lot. The hands-on projects were invaluable as well - I was able to pick up Figma through these projects as each lesson/project built upon the one before it so that I had a clear understanding by the end of the course. I also really enjoyed the 1:1 sessions with my mentor. He was able to answer my specific questions and really helped me as I went through the course. I highly recommend DesignLab UX Academy Foundations for anyone wanting to learn the basic principles of UX design.

The pros are an excellent curriculum, support from the staff, lots of extra webinars, and a weekly meeting with a mentor. I did not know what to expect when I registered and was anxiously excited. The program far exceeded my expectations and I could not be happier. I'm enrolling in another course immediately. 

DesignLab UX Academy Foundations is a really good online/mentor-based, that will give a UI base skills to get into a UX world. Expect to expend some extra time on the course than the one stated in the description by DesignLab, and note that 8 out 9 units are UI focus.

UX Academy Foundations is a great UI Design crash course. You get to learn and complete several activities every unit on UI design principles and basic visual design principles. Not only have I learned a great deal, but I also gained  expertise in a couple standard industry tools. I would highly recommend this course to anyone trying to learn the basics of design and get their feet wet. 

Foundations has been an extremely helpful program and I have learned so much along the way! Excited to move forward and learn more.

This course helped me go from knowing very little about UX/UI Design to gaining the skills set to build a website from scratch and mobile app screens. It is self-paced and the weekly one-on-one meeting with my mentor was super helpful. 

Overall, great course for someone with no design background. The content was interesting and up-to-date, most of the course was devoted to hands-on projects that were then discussed and iterated on with feedback from your mentor (best and most helpful part), and course structure was switched up just at the right times to keep up motivation. Great student community and great support from Designlab team.

I thoroughly enjoyed Designlab. The curriculum was engaging and my mentor was amazing. I felt encouraged and supported the entire time. Just from taking Foundations, I have learned so much and now have a solid base knowledge to go off of. I highly recommend Designlab!

 Overall, the program is very practical and I was excited to work on the projects. My mentor worked hard and gave me detailed feedback. She was also responsive and did a good job of answering my questions. However, I also had some issues.  I was planning to finish the course in 4 weeks to get ready for the UX Academy program, and I answered that in the survey before I started the foundation course. I expected that my mentor would know that I only had 4 weeks as a result and that we would do 2 sessions a week in order for me to finish at the time I wanted to finish. However, it seemed like she did not know this when we started, and she initially expected that we would meet once a week. This leads me to believe that there was a lack of communication on the part of the school with my mentor. Additionally, I contacted the school about this, but they took a week to respond, and they did not really do anything, so I ultimately just had to talk with my mentor and solve the situation.  As a result, I ended up missing out on 2 sessions by the time I finished the course. The sessions also felt rushed as well since I had fewer of them than normal.  I feel like I lost some opportunity to learn as much as I could have otherwise. I thought that I was going to be able to use the last two sessions to review concepts that I learned during the course, but after finishing the final project for the foundation course, I discovered that I couldn’t even make any more appointments with my mentor, despite having 2 sessions left. This despite the fact that I had previously talked with my mentor about using the last 2 sessions for review, and she had said ok.  I contacted my mentor and the school about this issue of missing out on 2 sessions, but I have yet to receive a response.  I think the school needs to better communicate the time expectations of the program. If they do not expect students to complete it in only 4 weeks, they should make that clear, and communicate it to anyone who signs up indicating that they want to apply for a UX Academy cohort that is coming up soon. Or, if it is ok for a student to finish in 4 weeks, then they should more proactively communicate the student’s expectations of scheduling to the mentor so that it is clear to the mentor right from the start what the person they are working with wants.  My overall experience was that the coursework was good, but I felt rushed and like I wasn’t able to enjoy the experience as much as I think I could have with more time. Because all of these issues come from a lack of communication, it does make me a little nervous going into the UX Academy program. 

Nothing but positive things to say about Designlab's Foundations course! I started four weeks ago with 0 experience in design, feeling unsure about whether or not I had what it took to become a designer. Fast-forward to today and having just finished the course, I can say that I have so much more confidence in my design abilities and have learned valuable skills that I feel will help me on my career journey to becoming a UX designer. The staff at Designlab has clearly put a lot of time and effort into creating a curriculum that helps even a design newbie like me confidently learn and build skills. If you're concerned about whether you can do this course part-time, don't be: the course is structured so that you can choose to finish on a full-time or part-time track. One of the best part's of the course, in addition to the Slack community of fellow students, is having one-on-one time with a mentor. Designlab clearly puts a lot of thought into who they choose for their mentorship program and I feel that this was a major key to my success in the course. The mentor assigned to me for the duration of the course has over ten year of experience in UX/UI design and I learned so much through working with him throughout the course. Being able to ask questions, hear about industry trends and real-life design projects and experiences was invaluable to me. If you're on the fence about taking a course, I highly encourage you to sign up for an informative webinar and/or chat with someone from Designlab! In addition to having a friend who graduated the course prior to me, speaking with Designlab staff and getting my questions answered during the webinar is what helped me make the decision to invest my time and money in the course and I'm so glad I did!! I now feel confident and excited to continue on this path and I plan on continuing to the full UX Academy.