Designlab

I found UX Academy Foundations when I was searching around for UX/UI bootcamps. I decided to go with it before signing up for a longer (and pricier!) option to get a feel for the work. My background is in tech and I worked full time while completing the... Read More course. Overall, it was a positive experience. Pros: - Mentorship - I got an awesome mentor and they really helped me succeed - Lessons are easy to follow and the coursework is fun - You will see yourself improve over time - Affordable, not a huge time commitment - Free Adobe XD subscription comes with the course! Cons: - Coursework almost exclusively deals with UI, very little UX - Can be difficult to juggle with full time work

I enjoyed the course and projects, but the mentors I had ruined my impression of UX design. My first mentor was in Germany and only wanted to meet when it was afternoon for her. I was accommodating to her and meeting her 7-9am in my time. She also for... Read More some reason scheduled her dentist appointments right before our meeting so she was always late. She thanked me for being so flexible but I was starting to question her priorities. Sure enough when the tables were turned and I asked her if I could reschedule she told me she had no other availability. Really?? I was tired of one-sidedly accommodating my mentor when she never bothered to step outside of her time-zone availability box. I changed to a more helpful mentor, but I saw he had A LOT of mentees, many of which also switched mentors. I think maybe Designlab gives students who switched to mentors who have proven success. Although he was nice and helpful, I could tell from his comments over time that he was slowly developing a copy-paste approach in giving feedback. Over time he became a cog, churning out the same comments for the same projects. And it was clear he had chosen favorite students from the comments, and he was still giving them a more personalized experience while the rest of us newer students had copy pasta. Yesterday was my final mentor meeting with him. I joined at 3pm to find him speaking with another girl. I remembered the girl from my first mentor session where my mentor bragged how she got a job at a video game company after the course. I was so confused why she was here -- is he planning to introduce us? Is he having a session with her even though she graduated and "made it" already? Did I travel time and was viewing a past session?? 1 minute past 3 became 3 minutes became 5. They were eating away at the time I had reserved and paid for, and ignoring me even though I was in the room. I tried making some noise and when they still didn't acknowledge me I left and broke down crying. I had an interview just earlier so I told my mentor I may be late, but seeing him nonchalantly go over my time slot made it seem like he was happy I'd late so he could focus on his star pupils. This has been my experience with Designlab. If you are lucky and find a mentor who is helpful and not overwhelmed yet, great. You may even have a lifelong mentor like that girl my mentor was with. But don't get too hopeful!

I completed both DesignLab's UX Academy Foundations and UX Academy programs (on a part time basis), and landed a full time staff position as a product designer at a mature startup — all in less than one year. I have an extensive background in marketing... Read More and brand design, and most recently held the title of creative director for an internal marketing team at a global visual media company. It was here that I decided to leave marketing and management responsibilities and become an individual contributor on the product design side. I felt that DesignLab’s curriculum was pretty thorough on the research end of the UX spectrum. I gained a solid understanding of methodologies, when to apply them, and why. I felt the curriculum was lacking, however, with regard to UI design instruction. There was some — but not a lot — of time dedicated to this. The Foundations course was important in that respect since it mostly focused on design, but it felt somewhat superficial to me. Students have a vast range of design abilities (many have no design experience whatsoever, while people like me came with graphic design backgrounds), so it might not be possible to address this in such a tight timeframe for all skill levels. I will add, however, there were plenty of resources that helped me improve my UI design skills during the course, so if this is something important to you, know that you’re going to have to address it outside of the main coursework. The structure of the program was very helpful for me. It’s fairly clear how lessons build on one another, and why the trajectory of the program is designed the way it is. You’ll definitely wind up with a portfolio with at least 3 solid and thorough case studies that demonstrate your command of everything from UX research to UI design (since you’ll have to work through high fidelity prototypes). Looking back on this experience I would probably make sure those case studies reflect real world work, as opposed to conceptual bootcamp work (several interviewers pointed out to me that they couldn't get past that when considering hiring me). All along the way having a dedicated mentor was another huge positive for my DesignLab experience. I was paired with an experienced product creative, and he really clarified why some of the design decisions I was making weren’t working. He was also critical in helping me demystify some of the UX processes. This field is still fairly new, and not everything is super straightforward or black and white. The student community in DesignLab’s Slack channels was also extremely helpful. It was here that I discovered many of the design tools I still use, and getting feedback on work in progress. It’s also a very useful networking tool. As your peers are getting jobs, connecting with them can help you land interviews at their companies. After I completed my portfolio I spent about two solid months in their “Career Phase,” which combines job searching and related tasks, like finessing cover letters or creating job specific landing pages within your portfolio. I was paired with a new mentor. I applied to about 50 jobs, was officially rejected by 20 (ghosted by others), had 8 first round interviews, 3 second round interviews, and two third round interviews, both of which made me offers, and one of which I accepted. I chose DesignLab based on length of curriculum, availability of “part-time” status, cost, and tuition reimbursement guarantee. Even doing this part time was very challenging while working full time. I decided in my last four months to quit my job in order to focus on this full time. It was a gamble but it paid off.

