My honest review of the Shift Nudge interface design course

The Shift Nudge interface design course is an online course aimed towards aspiring and junior designers to improve their UI design skills. When I first got into the field, I heard a bunch of people raving about this course so I have always been intrigued as to what I could learn. Matt (MDS) has organized and crafted this course super well, despite it being asynchronous. He includes homework assignments and a critique vault (only available in the pro plan) that helps you apply your knowledge. Visual design skills are learnt from doing so it makes perfect sense to always complete an assignment after watching the videos. As you progress through the course material, you’ll understand how to create beautiful and great visual design which can truly up your game.

Pricing and plans

Before even diving into the course, the price and different plans available is an important point to consider. I enrolled in the course September 2022 so the prices I list may or may not be different from the present day. The core plan includes 4 modules (introduction, typography, layout, and color) at $199 USD per month for 6 months. While the pro plan includes 8 modules (everything from core, style, imagery, elements, tactics, and the critique vault) at $299 USD per month for 6 months. If you pay up-front, you do end up saving ~$200 and ~$300 respectively. Instead of going for the simple core plan, I would highly recommend diving deeper into the other concepts Matt offers with the pro plan. In my opinion the pro plan is more valuable as it does feel like you are learning slightly more advanced material which can differentiate you from other entry level designers.

Course material

The course is hosted on Notion so it makes content super easy to access and create your own notes for. After gaining access to the course, you’ll be shown three different schedule plans. The difference between the schedule plans are basically dependent on how much time you would commit every week. The three schedules are: Slow and steady, pace yourself, and beast mode. I chose the pace yourself path which meant I would complete 3 lessons per week. With the pro plan, this would take me around 24 weeks to complete. Within the course schedules, there are some lessons that do not exist which I had to go back to the individual modules to look at. If I had only followed the schedule, I might’ve missed some material and I’m the type of person that enjoys absorbing as much as I can.

As someone who is decent at visual design, I already assumed I wouldn’t find the core modules to be very beneficial. The first couple lessons are all about learning the foundations of what makes beautiful design. Despite not learning anything new, it was a great way to refresh my memory and instill confidence in myself as a designer as I knew I had a grasp on the knowledge already. The pro modules included lots of nitty gritty topics which I enjoyed. I do believe that most of the content was a bit surface-level, but this course is aimed for new designers. New things I learnt in Shift Nudge:

• Colors (HSL vs HSB vs RBG vs HEX)
• How popular sites only use less than 4 font sizes in their interfaces
• Blend modes
• When to use a mobile vs desktop first design approach
• Design system elements
• More!

As part of the pro plan, you gain access to the critique vault which has 1000+ critique videos available for you to listen as Matt gives feedback and suggestions to other student’s homework assignments. From these you’re able to understand why a design decision was made but also not repeat the same mistakes for your assignment. As I wanted to avoid “taking too much inspiration” from others’ works, I would complete my homework first before going towards the slack channel or the critique vault.

Of course, completing this course allowed me to have a new library of random designs that I can look back on one day to compare how far I have gotten as a designer. Some of the homework assignments I’m pretty proud of are as shown:

Negatives

As with other online content, the community aspect is lacking due to, well the community. As someone who has completed an online course previously, it is hard to be in an engaging online community as it gets pretty dead. I tried to do my due diligence of posting my homework to get feedback but after a while, people don’t really pop in to give their thoughts and it just feels like you are talking to yourself. I appreciate how the course was all accessible online, but there is a clear gap missing for online courses in general. During my enrollment, it was also unfortunate that Matt had closed the other type of feedback sessions with notable designers… I forgot what they were called. But since Matt has introduced new live feedback calls!

Is it worth it?

Yes and no! Despite the plans being quite pricey, I believe that the course Matt has created will improve your interface design skills. If you are already good at visual design, this might not be the best course to take as you would already have all the foundation and basic skills. Nor if you have a good visual design mentor (as I did previously). I learnt most of what Matt taught through my mentor and am so glad I had them guiding me early on in my career. If you are an intermediate and senior designer, this course might be just a refresher. The course is also available to you for a lifetime which comes in handy when you remember something from the course, and you can easily look back. I enjoyed going through the course and ultimately, practicing my visual design skills!