I have selected and reviewed 10 UX design learning platforms and their courses, based on my own experience and other independent reviews in this article. Most of the courses reviewed contain current information on the latest tools and technology, as well as foundational design principles.
While we understand that technology is constantly evolving, the core concepts of UX remain relatively unchanged, and these basic design principles will still be applicable in the future.
Whether you are a beginner or an expert UX designer, I hope the content in this article will assist you to make informed decisions when it comes to choosing the most useful learning pathway for your situation.
What UX design courses are worth your time?
The right UX design course can pave your way to either starting a career in the field of UX design or for designers already working in the field, the learning of new skills and processes can advance your career to the next level. Completing the right course may give you the advantage you need when you are looking for your next role.
My advice for those wanting to start a career in UX design would be to focus on a course that allows you develop a portfolio of projects to showcase your skills, which is essential for you to land a full-time corporate job or a freelance gig in the future. Design tools tend to change over time and it’s advantageous to gain experience with the latest UX tools and technology, although having a solid foundation of your base design skills is still more important. You can learn a new tool at any time!
Any good UX design course should encompass components that allow you to hone your basic UX design skills, such as user research, usability testing, design principles, and user interface design, as well as focusing on the key UX concept of placing the user at the centre of your designs.
1. Springboard UI/UX Design Bootcamp
Audience: Beginner level
Time required: 9 months
Springboard offers online learning courses that are 100% remote, self-paced and mentor led. They also offer a job guarantee for graduates to assist them in finding a job once they complete the course. The UI/UX Design Bootcamp runs over 9 months and also provides you with a career coach.
I have personally been a mentor with Springboard for over 2 years, and from my experience here, I would definitely recommend this course to those wanting to learn UX design from scratch. The other huge benefit is that students will complete the course with an impressive 3 or 4 case studies that they can add to their online portfolio as part of the course, which can be used to demonstrate their skills and land a job in the UX design field.
Focus: Some of the topics covered include the foundational principles of user experience design, usability testing, interaction design, creating wireframes and prototypes, and basic design style guides. Students have the opportunity to work on a real-world project that provides invaluable experience for working in the industry.
You can learn more about the course here.
2. Interaction Design Foundation: Affordances: Designing Intuitive User Interfaces
Audience: Mid-level and higher
Time required: Approximately 16 hours over 6 weeks.
The Interaction Design Foundation offers a range of online UX courses for beginners through to advanced users. Their courses are self-paced, with optional meet-ups in your local area, and the grading is performed by experts in the field. Interaction design foundation's mission is to provide affordable and accessible education, and they receive many positive reviews from multiple sources.
We are going to look at one of their advanced courses, Affordances: Designing Intuitive User Interfaces. This course is aimed at UX designers wanting to acquire a deep theoretical and practical understanding of affordances and how they impact the usability of a design.
An affordance is a relationship between a person and a physical or digital object. For example, users will observe a UI element and determine what action is possible based on previous experiences and expectations.
Focus: The course covers the definition and role of affordances in user-centred design, identifying types of affordances and how to avoid these issues in design, and using concepts such as visibility, findability and conceptual models to enhance usability in your design.
You can learn more about this course here.
I would recommend Interaction Design Foundation courses such as the one described above based on the rich content, flexibility in completing in your own time, access to their UX community, and access to free masterclass sessions as part of the membership.
3. Google UX Design Professional Certificate
Audience: Beginner level
Time required: 6 months, 10 hours study per week.
Google is now offering professional certificate courses in UX design. It is widely known that Google has a mature UX design methodology that forms the framework for all their product designs, and gaining a certificate on completion can only enhance your competitive advantage in the job marketplace.
The Google UX Design course self-paced and no prior UX design experience is required.
Focus: Some of the topics cover UX design process foundations, conducting user research, user interviews, building wireframes, user testing, and accessibility. You will also complete the course with 3 UX design projects for your portfolio.
During the course, you will gain practical skills by applying the design processes to your projects. On successful completion, you can apply for jobs directly with Google and over 150 other US organizations.
You can learn more about this course here.
Audience: Beginner to advanced level
Time required: 1.5 hours
Udemy is an online learning platform that offers a wide range of course topics such as business, programming, design, and marketing. The platform is made available to experts to create and publish their own courses. All the courses are rated by participants on completion, so it's easy to identify which courses are popular and avoid others based on reviews. The courses are all online and self-paced, and you are provided with lifetime access to the courses you sign up for. There is also a 30 day money back guarantee.
The advantage of the courses on Udemy is that you can choose bite-size lessons that may take an hour to complete, or longer ones that can be 20 hours or more. This is great way to learn when you have limited time. The courses are also accessible on a mobile phone.
I would struggle to recommend any specific course from those available for UX design, because there are many excellent short courses that you can choose from. For example, if you wanted to learn more about UX Writing, there are 3 short courses by Dr. Katharina Grimm, of which 2 are best sellers. These are: Introduction to UX Writing, User Research and Testing for UX Writing, and Accessible UX Writing.
Focus: The Introduction to UX Writing course covers understanding what UX writing is, defining the important quality criteria, learning how to write CTAs, error messages and placeholders, learning how to ensure high-quality UX writing, and real-life tasks. And the best part is that this course is completed in 1.5 hours.
