Designlab

I had a fantastic experience with Designlab's UX Academy. When I enrolled, I was already an experienced designer, but I had been at the same small company for a very long time. I was ready to move on, but despite job hunting for almost 3 years I wasn't getting any interest at all from the senior positions I wanted. I enrolled in Designlab to make my portfolio attractive for senior-level roles, learn what had changed in the industry since my last job hunt, and get inspiration and mentorship to pull me out of my rut. I was able to accomplish exactly that. I have a portfolio I'm proud of, and in my post-UXA job hunt, I got almost a 50% response rate to my applications and landed a senior position within 5 weeks. I realize this is a different experience from most brand new and career transitioning students, but I highly recommend the course for more experienced designers as well.  Read less

I would recommend anyone with no design experience to take foundations. I thought the curriculum was well thought out, the lecture and assignments  were well-paced and covered a decent amount of topics. Learned a lot! I also had the opportunity to learn with my mentor through feedback and discussed the design industry over webcam. Personally, I think learning through feedback is very effective. I also thought the slack community with DesignLab was helpful to help each other out and connect virtually. Overall, I think it was a great experience.  Read less

With UX Foundations, you learn principles, tools and industry insights - while having access to 1-on-1 mentorship and a great community to support you with feedback. It's self-paced and the support goes out of their way to check-in if you seem to have some work to catch up on. Sometimes life gets in the way, but the support team is always there to help! With Designlab you get some nice perks to enjoy some tools at discounted prices.  Read less

DesignLab's UX Academy Foundations course was probably the best online design short course I've taken. For reference, I've taken Skillcrush's Visual Design course & Springboard's UX Design Skills course (discontinued at end of 2019, they now offer a similar Design 101 course) 

There are a few reasons DesignLab's UXA Foundations course stood out (especially from those other ones).
- Hands on learning (the curriculum is structured in a way where the emphasis is on doing rather than just reading/watching and taking notes). 
- Custom curriculum (DesignLab has a curriculum team that writes and makes the lessons. This is a lot different than Springboard that just links to articles on the web). 
-  8 hour long mentor calls (this is the best thing about the course. Having a mentor kept me accountable, on track with completing the course on time, and I learned a lot by having an experienced designer review my work) 

$499 price tag felt intimidating at first but wow, is the course worth it. I learned so much Read less

I love DesignLab! I have taken two courses with them (Design 101 in 2019 and UX: Interaction Design in 2021). Both courses were run extremely smoothly, and I highly recommend Designlab to anyone who is looking to up their design skillset. I find the mentorship aspect of the courses most valuable. Being able to talk to a "real," experienced designer has elevated my performance at work. Read less

I wasn't ready to go all in on a months-long bootcamp so this course was a good way to figure out if this was a career change I wanted to make. I really enjoyed the experience and got a lot out of it, especially the larger projects and mentorship sessions. Each unit consists of some reading material, video tutorials, copying exercises, and a design project. The last unit is just one big design project. You're paired with a mentor who gives written feedback on the projects and meets with you one-on-one for an hour for each unit (8 total). I thought the reading material was only okay, but the projects and mentorship sessions were great for getting a feel for what the work is like and learning to use the tools. Would definitely recommend this course. Read less

I think UXA Foundations was a great learning experience for me! I've taken some courses at Coursera and had some background in Figma prior to starting, so I wasn't sure how much I'd really learn from the course. The answer was A LOT! Each unit contains a couple projects to truly cement what I've learned, and my mentor gave me personalized feedback to help improve my designs. To be transparent, there was a good amount of copywork (copying existing designs) in the curriculum. They're a good way to get an understanding of how shipped designs are built and what tricks they use, and how to accomplish them on your own on a limited time frame. I got really good at using Figma this way! After each copywork assignment, you also got the chance to create your own designs (landing page, hero section, responsive webpage, etc.) and again get feedback from your mentor. 

