2. UX Academy (Part-time)

I have a design background however no experience with UX design. UX academy really sets an excellent foundation for expectations going into the UX Design industry. 

I am taking the UX Academy part time program, and feel this is giving me a good start on how UX process works and a step towards the field. 

UX Academy is a very well structured course that helps you gain the foundational skills you need to work in the UX/UI field.  I learned not only design skills, but also how to conduct research, and how to give and receive feedback ( which is critical to working on a design team). In addition, I learned how to iterate quickly, and learned how to justify my decision decisions ( important when collaborating with  and managing stakeholders) and how to present my design process. Having a dedicated mentor guiding you  is one of the best parts of this course. I learned so much from my mentor and am very glad that he challenged me and made me a better designer. In addition to this, they also have a very supportive community of students, former students, teachers, and mentors who you can reach out to for help. The community discussions and feedback  keep you motivated  and are excellent for networking. So by the time you graduate from the course, you already have your own network of people to help you find a design job.

I really enjoyed the UX Academy. I have learned a lot in a very practical way. I like the studying system that allowed me quickly to practise my learnings. A great help and support were also mentoring sessions and group crits. It gave me a chance to work and create with wonderful people from all around the world.

I chose to jump into UX Academy hoping to change careers into UX/Product Design. I had weighed between Bloc and Designlab at the time and chose Designlab in order to wholly focus on UX Design. So I paid the upfront $5200 to start my journey. I was excited to start and was expecting a well thought out format in teaching and learning about the design process. However, after going through the complete course I can say that there was not much value beyond what could be found through viewing other graduates online portfolios and following the process much like they do (supplemented by free sources online).

The best part of my experience with Designlab was the mentorship. My mentor was amazing and was able to help me understanding what part of the process is relevant and important to focus on. There were a lot of things he would explain that the course itself would not share. 

The other good thing about the course is getting you to have a discipline to stay on course and focus on product design for a certain amount of time. It pushed me to learn and practice everything, which otherwise I probably wouldn't.

Beyond those two things, there was not much value that Designlab put forth is being able to help you swtich careers. There would be group critique sessions that would not be entirely helpful as critiques were coming from other students who are just learning as well. There are one facilitator that would provide great feedback, however, the focus would be for other students to participate so the feedback would be limited. 

The 3 capstone projects during Phase 2 of the course are great projects to get you to practice everything. However, the prompts are simple and you could do these without having to actually go through the course. 

For a UX bootcamp, there are also a lot of UX issues with their online platform. It can get frustrating to navigate and actually keep track of things.

Finally, if you're hoping to stay eligible for tuition reimbursement after 6-months of job searching, make sure you follow their eligibility requirements perfectly. If you miss one thing in any way, they will not sympathize with you. They will find any excuse to not get you your refund. They are incredibly dismissive and have personally made me feel like I was an afterthought.

After graduating, career services isn't so much service but more bookkeeping for their sake. The support here purely comes from your mentor.

After this experience, I somewhat regret spending an entire year with them and spending the $5200. I would suggest that perhaps it would be more worth your while to find alternative cheaper ways to learn the design process and work on your own projects. Alternatively, I believe an on-site course (despite the higher price) would be much better, as you would have instructors with you there at all times and fellow students to learn alongside.

I hope this helps whoever is hoping to change careers!

Great hands on, one on one mentoring, but terrible portfolio review process.

I am a mid level professional who wanted a career change but didn't want to commit to another time consuming, expensive degree program. I needed to update my skill set and Designlab's UX Academy seemed like a perfect fit. Their one on one mentoring sold me along with the hands on projects and portfolio I'd have once I was done. Another selling point since I've been at the same comaony for 19 years was their career services. I need help and some guidance in that area. The problem is I can't get my portfolio through their review board. It's a terrible process that needs to be changed. You can't review a someone's work over email. That is how they give feedback: in an email. What they need to do is set up a video conference and review the portfolio in real time so the mentors can give constructive feedback. Most of the feedback I've gotten is not constructive at all, but more subjective. I can't act on subjective feedback because what one person likes another won't. So how do you ever get approved? Everything was great up until this point. Now, the one thing I placed all my hope in changing my career has let me down. I feel defeated, disappointed and no one at the school will help me. All I can do is warn you not to sign up for this program until they have changed the portfolio review process.