You can learn more about Udemy UX design courses here.
5. Future Learn- Digital Skills: User Experience
Audience: Beginner level
Time required: 3 weeks, 2 hours study per week.
This course was developed by Accenture, who is a leading global professional services company, offering strategy, and technology consulting to their clients. The course is aimed at designers preparing to enter the job market, or those looking for a career change. It is delivered online, with the opportunity to meet other students and join active online discussion sessions.
Focus: The course covers UX basics, user research, user journeys, basic wireframing, user testing, design tools, data analysis, and UX career paths. It also includes introductions to practising UX designers in multiple industries who provide insights into the skills you will require to advance in the field of UX design.
The length of the course would provide a good introduction to UX design, but it won’t leave you with a project to include in your portfolio. It may be a good option to explore if you haven’t quite decided if UX design is your next career move.
You can learn more about this course here.
Audience: Beginner level
Coursera is an online learning platform that offers some of the world's best courses (including the Google UX Design Professional Certificate reviewed earlier). The courses offered are a mixture of self-paced or timed, from 1 hour to 6 months. There are free and paid courses available, and most courses offer a certificate on completion. You can also find online degrees for a Bachelors and Masters.
For those starting out in UX, here are two highly rated beginner courses:
1. UI/UX Design by California Institute of the Arts - beginners
Time required: 3 - 6 months.
Focus: User research, defining project strategy and scope, information architecture, site maps and wireframes. The final part of the course involves a hands-on project where you will implement the UX design skills covered in the previous topics. You may also apply for financial aid or a scholarship if you can't afford the enrolment fee. Find out more about this course here.
This course is rated at 4.7 out of 5 with over 6.7 thousand reviews.
2. Introduction to User Experience Design by Georgia Tech - beginners
Time required: 1 - 3 months (self-paced)
Focus: The basics of User Experience design, requirement gathering, designing alternatives, prototyping, and evaluation. You will learn to use these four steps as a design framework that you apply in your own UX design projects. Financial aid is offered in this course.
Find out more about this course here.
This course is rated at 4.5 out of 5 with over 7 thousand reviews.
Audience: Beginner to advanced
Career Foundry is an established online platform that offers specialised courses in UI and UX design, web development, data analytics, digital marketing, and product management. Their courses include working with your own personal mentor to provide you with feedback and guidance on your progress.
I have selected one of the advanced courses to review. This course is aimed at UX designers who may struggle with the visual design skills needed to created professional looking high fidelity designs.
UI for UX Designers course – mid level
Time required: 2 months (15-20 hours per week)
Focus: Learning the basic principles of UI Design, such as visual design, colour, typography, icons, imagery, interactions, and responsive design using current industry standard tools. Applying these learnings to real-world projects to deliver influential designs for users.
You can learn more about this course here.
8. Khan Academy User Experience Researcher
Audience: Beginner level
Time required: Less than 30 minutes
Khan Academy is a free online educational platform, claiming world-class education for all. I have selected a unit about User Experience research, which is a specialised field of UX design. In my experience, UX research roles aren't as abundant as UX design roles, probably due to budget constraints that companies have when hiring in the field of UX. However, finding a UX researcher role is still very feasible, and if you are passionate about this area, you may want to complete this unit.
Focus: This unit contains three videos that will explore, from the eyes of a user researcher in the field, what UX researchers do, how much money they make, how they landed their job, where it's going, and how they plan for the future.
You can learn more about this course here.
9. Hack Design
Audience: Beginner level
Time required: 50+ weeks (self-paced)
HackDesign is a free course containing 50 lessons that guide you through the principles of UI and UX design from beginning to end. The lessons are emailed to you each week and contain links to articles, tutorials, cheat sheets and a list of tasks aimed at practising and improving your skills. This is a great way to learn, free of charge, and you can also complete these at your own pace.
Focus: The topics include, typography, user experience, user interface, mobile, interaction design, front-end design, product design, advanced user interface, advanced user experience plus more detailed themes within each topic.
This course may be lacking in some of the fundamentals of user centred design according to some of the reviews. However, there are also positive reviews from those who had completed the course.
You can learn more about this course here.
10. General Assembly UX Design Immersive
Audience: Beginner level
General Assembly offers a range of courses from full-time immersive programs with career coaches, one-off classes and workshops, and part-time courses. The bootcamp courses aren't cheap, but they have the highest job placement rates on completion. The company is global, so you may choose a course that is within your time zone.
UX Design Immersive online - beginners
Time required: 12 weeks
Focus: The curriculum is based on standards from large corporates to create industry relevance. Hands-on experience applying the essentials of user research, wireframing, prototyping and usability testing. Learn the details of user interface design, and collaboration skills for working within a team environment.
You can learn more about this course here.
Conclusion
The UX design courses reviewed here will vary in value based on where you are in your career, and your willingness to commit to learning. There are such a broad range of learning options available online, from self-paced short courses aimed at a specific skill, to immersive bootcamps providing mentors and real-world projects.
You will need to determine your time availability, financial budget constraints, and your preference for self-paced or guided to find the course or courses best suited to your situation.
I strongly believe that as UX designers we never stop learning and taking the right course or courses can definitely assist to accelerate the trajectory in your UX design career.
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