I earned a UX Design Certificate from CareerFoundry, here’s how it went.
On this year’s International Women’s Day I was rewarded with the approval of my final portfolio review in CareerFoundry’s Certified UX Designer Course. This meant I had finally arrived at the proverbial finish line, “Certified UX Designer” YAY Me! Over the last few days, I’ve received a ton of engagement on LinkedIn and I appreciate the love (my dopamine levels are all the way up), and several questions on my student experience studying UX with CareerFoundry.
In an effort to kaizen my life, improve my response time and hopefully assist any potential UXer’s out there in their decision to move forward or not with UX Design, here are my thoughts below.
TLDR: Overall, I’m very satisfied with my experience and would recommend it.
Content — Thorough reading, relevant content videos, and solid resources.
Projects — Realistic, practical, you get what you put into it.
Mentors & Tutors — They can get busy, be proactive when getting on their calendars.
Career & Job Prep — 6-month job guarantee. The career team is amazing at providing support, resources, and encouragement and the job prep is holistic and includes self-care, networking, job search, and career change strategies.
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Before actually pulling the trigger and investing into a UX course I spent several months researching courses across the internet, reading blogs, ratings, talking to students etc. After this extended research, I narrowed my choices down to CareerFoundry, & DesignLab.
Though very similar in content, incentives, and pricing, the support and experience I had communicating with the CareerFoundry made the difference.
The team at CareerFoundry gave me the confidence that I was making the right choice. The advisor I originally connected with, responded to each of my email questions with a video response, set up times to call and sent me additional resources. This really made me feel they were invested in me taking the course seriously and succeeding in it. Also, it’s founded by a woman. Cheers to that!
Content is thorough, it’s mostly reading, they do a good job of explaining each topic and setting the foundation through the fundamentals course (initial 4-week course to introduce the design process). Then diving into more detail and practical application during the immersion part of the course.
Projects, ya know, you get out what you put in. When I first began the course, it was a bit of finesse for me. Not really knowing if I made the right decisions, or followed the directions correctly. This lead me to do my favorite thing, procrastinating! I took way too much time and put way too little effort in my initial exercises. Which led to revisions, so many revisions.
Learning that done is better than perfect was essential because tutors are there to give feedback and request revisions if needed. I’m blown away on how far my design has come from day 1 til now. I credit a lot to the feedback from my mentor and the additional research I did to really make it pop.
Mentors & Tutors are full time seasoned designers with busy schedules so their availability is sometimes limited. This may cause delays in approving exercises or completing an achievement. You can always message them directly on the platform to check in though.
It’s a challenging course. Don’t underestimate the amount of time and energy needed to do this. It’s doable, no doubt. Just be mindful.
Overall, I’m satisfied with my experience and would recommend it.
Are you considering the Certified UX Designer Course? Feel free to ask me anything not covered here, I’m happy to share. If this was valuable, clap it up :).
