Are UX Design Bootcamps Worth It?

If you are an aspiring UX Designer, a quality UX design bootcamp can be an invaluable training opportunity to help you reach career readiness. As a relatively young career field, UX design is not frequently taught on college campuses, and hiring managers rarely include a degree in their job descriptions. Instead, to fill entry-level UX design roles, employers look for a strong mastery of UX design tools, techniques, and best practices and an impressive portfolio, including impactful case studies. While you may find the occasional college class that teaches UX design skills, UX design bootcamps are the primary comprehensive career-focused education available for those looking to enter the field. 

Cheaper self-paced courses are available, but a UX design student will need significant self-discipline to master the skills of UX design without the support of a live instructor and the accountability of a set schedule of classes. Many find that the perks of a bootcamp—especially the mentorship of an experienced instructor, opportunity to build a portfolio, and career support—are the surest path to a UX design career and more than pay for themselves. However, the expense of a bootcamp can be significant, so it will not necessarily be the right choice for all UX design learners. Some may find self-paced courses or even simple free online learning resources are the best choices for their UX design education needs. Read on to learn about the advantages and disadvantages of bootcamps and other learning options to discover if a UX design bootcamp is worth it for you.

What is UX Design?

User experience (UX) design is the practice of carefully considering and examining users’ satisfaction with their interactions with a digital product and turning this research into actionable insights to inform the creation of user-centered digital interfaces. UX Designers use prototyping tools to create interactive mockups of websites, applications, and other projects. UX design also requires human-centered user research methods, such as arranging focus groups, performing interviews, and running and analyzing surveys.

What Can You Do With UX Design?

UX design is a foundational skill set for building a career as a UX Designer or UX Researcher. UX Designers fill a vital role on design teams that create websites, applications, and other digital products. As specialists in user experience, UX Designers use a sophisticated skill set to look at design projects from a user-first perspective through prototyping, user research, and user testing. A UX Designer ensures that the user’s experience of a digital product is smooth and intuitive from start to finish, meeting their needs and exceeding expectations.

Meanwhile, the closely related occupation of UX Researcher performs complex data analysis focused on improving user satisfaction and brand loyalty. Focus groups are a favorite method of collecting data for UX Researchers. Their responsibilities include assembling these groups, questioning them regarding usability, and communicating their findings to their design team. They also discover and share actionable insights that provide direction for current digital products and future projects. 

UX professionals use their UX design expertise and tools like Figma to build prototypes of design projects in progress and share them with focus groups. Their projects are often long-term and require extensive planning through hypothesis, research, discussion with users, and data analysis. Understanding a user’s mind and providing the user’s voice to the design team is core to the UX professional’s work. They act as a bridge between users and designers, ensuring the team’s designs meet users’ needs in order to create positive digital experiences with products as varied as mobile apps, software, websites, video games, virtual reality, and voice user interfaces.

Other professionals can also use UX design to take their work to the next level. Marketers can apply user research, empathy, and prototyping to create targeted campaigns, and entrepreneurs can create stand-out products that resonate using the same skills to listen to potential users and gauge their authentic needs. Meanwhile, content creators can use UX design to build intuitive blogs that build a loyal audience, while educators building online courses can leverage UX design to make their training more user-centered and effective.

Do UI Designers Need to Learn UX Design?

User Interface (UI) Designers are another group that regularly uses UX design to guarantee the user-centeredness of their work. UI and UX design are so intertwined that it’s virtually impossible to perform one without some knowledge of the other. That said, UI Designers focus on designing the visual aspects of digital interfaces that are as intuitive to use as they are aesthetically pleasing. Most UI Designers rely on UX Designers to provide them with research from focus groups and surveys to share the voice of users who test their websites and other projects. While UI Designers don’t need the same expertise in UX design as UX Designers, knowing UX design concepts can help them understand the insights shared by UX Designers and translate this information into beautiful digital interfaces that put the user first.

Why Learn UX Design in a Bootcamp?

As a UX design learner, you have several class format options to consider when determining your educational path. Among those options, UX design bootcamps stand out for many as a comprehensive career-focused solution that will have students job-ready in a fraction of the time required by a university degree. UX design bootcamps provide aspiring UX Designers with an immersive learning environment and support through an accelerated, hands-on education in the tools and techniques of the field. 

While a bootcamp requires a financial investment, tuition is significantly less than the cost of attending college for four years. Typically, bootcamp tuition covers invaluable career services and mentorship from experienced designers not always provided by a college education. However, attending college has benefits that may make it a better choice for some, and others may find self-paced classes or training seminars a better fit for their learning needs. It’s important to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each class type to determine the best solution for you.

Bootcamps Compared to College

As a considerably young career path, UX design is a rare college major option. Many aspiring UX Designers struggle to find a bachelor's degree that provides the education they need to prepare for their dream career. Graphic design, human-computer interaction, and computer science are a few adjacent degree programs that can give you a strong foundation in relevant skills. However, these are unlikely to provide students with the UX design expertise and portfolio development opportunities needed to land that first entry-level position. 

Hiring managers looking for UX Designers and UX Researchers are well aware of the newness of the field, so these positions rarely require a degree. Instead, employers are interested in whether a potential hire has the knowledge, skills, and experience to do the work. As a portfolio of design projects and case studies is required to demonstrate that a person has these skills, a college degree that doesn’t support building this isn’t the best choice to ensure job readiness for aspiring UX professionals.

