Springboard

I attended the Springboard UX Design program from September 2017 to April 2018 and had a great experience. I initially started my course in 2016 for three months before pausing the program. Since that time the curriculum was significantly revamped for the better. The strongest aspect of the course are the mentors providing weekly coaching. I had three mentors throughout my Springboard courses, two of which had experience in the game development industry, which was important to me. One of my mentors did not have much experience in the industry and as a result I requested a change in mentors. This was the only negative experience I had with the course, and resulted in some duplicated work when I transitioned to my next mentor. Even though this mentor did not have game development experience, they had plenty of Fortune 500 UX knowledge and if my desired job was not so niche, I believe the mentor relationship would have been excellent.

The curriculum has a relatively short beginner's guide to UX concepts before introducing the capstone project. The capstone will take up most of your time, and all of the small assignments build to this final project. I felt like the training content (largely through Lynda videos) was applicable and engaging. It helped to apply the ideas from the video directly to my project as I took notes. Having a capstone to constantly build on while studying these concepts provided constant motivation. My mentor also helped take concepts and apply them to my project. I found it easy to speed through sections I was already well versed in, and enjoyed being able to take my time in sections that were new to me.

Overall, I'd recommend this program with the caveat that if your mentor doesn't feel right for you in your gut don't feel afraid to contact Springboard support immediately and talk it out with them. They are very responsive and immediately placed me with a mentor that fit my needs. I'm glad I learned the skills I did, and was able to create a professional portfolio from my learning experiences.

Something they don't mention in the on-boarding/ marketing material is that you also get a year's Lynda.com subscription with your Springboard course. This is a great resource to access if you have other disciplines you want to study.

I completed the introduction to data science course in 3 months. The course used the R programming language and covered important skills required of data scientist. This included data wrangling, data visualizations, data story telling, probability and statistics, and machine learning. The course also provided career resources. The material in this course was good and I believe I learned a lot. There is also a capstone project you are required to complete. This is where you bring all the skills you learned together. 

The best part of the course was a mentor who’s is a professional data scientist where you get 1:1 calls once per week. You can chat about anything data science related. The mentor helps guide you and motivate you, especially on the capstone project.

All in all I thought the learning experience was really good. 

Pros:
1:1 mentor call
Capstone project
Learn r programming

Cons:
I wish some of the assignments where hands on (a lot where) but some were assigned through datacamp

Pros

- Mentor was great. Really guided me and showed me how someone in the field thinks. Also put my name in at the start up that she works at and they hired me as a contractor!

-Lots of practice on the analytics side. I feel like I'm pretty knowledgeable now

-Mock interviews and career coaches, especially Allison, were great for preparing for interviews. 

Cons

-Was unemployed and finished in 4.5 months. I find it quite hard to believe someone can finish within 6 months with a full time job.

-Second half of course seemed disjointed and unfocused, though that could've been because of the track I chose. 

-They focus on us contacting random people on LinkedIn as a means of "growing our network", which in turn will allow us to get a job eventually. They don't really do much in terms of actually putting you in contact with people who are looking to hire or are open to meeting someone new to the field. 

I had a fantastic experience with Springboard. I took their Introduction to Data Science course in fall of 2017 and their Data Science Career Track course in 2018.  The course was a great alternative to a fully immersive bootcamp, since I wanted something that allowed me to quickly learn the skills required for a Data Scientist while still being able to work my full time job. The course does require a lot of self-discipline in time management since you're working through everything online and there is a lot of material to get through. I ended up spending an average 10-20 hours per week working through the course material so that I could finish in 6 months. The biggest asset for me was the weekly meetings with my mentor. He was a huge help in making sure I understood the tutorials and assignments and he helped keep me accountable and on track.

If you are willing to put in the work and don't mind learning online in an isolated environment instead of in a classroom, I highly recommend Springboard. It was a lot of work, but ultimately worth it because I ended up landing my first job in data. 

I signed up for this course after learning about UX and wanting to make a career change.  Ultimately I chose this school over others because of the access to mentors and flexibility to complete the coursework on my own time.  I was completely new to the field so I wanted mentors to help guide me.  Also I worked full time, so I didn't want to commit to a specific class time every week.  The overall course structure starts with a product idea that you create and walks you through the UX design process with the guidance of a mentor.  The actual course work is pretty much a compilation of videos and articles that are available publicly online.  For a beginner, it's nice that the course organizes the content appropriately.  I wish the time with the mentor was longer, because 30 minutes once a week comes and goes really fast!  It's important that you're mentor clearly understands what you want to get out of the course, that helps to determine how detailed they are in feedback.  Hallie was also an amazing student leader and Fabio & Emily were great as an additional resource in the weekly office hours.  You can check out videos on YouTube to see how office hours are structured.  I'm really glad I took this course as it helped me move from a job I didn't like in manufacturing to a product manager for a web development company!

I'm very happy I took the Data Science career track, it landed me a job in 5 weeks, was very useful and very flexible.

PROS:
It's flexible, with all the contents online, so you can go at your own speed and take time off if needed.
The contents are complete and wide, well focused onto what the professional world looks for
There is a lot of support, from TAs, mentors, and career services. Always there when needed
The exercises are interesting, gaining good insight from real data

CONS:

If any, some lessons can be a bit tedious or feel that you already went over it before. But this was only like 3 times in 6 months.

I started the course with absolutely zero knowledge of data science. I almost didn't even know what it's about it. In almsot a month I was at the point that I knew about Machine Learning techniques and I am so glad I took the course. Since it was online, I had to tune it to my own pace and I really enjoyed the learning process. I had previously taken courses from other online institutes (no names will be mentioned) but I had got nothing out of them sadly (truthfully). Good thing about Springboard is that it's a blend of online school with human interactions, office hourse, mentor calls, etc. that I guess is their winning card. 

