DesignLab’s UX Academy Foundations: The perfect course to step your foot into UX design
I finished DesignLab’s UX Academy Foundations program this week. I did a lot of research before deciding to take this program, so I’m happy to say that I don’t regret it at all.
Going into UX Academy Foundations, I was pretty certain that I didn’t want to do UX Academy after finishing this course because I didn’t find that it was worth spending all that money on a bootcamp (you can read more about it in this post).
However, I did want to take a short course that will bring me into the world of design, and UX Academy Foundations was exactly what I was looking for.
If you’re new to your UX bootcamp research, you might be wondering: what is the difference between UX Academy Foundations and UX Academy?
You can check out the table below.
These were my main reasons for enrolling in UX Academy Foundations:
- I wanted to learn Figma more efficiently. I had learned Figma on my own but I didn’t know how to use any advanced features or shortcuts that could help me save time.
- I wanted to learn to give and receive constructive design feedback. I had been working with designers in my job but I felt like I didn’t know how to give proper feedback due to my lack of knowledge in design principles. I also wanted to get my design critiqued by someone more experienced than myself to have an understanding of expectations.
- I wanted to have a solid understanding of visual design before I study UX on my own. I had no formal education in art or design.
Finally, here’s a breakdown of my experience with DesignLab’s UX Academy Foundations:
Admissions / Student Support
I had spoken to various admissions team from different bootcamps, but DesignLab’s was the most helpful and open to answering all questions.
While this may not feel like a big deal, it showed me how much they cared about students’ satisfaction. There were some bootcamps that either took forever to respond or never replied to emails/calls, which spoke to the company’s lack of organization and student support.
In addition to speaking with DesignLab’s admissions team (thank you Rudi!), I watched YouTube videos of other students’ reviews of the program, got on calls with DesignLab graduates, read Medium articles, and attended the open house until I felt certain about my choice.
Course setup
UX Academy Foundations is broken down into 9 units:
- 1: Visual design basics
- 2: UI Design principles
- 3: UI Design elements
- 4: Design evaluation and critique
- 5: Designing for multiple devices
- 6: Images, Icons, and logos
- 7: Color and typography
- 8: 10-hour design challenge
- 9: Intro to UX design
I had my doubts about spending money on a pre-recorded/written program, but I was surprised by the quality of the material. I find the quality better than most other Coursera and Udacity programs that I’ve taken.
First, the program is structured intentionally to help you build the principles and foundations before you get into the nitty gritty — such as typography, colors, and logos. This was great in first setting up a solid design framework and not getting distracted by the details such as colors and typography.
Overall, the program is very well-rounded and equips students with soft (i.e. giving design feedback and communicating with other designers) and hard (i.e. learning to use Figma) skills needed to get into the world of UX/UI design.
DesignLab also included their own video tutorials of Figma, which I thought were straight to the point and well explained than most YouTube tutorials out there.
Projects
There are several projects included in each unit. Especially in the beginning, the projects are focused on copywork, which I found incredibly helpful in figuring out what principles or methods big companies follow when creating their own work.
There are also short reflections after every few projects, which I found useful in evaluating my own process and understanding where I can make improvements.
The final project, the 10-hour design challenge, puts to test everything you learned up until that point. For me, the steps in completing the design challenge looked like this:
- Planning
- Competitor research
- Color & typography selection
- Style tile creation
- Sketching
- Figma: desktop and mobile screens
- Presentation file setup
I didn’t find the project particularly challenging, but it was a good recap of all the things we learned in the course.
All projects are reviewed by your mentor. I think what made my project submissions more meaningful was how thorough my mentor was in giving me feedback. More about the mentorship below!
Mentorship
Mentorship was the main reason why I enrolled in UX Academy Foundations. I wanted to get direct feedback from an experienced designer to understand where my strengths and weaknesses were.
I was initially paired with a mentor that didn’t seem to be very prepared and preoccupied with other things. I quickly requested a mentor change and was paired with a new mentor who was very supportive my career goals and provided lots of resources to help me supplement my UX learning journey.
While it’s important to be paired with a good mentor, a big part of a successful mentor-mentee relationship is also what you bring to the table.
Here are my tips for making the most out of the mentorship:
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Stay curious and ask away!
- Get to know your mentor. Read their linkedin and ask questions about their experience in the field. What’s great about a mentorship is that an experienced professional is making themselves fully available for you. Take advantage of it and build a relationship.
- Come to the mentor sessions prepared. Submit your assignments on time and if you need to change your appointments, let them know in advance. Basic etiquettes will show that you respect their time. I made sure to always come to the sessions with a list of questions that I gathered throughout the week.
Community
Once you enroll, you have access to DesignLab’s Slack channel where you can interact with other students in the program. I personally didn’t use this often as I was busy balancing my job and studies, but I highly recommend it if you want to connect with other students!
Platform
Despite the fact that DesignLab is a company specializing in UX and UI design, I didn’t find their platform very easy to use. The student portal is difficult to use on tablet or mobile, so I had to use my desktop most of the time.
This isn’t a problem given that you need your desktop to do the assignments, but it would have been helpful to do some of the readings or assignments on my iPad.
What I enjoyed about their platform was the ability to view all versions of your work in one place along with your mentor’s comments. On this same page, you could view other students’ work and the feedback their mentors were providing. I didn’t refer to other students’ work so much before submitting my own project, but once I submitted mine, viewing other students’ work gave me a great reference point on how I could have improved mine.
Final Thoughts on UX Academy Foundations
UX Academy Foundations is the perfect entry level design course for people wanting to get into UX/UI design. It’s also the perfect appetizer to see if you’re well suited for a full-fledged UX bootcamp or any other online learning.
One thing I wish DesignLab did better is get more in-depth to using Figma. Specifically, it would have been great if there were more projects on creating larger scale design systems and using other advanced features. After all, this is a program focused on UI design.
Overall, I feel pretty confident about my ability to use Figma as well as my understanding of basic design principles coming out of this program. I highly recommend taking UX Foundations if you are new to the world of design.
