Designlab

I decided to shift my career from marketing to design and enrolled in Designlab's UX Academy Foundations course. I had zero experience with design before the course and having completed it now, I can confidently say I have a good grasp on design basics. 

My mentor is an amazing teacher. She is supportive, helpful and caring. Our sessions were always productive and she even took the time to walk me through past projects, explain workflows, share frameworks - besides the weekly projects.

The curriculum was ok and I felt like it touched all of the basics you need to know if you're just starting out as a designer.  Read less

Overall the program is great. I did find it to be more UI heavy/intensive versus UX but I think it was great to get that foundation. I’ve already recommended this course to others looking for a change. I’m really hopeful that the skills I’ve gathered will help me make a career change. Read less

Designlab's UX Foundations provided a well-balanced learning experience. The self-guided approach with mentor feedback accommodated my full-time work schedule; and the manageable workload and abundant resources enriched my understanding. However, occasional delays in mentor feedback, likely due to their busy schedules, were a minor drawback. Overall, a valuable course for those seeking flexibility in UX education. Read less

I really loved the UX Academy Foundations course! I feel like it gave me a good understanding of UX/UI design especially as I apply and make my way into UX Academy after the holidays. Would highly recommend. Loved the 1:1 sessions with my mentor over the 8 weeks of the program.  Read less

I had a great experience with Designlab UX Academy Foundations.  I started the course knowing very little about how to design an app or a website, and I didn't feel confident at first.  Figma was completely new to me, and this was the hardest for me to learn.  There were a lot of good tutorials thugh, and these combined with help from my mentor allowed me to get to a point where I feel comfortable using it.  The curriculum was very good and the projects and feedback I got helped me learn a lot.  My mentor was awesome and very supportive.  He was positive in giving feedback while still challenging me to push my designs further.  I was doing the part-time track, and the one thing I have to say is that the suggested times for completing the projects was a bit unrealistic at times.  It took me a lot longer to complete the final project, for example, than the suggested 10 hours.  Also, taking into account the time needed to spend iterating on the feedback received took longer than I expected.  Overall, it's a great program!  I definitely learned a lot and I feel a lot more comfortable designing now than when I started! Read less

The experience was fantastic. The curriculum was very well rounded and provided me with the fundamentals of design. I really like the optional and additional readings provided this allowed me to further my knowledge in the field. The projects were challenging and well prepared. The mentorship experience was really great having to interact with someone that’s actively working on the fields as a designer was very helpful.  Read less

Designlab's UX Academy Foundations was a great Introduction to UX Design. I learn a lot about the history and basics of visual and UI design. You are also required to meet with your mentor 1 on 1 to discuss your assignments. You are added to a cohort and a discord and given access to the community which is very valuable.  Read less

I had a great experience with Designlab throughout the course of 2021. I enrolled in Foundations and the Academy in a part time capacity (20 hours per week) and finished up my capstone projects and graduated within a year. I personally felt the experience was well worth the price and I certainly learned a lot in my time there. The course itself was relatively "self-paced" with deadlines each week and a weekly meeting with a design mentor. My initial mentor was pretty slow in providing feedback so I switched mentors and got one who was fantastic! After graduating, it took me about 4 months of interviewing and applying to land my first full time offer. I took the role and made my transition into design! Read less

Designlab was just what I needed when looking for a career change. Their challenging curriculum paired with team cohort crits and INCREDIBLE mentorship from my mentor was just what I needed to get my UX career off the ground. I consider myself one of the luckier ones, but got a job in the field before graduating from the course.

The only downside from DL was how students who landed a job were treated in career services. I wanted to use the resources to improve my application/interviewing/ portfolio skills but was only given 2 sessions, even though I had a contract gig that was ending 6 months later. 

Even with the small grievance, Designlab was exactly what I wanted in a bootcamp and successfully aided me in my career change to UX Design. Read less

When deciding to pivot my career from nursing to UX design, I researched different bootcamps and compared their curriculum with prices. I found Designlab to be the most impactful for an affordable price.

Community: My favorite thing about this bootcamp was the community aspect. I met some life-long friends and colleagues through their Discord channel. I heard about my first internship from someone I met via the "Los Angeles channel" on Discord, whom I personally met up with at a coffee shop. There are endless opportunities provided by the DL community (i.e. job opportunities, tips and tricks for interviewing, resources, webinars, etc). I ended up joining a hackathon upon hearing about it on the DL Discord chat and it was by far one of the greatest experiences of my UX career.

Curriculum: Aside from the community aspect, I learned a lot from the curriculum itself. I was enrolled in UX Foundations and UX Academy, which gave me a profound understanding of UX principles and the design process. I found the videos and resources to be super helpful. I know that many have complained that there isn't enough focus on learning about Figma and how to actually do the designing, but I feel that it's only fair since the purpose of the bootcamp is more about understanding what goes on behind the designs rather than learning how to design step-by-step. As a student, there is a lot of self- learning to do and it is up to them how much work they want to put in on their own.