I really enjoyed my course with Springboard. Compared to other bootcamps/online courses I've done they really make an effort through the mentoring and support to genuinely help you get to where you want to be. In my case, I was familiar enough with most UX concepts but hadn't had many opportunities to put them into practice or demonstrate my skills, and wanted to move into UX design as a career.

To that end, the curriculum was less important to me than the opportunity to work on an end-to-end design project with mentor guidance, which I could then use to start a portfolio. So the capstone project was a perfect format to help me reach the main goals I set out to achieve when choosing a course, namely to feel more confident in my UX and visual design abilities, and to have a portfolio to share with employers. However, the learning material itself does give a good grounding in a broad range of UX concepts and skills, so if you're a beginner you'll definitely be sent down the right paths. There's a tonne of UX information out there online, but on the whole Springboard do a good job of bringing the basics together without getting you lost in the details.

I've just finished my course and haven't got to the point of applying for roles yet (I want to try and expand my portfolio a little further first), but I would definitely recommend the course to anyone looking to achieve what I have. I have no regrets about making the jump!

I really enjoyed the way Springboard structured the UX Design course. It was available where ever I was (with internet) and the support from my mentor was a HUGE BONUS!

. You definitely go through the process as a all rounded UX Designer, so you can start your career after. I would recomend it to any one. 

As a digital nomad I found this course very enjoyable!

The only cons I have would be the platform they use for students to learn. It could be improved so it works a bit more seamlessly

Springboard's UX Design course is an excellent introduction to the field of user experience. The curriculum, my wonderful mentor, and my project all worked in tandem to solidify my understanding of the general UX process, such as creating personas and conducting usability tests. It's also more affordable compared to many other bootcamps, which can cost thousands of dollars. Springboard is self-paced and has a monthly fee, so you can complete it earlier and pay less, which is what I did. My student advisor, Dave, was kind enough to help me determine how to reach my personal goal and spend what I could afford.

Although there is no job guarantee (apparently, a "UX Career Track" course was recently added for this purpose), the UX Design course helped me learn new skills and flesh out my existing portfolio. A lot of UX job ads specify that a UI background and/or HTML and CSS skills are required, which are areas where I currently lack proficiency. I'm hoping I'll eventually be able to get a stable UX job (perhaps after acquiring more technical knowledge) or apply my skill set to a similar field.

To summarize, I highly recommend Springboard if you want to understand the UX process as a whole, though you will benefit further if you already have front-end development experience.

I've taken a UX design course with Springboard in the fall of 2018. I've chosen them for one on one weekly lessons with the mentors, working in the industry. The curriculum is pretty good, and there is always an awesome guy Andrew (I hope i haven't confused the name) on forum who always reacts to anything you post, so at least you are getting some reaction, which is nice. This being said, there is a lot of stuff you need to dig into yourself if you really want to get to the core of it. However, this course helped me understand what I am really interested in (UX) and what I am not too passionate about (UI). Overall, it has been great experience.

I've taken a UX design course with Springboard in the fall of 2018. I've chosen them for one on one weekly lessons with the mentors, working in the industry. The curriculum is pretty good, and there is always an awesome guy Andrew (I hope i haven't confused the name) on forum who always reacts to anything you post, so at least you are getting some reaction, which is nice. This being said, there is a lot of stuff you need to dig into yourself if you really want to get to the core of it. However, this course helped me understand what I am really interested in (UX) and what I am not too passionate about (UI). Overall, it has been great experience.

The course was incredibly easy to jump-in and start learning right away; with a nice variety of mediums to learn from.  I come from a completely unrelated background and came to this course to make a career change.  Springboard gave me all the tools that I needed to become fully confident in learning the UX process from start to finish, theories as well as modern-day applications AND getting me a solid first project to showcase on my portfolio.  1:1 mentor calls were by far the best part and extremely helpful especially with an online course for when questions or guidance is needed. The community resource was great and support system for any course related help was immediate and on top of their game.  Can't say enough great things!

Springboard's course on User Experience (UX) Design profoundly changed my career path. Only three years ago,  I was a philosophy major at Vassar College. While I was a tech-enthusiast, I always believed that my non-coding background limited my ability to enter this field once I graduated. However, by sheer luck, I stumbled upon Springboard's online UX course and signed up. At the time, I hardly had any little knowledge of what UX was at all. Now, as a UX Designer at IBM, I cannot stress how pivotal this course in enabling me to jumpstart my career.

Springboard uses an intuitive website to guide students through the various stages of designing a mobile application or website (which may conveniently enough be used as a portfolio piece). Utilizing a mixture of articles, interactive courses, and videos, I was able to gain a firm understanding of the different design research methodologies popular in the field. This was important on two fronts. Firstly,  these techniques helped me design better applications, since tools like card sorts, interviews, and wireframings genuinely help you design better experiences and can be applied virtually anywhere. Secondly, the techniques I learnt served as buzzwords to those I interviewed with for UX Design roles that demonstrated my knowledge in the field.

On top of this, there were two aspects that made this course truly successful. The first was the weekly Skype calls with a design mentor. At the start of the course, I was assigned a mentor who was a professional in the field. Once a week I could consult her with any questions about the coursework, or any career-related questions I had. Cultivating this relationship humanized the course for me, and transformed it from a collection of videos and literature to a full-fledged course. The second aspects that stood out to me was the price. At 400 dollars a month, you really can't complain given the material you're given. I was able to go on to develop 4 portfolio pieces with other clients after the course to build my name- other popular alternatives such as General Assembly will run you thousands of dollars more.

Overall, would definitely recommend this course!