There are classes for all age groups, both in-person and online, so you (or your children) can deepen your understanding of the art of user experience development and prepare for a high-paying career in the field.
Key Takeaways
- UX design is an in-demand field in almost every industry, thanks to its focus on improving the user’s experience.
- Classes for UX design are available for young children, teens, college students, and adults that wish to enhance their technical skills and creative potential.
- Noble Desktop offers a UX/UI Design Certificate program that teaches the fundamentals of both user experience and user interface.
- Other institutions like Google, Springboard, and the UX Design Institute offer equally worthy courses that can be attended from the comfort of your own home.
- High school students can start their journey towards a career in the creative industry with courses from NextGen Bootcamp.
- Even elementary-aged children can learn the basics of UX design with the help of courses from companies like Ivy Seed and Digital Influx.
- Summer can be an ideal time to study UX design, thanks to more available free time for teens, college students, and even adult professionals.
- You will want to consider what type of class (in-person or online) and what subjects you wish to study so that you can pick the ideal course for you.
UX design takes into account the elements that shape a user’s experience with a product or service, how these elements make the user feel, and how easy it is to accomplish their desired tasks. Also known as user experience design, it can cover anything from how a physical product feels in your hand to how easy and efficient the checkout process is when shopping online. The goal of UX design is to create easy, efficient, relevant, and all-around pleasant experiences for the user.
The term “user experience” was coined by cognitive psychologist and designer Don Norman in the 1990s. These days, apps and websites are mainly associated with UX design, but the concept of improving a user’s experience through both form and function has existed for much longer. Now implemented by major companies worldwide, from Apple to Samsung, car manufacturers to film and TV streaming services, UX design is a crucial part of product development and customer retention.
As a UX Designer, you can create impactful experiences that improve people’s lives. Your designs can help businesses succeed, solve real-world problems, and make the digital world a more accessible place. If you thrive in a problem-solving role and care about design, implementation, and testing, then you could find a lot of fulfillment and success as a UX Designer.
For Adults & College Students
There is a high demand for UX Designers across a variety of industries, so there are plenty of career opportunities and even long-term career stability. And as companies continue to shift more and more towards a digital-first approach, highly trained teams of UX Designers will be even more essential. Plus, the average salary for a UX Designer is around $144,000, well above the national average. As a UX Designer, you can create impactful experiences that improve people’s lives. If you thrive in a problem-solving role and care about design, implementation, and testing, then you could find a lot of fulfillment and success as a UX Designer.
Noble Desktop
UX Design Bootcamp
Held live online (or in-person in New York), this bootcamp covers design concepts, industry tools like Figma, and research methodologies. With the help of expert instructors, you’ll learn to design digital products (like websites and apps) and build clickable prototypes that you can show to users for testing, clients for review, and developers who will turn your design into the final working product.
Small class sizes help to foster a more intentional learning environment, and extra benefits like one-on-one mentoring and a free retake add extra value to the cost of this course. You’ll get a certificate upon completion that you can display on your LinkedIn or add to your resume or portfolio.
Figma Bootcamp
This course covers all things Figma, a modern design app commonly used by UX Designers. It’s a vector-based program, so you can scale for a variety of screen sizes with ease, as well as export hi-res (Retina) graphics for websites and apps. You’ll learn to create designs and turn them into interactive prototypes that translate from screen to screen, open navigation overlays, and make specific areas within a screen scrollable. Plus, you can even master skills like adding animations to your designs using smart animate! A proprietary workbook is included, as is a one-year free retake.
General Assembly
User Design Experience Bootcamp
This course is offered both online and in person at their select campuses across the U.S. You’ll get hands-on experience applying essential tactics like wireframing, prototyping, user research, and usability testing. Plus, you’ll dive deep into visual and user interface design and touch on hot topics like service design and design leadership. This program prepares you to work cross-functionally with business stakeholders, product managers, and web development teams, so you’ll practice UX/UI handoffs, team presentations, design critique, and other techniques for collaborating on the job.
Upon passing this course, you will receive a signed certificate of completion. Thousands of GA alumni use their certificates to demonstrate their skills to potential employers — including GA’s 19K+ hiring partners — along with their LinkedIn networks.
UX Design Certificate
Trusted across a variety of industries, Google’s UX design certificate is offered through Coursera and is designed for those who are new to the field. You’ll learn about developing personas, user stories, and user journey maps. You’ll also master conducting usability studies, creating wireframes and prototypes, testing and iterating on designs, and building a professional portfolio.
