Why these 5 best UX courses for women are changing the tech community

By Samaya Sinha, Co-founder at Ideate Labs

Last Updated Nov 9, 2023

Table of Contents

1. Our Criteria for Vetting User Experience Courses for Women

2. Our List of the 5 Best UX Courses for Women

3. How do I choose a User Experience course?

4. What can I do to get started learning UX design or UX research?

5. Speak to an instructor today

6. FAQs: 5 common questions about UX courses for women

Our Criteria for Vetting User Experience Courses

There are so many options when it comes to taking a UX course or UX bootcamp - there are free YouTube videos or the Google Coursera course to get your feet wet and get an introduction to UX design, while there are also UX courses and UX bootcamps that provide a more holistic, in-depth education if you are ready to invest time and money into making a career change into UX design or UX research. And then there are also grad school programs in product design or human computer interaction if you are really looking to have an immersive 1-2 year educational experience. In this list we have vetted 5 UX courses for women based on their unique mission towards empowering women, as well as the breadth and depth of their curriculum.

Here’s the list of the 20 best UX courses based on our criteria for vetting them (read their descriptions below):

1. Ideate Labs- UX Courses for Women

2. SheDesigns

3. AllWomen

4. Avocademy

5. DesignLab

Our List of the 5 Best UX Courses for Women

1. Ideate Labs- UX Courses for Women: The international, entrepreneurial all-women UX program with a focus on immigrants and POC.

We started the Ideate Labs community with the mission of making UX UI design accessible to all, especially women, minorities and POC. Since then we have graduated 4 all-women cohorts and have helped immigrants and women of color level up their salaries to earn six figures, all while building confidence in themselves. Check out our 2 flagship programs: The 4-month Live, Online Design MBA course ($6450) and our Self-Paced, Online Design MBA ($4950)

We take a unique approach to teaching UX and positioning our students for UX jobs. We believe all UX designers should have a good grasp of business strategy and business models, as well as entrepreneurship and scaling a business, so that they can understand how applying UX design or research varies between startup environments, agency or consultancy environments and corporate environments. Some of our graduates have gone on to start side hustles and startups too, while others have gone on to work at agencies and large corporations. Each graduate finds a UX career path that best suits their unique skills, personality and career goals. Our curriculum showcases how UX intersects with product management, product development, business strategy, entrepreneurship, engineering agile development cycles and inclusive design practices.

At Ideate Labs, we help women, immigrants and POC land 6-figure job offers or coach them till they get it. We work 1 on 1 with women to help them build their confidence and overcome their imposter syndrome so that they can stop self-selecting out of great UX jobs and consider more jobs when they apply, We also encourage our cohort members to negotiate higher salaries and set unique professional goals so that they can remain focused during the job search. If you are interested in joining our courses, check out these videos below: UX Career Paths for People from Non-Traditional Backgrounds & How to Successfully Pivot into UX Design in 6 Months.

2. SheDesigns: Join a supportive community for women of color. SheDesigns provides UX courses and mentorship for UX job placements. SheDesigns provides a 6-Week Intro to UX course, as well as a 12-Week Immersive UX course. We are always excited by mission driven programs that elevate specific communities, especially fellow women-led programs in education. The programs require an application process and interview before admission into the courses and so offer a chance for personalized fit. The 12-Week Immersive UX course provides an introductory UX research curriculum and a more holistic UX design education.

3. AllWomen: An all-women community for the European market. Join AllWomen’s community for courses catered towards the European market and European UX job placements. AllWomen is a woman-focused learning community based out of Barcelona, Spain and offers UX, Product Management and Data Analytics bootcamps. We are again very excited by their mission to help women break into tech! Their UX bootcamp can be completed in 10 weeks and covers a holistic UX research and UX design syllabus. UX Bootcamp prices are not listed on the site, but they do offer mini courses priced between 500-800 Euros.

4. Avocademy: Not exclusively for women, but loved by women. Avocademy has been a recommendation from many aspiring women UX designers pivoting into their new careers. However, it is not exclusively for women. Another affordable UX foundations program that is preferred by women and priced at $2997, Avocademy offers a fully online program that takes 8-16 weeks to complete. There is no mention of class size as this seems to be a self-paced, online way of learning, although mentorship is offered. The curriculum offers an introduction to both UX research and UX design.

5. DesignLab: A comprehensive UX design program. While DesignLab doesn’t focus solely on women, it does get good testimonials from women and folks from non-traditional backgrounds who do not want to choose a larger bootcamp brand like General Assembly, Springboard, CareerFoundry, or Thinkful. They offer an introductory UX course and a more intensive UX program that takes 15 weeks to complete full time, while 30 weeks to complete part time. Their programs offer a UX/UI design curriculum along with career coaching. The intensive UX program costs $6,850 if paid upfront, but includes interest if paid in installments.

