Springboard

The Pros:
Attending the Springboard UX Design program helped me fill in some gaps about the UX Design process. I had some exposure and practice with the UX process before taking the course. However, my knowledge and experience were minimal. The Springboard... Read More UX course helped me gain some new skills as well as giving me a few mock projects for my design portfolio.

Having access to a real mentor gave me the confidence that I was on the right path to learning UX design. My mentor was helpful and insightful in answering questions I had about the UX process and the new skills I was learning. In addition to the online training curriculum, I also had the support system of fellow students taking the course. This was helpful when getting feedback about my projects.

The cons:
The Springboard UX Design course is a great course for anyone who is alright with learning online. If you like to ask lots of questions, or need to be able to interact with other humans then this course probably isn't the best. Although you do have access to other students through an email type system, that about it. You are assigned a mentor, but you have limited time with your mentor over skype or via phone calls. In this respect, you miss out on that detailed human interaction that you can ask detailed questions and get real feedback.

I know the curriculum has changed since I started the course Oct 2017, so some of the criticisms may no longer apply. The strongest part of the course is the access to the mentor(s) and the team of career coaches.

The curated course content overall is... Read More very good, though some lectures are from 4-5 years ago.
The main focus is the two capstones and the mentor interaction to keep you moving forward on them.
The Python datacamp courses (at the time) where mostly useful, though at some points I used other materials from courses like Udemy or LinkedIn Learning where the curriculum fell short of the coursework being asked.
The coursework at many points has incorrect time-estimates for the (2-4 hrs suggested but actually needing 10-20). Some coursework questions and worksheets were out of date or missing. If you have a full-time job then staying on a schedule based on the course completion time then you will be as frustrated with this as we were. The most common observation on the forums was the poorly supported statistics element, with insufficient course material for a crucial element of data science and insufficient study material for the coursework.

I have worked every week/other week with my career coach to refine my resume, profile etc. I am getting invitations to on-site interviews and phone screens.

I attended the Springboard Data Science Career Track program for ~5 months. I did some research before entering. I had some coding and data analysis experience before entering. This one suits me the best among other data science courses, because (1) It's... Read More online, so I don't have to quit my job. (2) It's mentor supported, very few if any online program offer that (3) It has a job guarantee. Overall, the experience was fantastic.

The curriculum, while not perfect, is well curated and organized and covers not just technical subjects, but also career support. I get 30 minutes with a mentor every week to review my assignments, answer my questions, etc. My mentor had similar background as I do and had gone through the academia to industry transition before, so he was able to offer valuable advices in addition to technical guidance. At the end of the course, I was required to pass 4 mock interviews and complete two capstone projects which prepared me a lot for the job hunting. I landed interviews from many companies, from start-up to large companies like Amazon, near the end of my study. Though, I have to say, the course alone won't be enough for interviews at the likes of Amazon and Google, it should be sufficient to help you land you positions at mid-tier companies.

Overall, I find what I learned very useful, the experience with my mentor pleasant, and the cost reasonable. If you are someone who is considering transition to data science, but cannot quit your job for dedicated bootcamps, I definitely recommend this program from Springboard.

I walked into Springboard with not a lot of expectations, mostly because I knew so little about UX Design to begin with. With my background in graphic design though, I found that a lot of the teachings and exercises came intuitively as I navigated the... Read More coursework. For those who don't have the same background as I do, I still think it would be a solid course to do; Springboard provides a really good general overview of what UX is and all its separate pathways found in the tech bubble today. The mentorship works great as a personal nudge/kick in the butt when you need it to, and there's some fairly decent peer feedback as well on the community boards.

Starting UX with Springboard was challenging especially if you come from non- designer field. My accomplished tasks looked unprofessional, due to the lack of knowledge in the graphic design field. It gave you theoretical knowledge, however, the content... Read More of the course is not written by Springboard but rather patched out from different online resources and for that reason, the course was expensive for me. I did graduate with a portfolio but it is far from being job ready. It was a great beginner course that was very organised and challenging at the same time, it was for sure pushing you out of the comfort zone. Give it a try if you are totally a beginner.

Having a mentor to keep moving forward and bounce things off of was very helpful. The content was great but being able to reach out with the inevitable, wait, how does that work type of questions was great.
Working through a capstone project provided a... Read More concrete artifact to discuss during interviews

The program was great - the one on one time with a mentor was good as well. I was between jobs and wanted to change career paths so it gave me a good footing for the world of UX design and the behind the scenes look at what and how things get done. it... Read More was hands on and going through the various sections not only builds to a great capstone project but a good portfolio piece be able to talk about as you go out and interview.

Having a B.S. in Math reduced the learning curve for me to complete the content in the Introduction to Data Science course but the real challenge and fun came from the projects and interaction with my mentor and the community. Learning and research is... Read More not a solo effort and Springboard has designed their program around that. The weekly meetings with my mentor who was very knowledgeable and motivating pushed me to keep progressing on with my project and try new things that I never thought about in my previous education. Overall the course made me appreciate the lengthy and challenging in a Data Science project and how much you really need to work with other people to accomplish tasks.