Mentorship: I was fortunate to have really good mentors along the way. It's quite possible to have a mentor whose mentoring style that does not align with the students' personal needs. Luckily, there's the option to request for a new mentor. Students are responsible for knowing their own learning needs and how they want to be mentored. I personally found that having a mentor who allows me to work independently while being available to provide feedback and resources as needed was more helpful than having someone micromanage my work. I also found that it was useful to have questions and ideas ready to be presented to my mentors prior to meeting so that each meeting was productive. 

Overall, I had a really positive experience with Designlab and would highly recommend it, especially for those who have zero design experience!


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The program overall was structured very well. It was easy to follow the weeks, projects, and directions. One of the many things that I liked was the fact that we had a mentor to guide us through the process as well as giving feedback on the assigned homework was very good for my growth as an aspiring designer. One of the cons I felt could be improved would be the reading sections of the program. I don't retain information well with just reading, which made it a little difficult to understand when reading four to six different sections that laster about 20 minutes. My suggestion to this is to add videos that either could partially replace the text on readings (half reading and half videos), or having videos that have the text portion follow said video. That would help me and a lot more people understand and collect the information better. Read less

The foundation's course will give you a comprehensive understanding of the principles and concepts behind UX/UI design. The course offers abundant reading material, complemented by a limited number of videos primarily focusing on figma and sketch tutorials.  It's like a window into what the academy offers and allows you to assess your commitment to the weekly mentor sessions and group critiques. The only downside is that the Figma tutorials provided in this course are slightly outdated and lack detail. Prior familiarity with the software will greatly enhance your learning experience. Read less

I recently completed the foundations course and will hopefully be in UX Academy soon. I really enjoyed this course and felt it was paced well for the part-time track. I have a full time job so I wasn't able to do full-time and it was the right amount of time commitment. The lessons and projects have time suggestions to guide you and are completely self paced. Some days I had more time to go through them and other days I didn't so it was helpful to have the time stamps on them to help schedule myself. I found the lessons very interesting and well structured. 

My mentor, Kelly, was absolutely amazing! She gave great feedback and really helped me beyond just foundational learning. Once I understood the basics, she encouraged me to start thinking about higher level design thinking. She was extremely patient and very knowledgable! I had previous design experience (non-UX experience) so she was great at helping me incorporate it into my projects.  Read less

Before Designlab, I took a lot of free online courses, but none of them gave me practical teaching on how to use software and actually design. I appreciated that in conjunction with all the informational lessons, there were many projects that allowed me to get comfortable with the software and actually practice design principles and hierarchies. I liked how all the information in the course was developed by Designlab, meaning I was paying for unique material. I also really appreciated the mentor program. It really helps to have real feedback from a real professional. I will say, I don't necessarily feel like I got that much more connected with people in the UX/UI field in terms of making connections and networking, but that could be due to my own struggle with using the Discord networking community. Overall though, I do feel more equipped and prepared to develop my portfolio further. Read less

For a foundations course, there's not any cons that I could think of when it comes to the overall course. The dashboard was very user friendly, which allowed me to easily follow along what lessons were next and when my next mentor meeting was. The course provided some amazing reads that really helped teach me a lot of key factors that prepared me for the unit projects.  Read less

I've got to say that learning the foundation course here in Designlab has been super smooth. Everything's straightforward to understand, and having that one-on-one with a private mentor? Absolute game-changer. Plus, the cost is pretty affordable. Totally worth it!  Read less

The course was well paced and had good projects that challenged me. The mentorship was great and helped me realize my mistakes quickly but in an efficient way. I felt myself progress over the course of this program and it clearly shows in my work, which is something I can look back on and see that I’m learning. Read less

I recently decided that I wanted to make a career shift from the advertising field to UX/UI design. I had a bit of experience designing websites from a graphics perspective but I wanted to find a bootcamp to develop my skills and portfolio. The Foundations course at Designlab is a prerequisite for their full UX Academy. This course gives you the opportunity to learn the basics of design, how to approach finding the solutions to briefs, thinking like a designer and how to design in Figma. It was really helpful to go through all of the projects and work with an amazing mentor who gave really insightful feedback. I would recommend doing this course if you're interested in learning more about design and seeing if this type of work is a fit for you. Read less

I struggled a lot with the time management of esch proyect to upload. Since all works were subjective in my opinion. I dont think i could actually work with the knowledge i get in here. Obviously i need to keep learning but with only foundations you would think this can be a steping stone, but i would say i would need more than that. Read less