Completing a Google Career Certificate also gives you exclusive access to CareerCircle, which offers free 1-on-1 coaching, interview, and career support, and a job board that connects you directly with employers, including over 150 companies in the Google Career Certificates Employer Consortium. Fully online, this course takes approximately 3-6 months to complete.
Springboard
UI/UX Certification Course
This beginner-friendly course is held entirely online with the addition of 1:1 mentoring. You’ll master a design-thinking mindset and learn how to design personalized, intuitive user experiences. You’ll also harness the power of AI to maximize your time, creativity, and job prospects, become familiar with various design-based research methods and when to use them, learn how to interpret data usage from an app or website and utilize ChatGPT in user research, and explore automated data collection and analysis. Finally, you’ll participate in a 4-week remote externship with a real startup company to apply all your new skills.
York University
Certificate in User Experience (UX) Design
This part-time certificate will explore UX design as a tool for optimizing user experiences by covering essentials, like system design and formulating personas that mimic the target audience experience. You’ll learn to evaluate and use relevant methodologies like design thinking, participatory design, and the MoSCoW methodology. You’ll also master best practices in visual design and system design and learn how to use the different design systems functions. The course will also cover cross-functional skills such as teamwork, communication, problem-solving, active listening, and storytelling.
At the end of this course, you’ll receive a certificate of completion and walk away with a portfolio of work that effectively applies UX best practices and processes to showcase your skills.
UX Design Institute
Professional Diploma in UX Design
This self-paced online class helps you master the foundational skills of UX and explore concepts like user research, analysis techniques, structure and navigation, interactions, design principles and patterns, mobile UX, workflows, prototyping, and wireframing. You’ll also create your own portfolio that best showcases your work and skills and then complete the course with a two-hour final exam. Career guidance, tutor support, a thriving online community, and popular monthly webinars are all included in the price of this course. You’ll receive a certificate of completion once you’ve passed the exam that can be displayed on your LinkedIn profile or online portfolio.
For High School Students & Teenagers
Deciding on a field of study and preparing for college can be overwhelming. A course in UX design can help expose you to one potential field that combines both creativity and strategy. Learning UX design can help students develop in-demand skills that can be used in many industries. UX design is multidisciplinary, and can involve a variety of roles, such as user research, usability testing, prototyping, data analysis, and collaboration with marketers and developers. Plus, UX design also involves transferable skills like research, critical thinking, visual communication, and coding.
NextGen
UX & UI Design Summer Program Online
This hands-on summer boot camp explores key UX & UI concepts and skills that are in high demand in world-class tech companies. You'll start with an introduction to user interface (UI) design and learn the patterns and shared visual language that apps and websites use in interface design. This course also explores user experience (UX) design concepts, including user interviews, user personas, and journey maps for researching and planning your project. You'll then create your own clickable product designs with Figma and test them on users. You’ll receive a certificate upon completion, showcasing your hard-earned new skills.
Digital Design Summer Program Live Online
This virtual course helps high school students build a portfolio, learn the ins and outs of design, and gain useful skills that can be applied in college, jobs, internships, and extracurricular activities. You will learn how to make photos pop and create eye-catching graphics with Adobe Photoshop, design print and web layouts with Adobe InDesign, and create logos, icons, and other scalable images with Adobe Illustrator. The class will also cover important concepts for professional designers and best practices for graphic design, user interface (UI), and user experience (UX) design. Using Figma, today's most popular UX/UI app, you will build clickable prototypes for applications that they can test and refine. At the end of the course, students will receive a Certificate of Completion that can be added to their resume, college application, and LinkedIn account.
STIR Lab, University of Central Florida
Teen UI/UX Mobile App Design Bootcamp
This online course is designed for teens 12-17 and held over Zoom. This bootcamp will be part of a research study in which teens will learn about user experience, storyboarding and prototyping by creating scenarios based on their unsafe experiences on social media in the past and will design features and solutions for online risks. Teens will learn about user experience and online safety and will receive a certificate of completion at the end of the course.
Girls Who Code
Summer Immersion Program (SIP)
In the two-week program, high school students attend live, virtual classes sponsored by industry-leading companies like MetLife, Bank of America, Logitech and Synchrony. SIP students will dive into the tech world and game design, covering beginner to intermediate CS concepts, the step-by-step design process, and the basics of UX design.
For Kids & Preteens
Calling all artistic kids! UX design lets you flex your creative problem-solving skills by working with different teams, various goals, and evolving best practices, finding innovative ways to make them all work together seamlessly. Plus, design projects are an opportunity for kids to build confidence, express creativity, and learn a marketable skill that could lead to a fulfilling future.