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I just finished the Design Lab Foundations course, this was an awesome course with access to a mentor throughout the entire process. The course is very well laid out, each unit starts with some readings then you usually have multiple small assignments along with one larger project. The smaller assignments can take around 1-2 hours while the longer projects are usually around 3-4 hours with the final project being 10 hours. I love the simplicity in this course layout, I was able to start each day by doing the readings then working through the assignments, finishing the course in about 3 weeks. This was nearly full time as I worked on it for about 6-8 hours per day during the week. I'm planning to do the UX Academy through Design Lab as they do an incredible job teaching the material and providing support and help along the way. My mentor was fantastic, they work in the industry and answered all my questions about becoming a UX/UI designer, we made iterations to my projects to improve my designs as well. Design Lab has a great modern way of teaching, providing an incredible foundation of design while also ensuring the students are using the most prominent tools in the industry and challenging you with fun and interesting projects. Excited to get started in UX Academy at Design Lab and can't wait to work in this industry. Foundations is perfect if you are considering getting into UX/UI but aren't sure where to get started.  Read less

I just want to start by saying this was my personal experience and yours may differ.

Overall I had a good experience with DesignLab and if it wasn't for their program I wouldn't have had transitioned my career as quickly as I have today.

The overall curriculum is well done, and the structure of their course is great! At the beginning of my journey in DesignLab, the staff was great! They were very communicative with any questions I had pertaining to the course, finances, etc. I enrolled as a full-time student and the work was heavy, but enjoyable! Lots of great content although some of the modules had broken links throughout the course which was a bit frustrating, but not a big deal.

My mentor during the course was amazing and helped me so much with questions, feedback, etc. This was probably the best of my journey in DesignLab. I graduated with a high score on my portfolio review and was excited to begin the real journey of landing a position in UX/UI.

Unfortunately, this is where DesignLab stopped providing the support I needed. They did provide some good articles and assignments to help you establish a cover letter, resume, and tips for applying to work. However, the information was no different than Googling "How to land a job in UX design." My main focus and hope during career services was working with a career coach who would help me land a role. I was paired with my first career services coach and although she was knowledgeable in the field, I struggled to communicate with her. She did not speak English well, I had a difficult time understanding her and she didn't seem to understand my questions most of the time. I was not getting detailed feedback on my portfolio, resume, and progress so eventually after a few meetings, I decided to request a new mentor. I filled out the questionnaire to request a new mentor, but my request was ignored. I had to reach back out to request it again, and they made me re-fill out the questionnaire. I was paired with a new career coach and my experience was the same. During each call, they were unprepared and did not have much value to provide to me. They struggled to answer questions about my job search journey, and I felt that our meetings were a waste of time. I stopped scheduling meetings and looked for support elsewhere, where I was able to connect with a career coach who was able to give much more valuable tips on landing a job.

I attempted to contact DesignLab regarding my experience and to request a new mentor, but my emails were ignored again. Not sure why I haven't had contact with them, but it seems like after you graduate from the course, they stop providing the support you would receive during the beginning of the course.

The experience was good, but if you are looking for career support specifically, you may want to check out some other Bootcamp Courses.  Read less

Enjoyed DesignLab’s UX Academy. It’s a course that goes over every part of the UX design process and comes with a hugely supportive community and group of mentors. Each week there were plenty of opportunities to not only learn, but to practice UX and get feedback on projects. Great experience! Read less

I really enjoyed this UX Foundations course. As someone who had ZERO design experience before starting, I really feel like I gained a solid grounding in UI design. Design patterns, design theory, colour selection, typography, iconography etc. I feel as if each of these topics were given equal exposure and I now feel more confident about hopefully enrolling in the Academy soon. 
I felt as though the projects in this course were varied in nature and there was a nice balance between this and the theory side of the course. I really enjoyed the experience and would recommend this course to anyone considering entering the world of UX design.
Just a warning though. This course is entirely UI. No UX at all. To my understanding, you will only begin with the UX side of things in UX Academy (which is the big course that comes after UX Academy Foundations). I believe that DL say this is because they want new students to the world of design to have the essential skills in UI (and on the different apps) squared away before they enter the wider learning world of UX.
The only point I would make is that there are quite a few projects that require you to copy existing designs out there. Now, that's fine and it's good practice on whichever design tool you're using. However, I assumed that the reason for all these copy projects was to gain experience on these design tools in preparation for UX Academy As such, it did begin to get a bit boring. When I mentioned this to my mentor, she said another reason for these exercises is so that we as students can start to look out for design patterns and to think about why the designers of these forms, landing pages, app screens etc made them the way they did.
Eureka! I really feel that if Designlab had explained the purpose for these exercises earlier on, I would have approached these projects in a different way and would have gained more from the experience. Now, this isn't a criticism. This course is only a very new one so I am sure they will make improvements down the line. Just something for the DL team to consider.
All in all, a great course and recommended :) Read less