All that said, some UX design learners may be in a place in their educational journey where they may benefit more from a college degree than a bootcamp. Recent high school graduates with access to scholarships and grants may find college more affordable than a bootcamp. Those with UX design on a list of potential career options may also be interested in attending college, where they can explore a variety of subjects and fields before deciding which is right for them. Another factor to consider for those who can afford it, is that college is a rite of passage featuring unique socio-emotional learning experiences very different from fast-paced and highly focused UX design bootcamps. Those with the luxury of a few years to dedicate to their education may appreciate the college experience, but they will more likely than not need to invest in a UX design bootcamp following graduation to learn the skills of the field and develop a portfolio to qualify for a UX design job.

Bootcamps Compared to Self-Paced Courses

Asynchronous or self-paced classes are another course format option that you may consider enrolling in to learn UX design. As the name implies, a self-paced class allows a student to learn at the pace that works for them. With no set schedule or live components, UX design self-paced classes give participants the maximum flexibility a structured class can allow. Students can begin self-paced classes whenever they are ready to enroll, which is why they are also known as on-demand courses. For those with packed and unpredictable schedules or other obligations like parenthood or multiple jobs, self-paced UX design classes are an invaluable resource for learning the skill.

However, a considerable drawback to self-paced classes is their lack of a live instructor’s guidance and mentorship. Mastering a complex topic like UX design—featuring both technical and human-centered skills—can be challenging without the real-time feedback of an expert instructor drawing on years of experience in the field. Self-paced UX design classes also lack the benefits of collaborative learning with a classroom of peers, such as participating in group projects and the opportunity to hear diverse design perspectives. 

For many UX design students, the self-driven aspect of a self-paced UX design class is a serious disadvantage. Without the accountability of a set schedule or a live instructor, self-paced classes require students to use their discipline and intrinsic motivation to complete the course and master its content. For some, this situation is ideal, but especially for those busy enough to require a self-paced course, staying on track with their UX design learning plans can be significantly more challenging without the benefits of a bootcamp’s live classroom sessions, whether they be in-person or online.

One final advantage to self-paced classes is worth considering and may make the disadvantages worth navigating for some. As these asynchronous classes are prerecorded and are essentially passive income for the educational institutions that offer them, their tuition can be significantly more cost-effective than live online and in-person bootcamps. However, the price of UX design bootcamps more than pays off in the value of a live instructor, mentorship, career support, and their up-to-date content, which you cannot necessarily count on receiving in every self-paced course.

Bootcamps Compared to Free Training Options

If keeping costs low is among your most significant concerns when searching for a UX design training solution, you may wish to explore what free options are available for learning the subject. If you are early in your learning journey and have yet to commit to UX design as a career option, then a free online tutorial explaining what UX design is a great place to begin before investing in a UX design bootcamp or another course. Noble Desktop provides several free UX design seminars, and you can search for YouTube videos and online articles to provide an introduction to the topic. In addition to searching for UX design, you can also explore the web for resources on key tools used in the field, such as Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD.

In addition to providing an accessible introduction to UX design, free training resources can be a great place to start when you wish to add some familiarity with the concepts to your current professional toolkit in an adjacent field. Wherever you are in your UX design learning journey, you can use the free options to support experimenting with the tools of the trade on your own.

The major drawback to free UX design learning resources will quickly become evident if you attempt to prepare for a career in the field by exclusively relying on these videos, seminars, and articles. Trying to piece together a comprehensive UX design curriculum using free resources is an enormous amount of work and virtually impossible to do with the limited options available. Without some expertise in the field already, you are unlikely to know what you may be missing when it comes to theory, techniques, methodologies, and best practices. Additionally, the lack of mentorship from an experienced instructor, structure, and external accountability can make it difficult for even the most disciplined UX design learner to remain focused and complete their studies in a timely manner.

While a UX design bootcamp requires a considerable amount of time and money, the return on investment is more than worth it for those planning to launch a career in UX design. UX design bootcamps provide you with the training, mentorship, and job support to land your first position in the field. However, free videos, articles, and tutorials are great tools to support your study time outside of class when attending a UX design bootcamp and can enrich any learner’s education. 

Learn UX Design Skills with Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop provides several UX design classes, including bootcamps, certificate programs, and short courses. If you’re seeking a comprehensive career-prep UX design course, Noble’s UX & UI Design Certificate program is the solution you’re looking for. No experience is required for beginners to enroll in this course, which includes 132 hours of expert-led instruction, one-on-one mentorship sessions ideal for career prep, a free retake option, and a verified digital certificate of completion. Whether you attend the UX & UI Design Certificate program as a part-time or full-time student, you will master the principles of UX and UI design, prototyping, user testing, and Figma. With the professional-quality portfolio you build, you will be job-ready by the time you graduate from the program.

Suppose you find yourself in need of a deep dive into a specific tool of the trade rather than the full skill set of UX design. In that case, Noble Desktop provides several courses on individual applications commonly used in the field, such as Sketch, Adobe XD, and its Figma Bootcamp. Featuring 12 hours of hands-on instruction, a free retake option, Noble’s proprietary workbook, and a digital certificate of completion, the Figma Bootcamp includes everything you need to master this go-to design application. By the end of the bootcamp, you’ll be confident using Figma to perform essential UX design tasks, such as building interactive prototypes, creating animations, and designing user-centered layouts.

If you’re confident in your UX design skills but could use support in building a portfolio that accurately showcases your expertise, Noble’s Visual Design Portfolio Bootcamp provides expert guidance through the process. Strong working knowledge of Sketch, Figma, or Adobe XD is a prerequisite to attending this bootcamp. In this 18-hour bootcamp, you will use the industry-standard tools to create professional-quality projects to assemble into an impressive portfolio. A free retake option and a certificate of completion are included for no additional fees.