I looked into various courses for UX but when it came time to enroll, the world was rocked by a pandemic which changed everything. Suddenly, the immersive in-person bootcamps were online but still very expensive. So, after some research, I decided to... Read More try out Designlab's UX Academy. I took the part-time course after trying a few weeks full-time and feeling like I wasn't absorbing everything. The first phase of the course presents the content and walks you through creating your first practice website/experience and writing a case study. Then, the second phase has you do the same type of thing with different briefs in shorter periods of time. I liked the amount of freedom Designlab gives students to determine what their projects should be.

Throughout the course, you're paired with a mentor. I felt like my mentor had the real-world experience to back up the excellent feedback and suggestions. She pushed me to go further when I needed it, but also encouraged me when I felt unsure. I had weekly mentor sessions where I could ask questions, present recent work for feedback, or practice presenting - it was great.

The other piece of the program is the group critiques, which have you give and receive feedback from other students. I liked that it pairs you with students from different cohorts, so it allowed me to encourage students just starting when I was wrapping up the course in the same way more senior students did for me at the start.

Job support is okay. My mentor during the job search helped me understand what the local area was like and helped me improve my online presence, but I wish Designlab could partner with companies or offer contract opportunities, internships, volunteering, or even just options to work with Designlab themselves. Real world experience is extremely important, and I think there's an opportunity to base Phase 3 around gaining that advantage. That said - I felt well equipped having learned the content in Phase 1 to work with real-world stakeholders for freelance gigs.

There are a few other areas for improvement. The support and resources for writing out your case studies and building your portfolio could be clearer. I also think it's a missed opportunity for Designlab to not partner with portfolio tools to have discounts for students. In particular, Squarespace, Semplice, or Webflow. The approval process for my portfolio was also lackluster. I didn't feel the reviewer gave actionable feedback. Booking group critiques was also unintuitive. It required using third-party tools and entering passwords that would change periodically and the instructions sometimes conflicted with the information on your main student dashboard. It seemed like that was recognized as an issue and will probably be updated and improved. It seems like Designlab is committed to continuously improving their course which makes sense given the spirit of Design Thinking.

Im glad i picked design lab for learning ux designing. They gave the best content. The people who work for design lab are it's assets. They go out of the way to help students to accommodate their needs. Super approachable and very understanding. The content... Read More itself is well organized, easy to follow with videos and lots of project work for practice.

Designlab exceeded my expectations for a bootcamp. I wanted to immerse myself in design to enable a successful transition from my previous career to UX/product design. Their courses are self directed and all projects are approved with the help of a mentor.... Read More I chose DesignLab because it had the right balance of guidance and self discovery. The community is excellent and support is always there for you. I have recommended DesignLab to many individuals interested in design. This bootcamp is what you put into it, for me it was a great experience and gave me the foundation to the start of my UX/product design journey.

I was hesitant on taking this course at first but I wanted to sign up to see what working alongside a community of peers and a mentor was like and to learn about the foundational skills to UX/UI. Although this course was focused more on UI fundamentals... Read More with units focusing on icons, typography, illustrations, I am happy I took this course and learned a lot of practical skills such as how to give and receive feedback for designs. The projects were also fun, user-friendly, and interactive with the Designlab community so you don't feel like you are on your own. It was so nice to connect with other students and share about our individual UX/UI journeys as well as encourage one another. I think the only thing that I was a little worried about was the mentorship. My mentor was not that responsive with feedback, so that did kind of take away from the experience but I still learned something from the feedback I did receive and Designlab was also quick to assist with any issues I had and made sure that my learning experience was still very rewarding and valuable. Overall, I had a positive experience and I highly recommend this course! I learned a lot about the UX/UI design process and principles and feel more prepared to take UX Academy.

I took the fulltime UX Academy program after completing UX Foundations. I found it to be super intense at times which looking back was a good thing, preparing me for some of the work I am currently doing. My advice for anyone enrolling in UX Academy is... Read More to take full advantage of your breaks (you're going to need them especially during the capstone projects), reach out to your cohorts via slack and group crits and to fully utilize your 1 to 1 time with your mentor. Overall for me, Designlab's UX Academy was a life changing experience that prepared me and allowed me to make a full career transition.

DesignLab is really organized. They were always quick to respond to my questions via e-mail. I had trouble with the first mentor I was assigned, and they were extremely helpful getting me assigned to a new one, that ended up working out great. I learned... Read More a lot and I'm very glad I took this class.

I loved this foundation course, gave me all the necessary exercises to build up my designing skills and the basic knowledge. I love the fact that we can complete the units in our own pace while doing a full time job within the 8 week frame. Mentor experience... Read More was helpful too.