I think it was a really great course for intro UI course.
Nice readings and assignments.
The only problem might be the name itself. 
I don't think this is a Foundation UX course, this is more Foundation UI I think...
But I'm not sure, since I'm new to this world of UX. I might be wrong.
It just felt like more UI classes than UX for me.
And they were great. Read less

Though I come from a graphic design background, I knew virtually nothing about UX/UI. After a quick four weeks of their Design 101 foundations course, which taught me the fundamentals of UI design, I was ready to take on the three-plus months of the main UX Academy. Though I did have to switch mentors at the very beginning, (my first one was unresponsive) I had a great time. My mentor was outstanding and really guided me through the work. It certainly wasn't easy, and it's a lot of work, but I would absolutely recommend this program to anyone who's interested in UI/UX. I spent only a short time in creative services, but from what I did participate in, it was also great. I found a job pretty early on. Read less

This program has taught me a lot about design. I really enjoy the mentoring sessions, I chose to complete the course in 4 weeks, and it wasn't overwhelming, I also work full-time (unrelated to design). The program is self-paced and there is not a recommended schedule, so before I started I wrote down when I wanted to accomplish everything. Most of the lectures are writings online, with a few video tutorials. There is a lot of time spent on projects which I really enjoyed, as I prefer doing projects and learning by experience as opposed to tests or lectures. It was really simple to contact my mentor and set up the meetings, she was very helpful and gave me some tricks. I like that all the mentors are working in the UX industry so they have practical experience. Overall, this program was amazing and I am excited to do the full boot camp.  Read less

Such an amazing program! I came in with no design experience and ended with so many tools on my belt! The impact of the curriculum is evident by the quality  of my projects over time. My mentor was so helpful and available to advise me along the way. The curriculum is straight and to the point and the projects were impactful Read less

I took this full time with the intention of going into UX Academy immediately afterwards.  I found their estimates for course work to be underestimates by about 25 to 50%.  There are parts units they don't count but are really worth doing if you are not familiar with the tool you use (Figma). Read less

I found it quite overwhelming to study during a global pandemic and doing research as to which program I should be in was very overwhelming. I went through tedious research and comparing curriculums to comparing price ranges and it's quite intimidating to get to a course that you've no idea of, let alone spend money for it. I finally decided to shoot an email to Designlab, and actually thought they won't respond but they did! They even gave me a zoom call. The call was from the UK and I'm from southeast Asia, so timezones were in the extremes. Up to this day, I am very grateful for that call from the admissions office before joining the program because at that time someone in my family had Covid and I really appreciate that gesture. I reached out in October 2020 and I finally joined the course in January 2021. I'm halfway through and so excited to step into the new path that I'll have after this. I would also like to stress that the mentor program that they have really helped my confidence in learning and affirmed me in so many ways. You get fully onboarded from the get-go and I really liked that they're very responsive to all of my inquiries and very open to feedback because they want to improve! :)  Read less

I chose DesignLab after months of research. I'm a former teacher making a career change, so a comprehensive, flexible curriculum was essential for me. DesignLab uses project based learning to immerse you in the world of UX and UI. The updated Foundations course teaches you the software (Figma, Sketch, XD) through assignments, and your mentor guides you in a personalized way once a week. I couldn't have chosen a better course- and if you finish Foundations, you get a discount applicable towards the next step in the DL course list- UX Academy. For people who want to get their money's worth for their education, choose DesignLab- I'd wager it was more worth it than my university degree! Read less

DesignLab Foundations helped me jumpstart a career shift from Sales into Design. Doing this bootcamp part-time was a great choice - I never felt rushed or overwhelmed with the time commitment, it was very reasonable. The program included lots of cool projects and taught everything I needed to know for each project. The mentorship program is also worth noting - my mentor was amazing, always very supportive and wanting to help out. I would highly recommend this program to anyone looking to learn about UX Design. Read less