Designlab

In the past I've worked as a programmer in a design agency. I want to make the leap to being a UX Designer and this Foundations course was a great lead-in course to instill and practice some visual-design basics. I now feel confident in my visual design... Read More skills and look forward to pursuing UX Design. As of early 2021, it's a new course offering. I think this had an impact on my mentor's familiarity with the assignments and expectations. My mentor was a professional though and was able to offer insightful feedback nevertheless.

I just graduated from UX Academy Foundations and I learned a lot. There's a lot of information that will help you in your growth to becoming a designer. DesignLab gives you the structure and guidance needed to help you start of you UX design lab career.... Read More The mentor calls were also very helpful. Overall, I think it's a good program if you want to learn about UX Design.

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... Read More 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 :)

If you don't have any experience with design, I highly recommend taking Designlab's UX Academy Foundations. I've completed a few online courses in UI/ UX design, but nothing comes close to this course! In a matter of a few weeks, I gained more confidence... Read More in my work. Having a mentor that was easy to get along with and lives in the same state as I do made a world of a difference! She helped me feel comfortable with what I was working on and always offered helpful feedback/ advice. Was the course easy? No, absolutely not. It was challenging, but 100% worth it. Though it's an online course, I still felt very connected to the Designlab universe. I just wrapped up this course so I haven't applied to the UX Academy yet, but I plan on it!

DesignLab's UX Academy foundations course is filled with information, practical guidelines, and numerous projects for practice, that will surely teach UI design principles and UX basics. The weekly mentor discussion is a big plus as I learned a lot from... Read More a real person, and I have gained much knowledge from this course about Figma and Sketch, and potential career paths

The best thing about DesignLab is that the course is well-organised - the units enabled me to take more and steps to building a good foundation for knowledge and stretched my skills further and further with every exercise. Each unit is calibrated perfectly... Read More so that it’s not too difficult that you’d give up, but challenging enough to keep stretching your skills. The mentorship is excellent - my mentor provided help by suggesting readings and resources, shared tips and real life design problems from his own experience, guided me through some design related work processes I was working on for my job, and provided emotional support so that I could felt like someone was really rooting for me! The course interface is also great - very straightforward, brings the course materials, mentor sessions, AND a huge gallery of past and current students work for endless inspiration! I’d love to do more courses after a short break - next course I’ve ever done and I’ve done a lot!

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... Read More this world of UX. I might be wrong. It just felt like more UI classes than UX for me. And they were great.

Overall I'm very happy with my experience taking UX Academy Foundations through DesignLab. I initially registered for their Design 101 course but as they were transitioning to Foundations they allowed me to transfer my registration to the new course instead.... Read More I found the DesignLab staff to be friendly, accommodating and willing to answer any questions I had quickly. The course is over 8 weeks and intended to be a preparatory course to apply to their UX Academy but it has a lot of merits on its own. It's broken into 8 different sections, each focused on different aspects of UI and visual design from visual design basics, to UI elements and principles, to color and type and so on. There are various readings and projects for each session and the projects vary from copy work, written reflections and hands on design projects with briefs. The final project is a 10 hour design challenge to design a website and three mobile screens for a fictional travel site. The curriculum covers web design, responsive design and mobile app design. An important note that this course mainly covers UI and visual design and there is not a ton of information on UX design except for an optional section at the completion of the course. This is understandable as the UX design portion is covered in their UX Academy course. The majority of the work is self-paced and there are not set times for taking the coursework which is nice and allows for a flexible schedule. In addition, it seems as if you have lifetime access to the coursework, even after you submit your final project. They pair you with a mentor who is working in the field and you have weekly hour sessions with your mentor to ask any questions and review design projects. Your mentor can also comment on your design work through their online portal outside of your scheduled sessions. You're also given access to a Slack channel so you can talk with other students also in the program. I enjoyed working with my mentor, who was able to give me specific, actionable feedback on my projects as well as the reasoning behind her suggestions and was readily available via Skype and email outside of our sessions. Ultimately, I feel as if I learned a lot about UI, visual and web design and feel like I've established a great baseline of knowledge to add to my resume and to offer to future employers. However, it is is a significant investment of time. They estimate 10 - 15 hours per week, which I would say is mostly accurate, though some weeks I'd say I was doing closer to 20 - 25 hours a week on iterations and revisions of the design projects. As someone who does not have children or a particularly demanding job this was doable for me, but if you work a lot of hours or have children, it may be harder for you to complete everything required within the time frame. For the majority of the course I worked both nights and weekends to complete what I needed to on time. In addition, it is self-paced, so you get out of it what you put into it. If you're not willing to put in the time to do the readings, prepare and participate in your mentor sessions and do the design work and iterations/revisions, you may not find this course as satisfying as I did.

I did not have any UX/UI design experience going into this program. I selected Designlab because of the positive reviews, and the opportunity it would give to have some one-on-one feedback from a mentor. I was very impressed with the thorough education... Read More I received. I especially appreciated that the units were broken down into digestible and attainable goals. I especially enjoyed the conversations with my mentor where I could ask specific questions about my work and learn more about real-life applications to the profession of UX/UI.

Pros: - The reading content for each unit was very clear, concise and engaging - The weekly projects within each module are setup to help you put your learnings to practice - My mentor was very helpful, caring, and interested in introducing me to the... Read More industry Cons: