UX Design

Designlab Review: UX Interaction Design

Designlab Review: UX Interaction Design

Hey guys,

today I want to talk about Designlab and my experience with their online course UX Interaction Design.

There are plenty of online courses out there and it can be really hard to choose the right one for you. I hope my review can help you decide whether Designlab's UX course could be indeed the next one you sign up for.

My Background

I am a Marketer and a self-taught UX/ UI designer. I started learning design by myself around 3 years ago. At that time, I was just taking all kinds of online courses-basically anything I could get my hands on, as long as it was about UX or UI design. I did a bunch of courses on Udemy, I tried some Newsletter-based courses like UX Design Weekly and Hack Design.  It took me 2 years of practice to perfect my skills. Then I switched to Sketch around a year ago and continued learning new things every day. I know how hard it is to make a decision whether to invest some money in a new course, especially if you have already invested in many others before. That's why I decided to write a review about Designlab's course and share my honest opinion with you.

Before buying any online UX course, you should check some basic things like syllabus (what exactly you will learn), techniques (how will you learn), expectations (what do you expect to get out of the course) and last but not least the price (if it's reasonable).

Read my personal experience with Designlab's course on Interaction Design below.

The Syllabus

Let's start off by taking a look at Interaction Design's syllabus. This is a 4 -week course  and the lectures are divided as follows:

According to DesignLab, you should invest around 10 hours per week in order to complete the course. The good thing is, the course is self-paced which means you can complete the tasks whenever your schedule allows it. This is great for people with full-time jobs as well as freelancers. The bad thing is you should really plan those 10 hours every week if you don’t want to fall behind, since you also have 1 feedback session with your mentor. I felt really bad when I knew I had a session coming up the next day and I was still not ready with the tasks. You need to be committed!

The Techniques

Online Platform

DesignLab offers an online platform where you can track your progress, schedule sessions with your mentor and see other people’s work. It is really well-designed and very intuitive. I had no problems whatsoever navigating through it. There were some minor things that bugged me, f.e. the fact that  I could not upload files larger than 2 MB.

Tasks

Each week is divided into smaller tasks called Units. Some of the Units are reading tasks or Lectures and some of them are Projects where you have to actually apply the new knowledge and get your hands dirty. You can see your course progress at all times and you also get an email notification after each week’s completion.

Instructions

The instructions were mostly clear, however sometimes I needed further clarification and ended up redoing some tasks after my mentor sessions as it turned out I got some tasks wrong.

Mentorship

At the beginning of the course, you get introduced to your mentor. This is the main difference between this course and any others I have taken- you get feedback from an experienced designer! I thought this is awesome and I wasn’t wrong. Not only did I get feedback on my weekly tasks, but I also got some invaluable tips on how to price my design work, how to search for new clients and how to present my work better.

Expectations

It is really important that you know what you want to achieve when taking the course. I honestly didn’t expect to learn too many new things about design. Instead, I was curious about the topic Interaction Design and wanted to get some honest feedback on my work from a professional designer. Also, I was looking for a more detailed information on the steps of the UX design process, because I am responsible for the design of my own startup and wanted to make sure I am not missing anything important.

Keep in mind that once you finish all tasks and mentor sessions, you will get an online certificate that you can add to your LinkedIn profile or show potential employers.

Price

The course costs 299$ and DesignLab guarantees to give you your money back if you don’t like it. Given all other UX courses out there, I think this is a reasonable price because it also includes 4 personal mentor sessions. Not to mention, you get tons of perks.

If you are interested in taking this course, you can even get an additional 25$ discount when using the link below to sign up 🙂

Summary

Overall, I was really happy with the course. By the end of week 4, I felt a lot more confident about my UX design knowledge. The course was very well-structured and easy to follow. Also, there were some valuable links for further reading at the end of the sessions, which I found quite helpful. I would definitely recommend this course and I think it is a great choice, especially for beginners.

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