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 :) |