Create & Learn
Modern Website Design with Wix Class
This fun hands-on class teaches students (grades 5-12) to build professional websites for themselves, friends, and communities using Wix. You’ll start with the basics of how to use WIX and how to structure your website and then move on to designing layout, choosing color schemes, and creating a web store to sell products. By the end of this course, you’ll know how to use and customize templates to make designs better, edit and customize images and other key design components of the sites, add more complex components to the site such as maps, allow site visitors to submit information to site owners, create web pages that are private, and enable payment for fundraising/donation, buying tickets to events, or selling products.
Ivy Seed
UI/UX Design Summer Camp
Designed for youth ages 7-17, this five-day course is held in-person at Boston University. Developed by experts from MIT and Stanford University, students will learn to use and develop their creativity and critical thinking skills to design their own project. They’ll gain valuable experience with design sprint, learn design thinking, master using Sketch, discover user experience thinking, and design a UI/UX project that solves a social issue. This course has no prerequisites and boasts small class sizes that encourage discussion and individual attention.
Digital Influx
UX for Kids
Designed for children ages 9 -12, this beginner's course introduces them to problem-solving like a UX designer. With fun & interactive games, this course focuses on skills like empathy, curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, conflict resolution, collaboration, and awareness. Students will design a product that tackles a real-life problem: green energy, health and wellbeing, or animal welfare. All projects are created in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. By the end of the lessons, they’ll have designed an app, website or product, earned a certificate of completion, and created a digital portfolio to show the world.
Why Summer is the Perfect Time to Learn UX Design
Summer is a good time to learn UX design for a variety of reasons. For students, summer offers a break from their regular schooling, providing more time to focus on new skills. Parents may find that their kids need focused activities over the summer to stay motivated (and out of trouble) and an in-person program is extra helpful for those that cannot stay home through the summer months with their children.
High school students can use a summer course to test out potential fields of study for college. Being able to pinpoint their interests can set them on an expedited track for collegiate and career success. Additionally, learning UX design teaches prospective college students and soon-to-be professionals valuable life skills. Empathy, adaptability, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication are necessary traits for both UX design and life in general. Learning in a structured environment like a summer course will provide them with ample opportunity to practice and further develop these skills.
For professionals, summers often result in slower recruiting practices as people go on vacation and offices shift to summer schedules. This slower time gives you the chance to network, get educated, and improve your design skills. Online courses can be a great way to learn about the latest tools, trends, methods, and techniques. And, with many of these video editing classes taught by instructors who work during the school semester for universities, there may be more options available to choose from over the summer months.
How to Choose the Right Summer UX Design Course
There are several factors to consider when choosing a summer UX design course. The first factor you’ll want to consider is what learning environment is best suited for you. Classes are offered in three main ways: in-person, live online, or virtually on demand. Do you thrive in a collaborative environment where you can interact with your peers and receive in-the-moment feedback from your instructor? Or, do you prefer a more solitary learning environment, perhaps one where you can learn at your own speed? Do you live in a bustling city with ample in-person classes, or are you located in a more rural region? Your answers to these questions will help you choose the right offering for you.
Summer UX design programs will also vary in length. You’ll want to consider how much time you can commit to your education and what level of flexibility your schedule requires. Are you looking to immerse yourself in an intensive program like a bootcamp? Do you work full-time and need your classes to be scheduled for evening and weekend hours? Programs can vary from a few days to a couple months, so you’ll need to decide if you can only take a week away or can commit your entire summer to learning.
In-person training offers face-to-face interaction with both your fellow students and your expert instructor. This collaborative environment is available for both full-time and part-time classes and provides structure and accountability, two things that can help you succeed. Online courses may lack this in-person interaction, but they make up for it with increased flexibility. Live online classes still offer instant feedback from your instructor and interactions with other students, while on-demand virtual courses allow for the most flexibility since you can decide where and when you learn.
It’s important to consider which subjects you wish to study as well. UX design encompasses many things and each course may differ slightly in what it includes. For instance, there are many essential tools used by UX Designers. You may want to choose specific ones to learn, like Figma for prototyping and wireframing, Asana for project management, or Survey Monkey for surveying and user research. These are only a sampling of tools available, so make sure you choose a course that covers the ones you wish to master.
The good news is that, no matter which option you choose, you can obtain a quality education with a top-notch curriculum and expert instructors.