How do I choose a User Experience course?

We have noticed that some of our most successful students at Ideate Labs have done some research on the variety of UX career paths available and have a clear plan in mind on how they would like to rebrand their past career experience into a new UX career. Check out our YouTube video here to hear about traits our most successful students have from Day 1 that help them land a 6-figure UX job within 7 months.

Before you choose a bootcamp, we recommend doing the following:

• Take our personality quiz on what UX career path best suits you. Are you more of a creative or a strategist? Are you someone who would enjoy working at a startup, agency, or large corporation?

• Join UX free communities to start networking with UX learners and UX professionals. They will give you anecdotes on how they got into UX and learned UX. Our free Slack community has over 7000+ learners and professionals to chat with and you can join here.

• Take free UX courses and lessons before you commit more time, effort and money into a lengthy UX bootcamp or UX course. We recommend checking out our YouTube channel for free UX lessons on UX research, design thinking, UX/UI design, UX portfolio and resumes, and so much more!

Some reasons why our alumni have chosen Ideate Labs after browsing our free UX resources:

• Affordable 1:1 mentorship and lifelong career coaching: The course price is 2x-3x less than a lot of the larger UX courses and bootcamps, while providing more 1:1 mentorship and lifelong career coaching. Our promise is that we help you a land a 6-figure UX job offer in 7 months or coach you till you get it.

• In-depth UX research, UX/UI design and business strategy curriculum: Most UX courses on this list provide a great UX/UI design curriculum, and some of them even offer a few modules on frontend development as well. However, almost none of these UX courses and bootcamps have a very in-depth UX research curriculum and focus on research for only 1-2 modules, while not touching on business strategy at all. We focus 7 weeks of our program on learning quantitative and qualitative UX research methods, as well as how it connects to business strategy, entrepreneurship, and product management. Some of our alumni go on to land UX management jobs and lead UX research or UX design efforts within companies.

• Choose your own project topic: Rather than assigning a generic project topic to the whole cohort, we encourage all students to choose their own project topic like startup founders because this helps them learn skills like product positioning and product scoping from a business strategy perspective. This also ensures that each cohort member has a unique UX portfolio after they graduate that showcases their unique strengths and specific skills.

What can I do to get started learning UX design or UX research?

We recommend getting started by first seeing if UX design or UX research as a career path is right for you in the first place! Here is our checklist on how to get started in UX without breaking bank! Take a week or two to really do some research on UX as a career path before investing more time and money and effort into taking a UX course or UX bootcamp.

Our FREE UX blueprint for breaking into UX:

• Check out our free webinar on the different types of UX career paths: UX Career Paths for Folks from Non-Traditional Backgrounds

• And our free blueprint to pivot into UX: A Blueprint to Pivoting into UX/UI as a Career

• Take our free UX career blueprint quiz: What UX/UI career path best suits your personality?

• Get an in-depth understanding of design thinking: An Introduction to Design Thinking

• Understand how cognitive science and psychology intersect: The Laws of UX, The Psychology of Action

• Learn About Design Systems: Atomic Design by Brad Frost

• Learn some Figma basics: Top 10 Skills, Tips & Tricks in Figma for Beginners

• Join an interactive UX research ideation workshop: Design Thinking for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

• Join an interactive UX design ideation workshop: Redesign Netflix Ideation workshop

• Get tips on building a UX resume and portfolio: Storytelling for UX/UI Designers on the Job Hunt

• Watch our info session on: How to Successfully Pivot into UX/UI Design or Research in 6 Months

Speak to an instructor today

If you are interested in taking our UX courses, please contact an instructor today to learn more about the program. You can book a 20-minute design therapy call here where we go into detail about your specific background and how we can create a personalized blueprint to pivot into UX/UI design for you!

This consult will feel like a design therapy session and we dig deep to understand your personal and professional goals.

You will be having this call with Samaya, our co-founder at Ideate Labs. Hear about anecdotes from her work for INCREDIBLE Fortune 500 brands like Frog Design, Disney+, Hulu, J&J, Ford, Facebook + more these past 8 years.

Connect with her on LinkedIn to get UX beginner tips! She’s excited to give back to the UX community and help women, immigrants and POC especially.

FAQs: 5 common questions about UX courses for women

1. What is a UX design course?

Most UX design courses and UX bootcamps cover design thinking and walk through the end-to-end design process. However, the majority of UX bootcamps and UX courses focus on UX/UI design and visual design, while just touching upon UX research. A few UX courses and UX bootcamps also cover UI frontend development within their curriculum as well. At Ideate Labs, our UX courses cover UX research, UX/UI design and business strategy, while touching upon product management.

2. Is it easy to learn UX design?

It is neither easy nor hard to learn UX design - we believe that relying on previous work experience or educational experience can help with pivoting into UX design. At Ideate Labs, we have had women pivot into UX design and UX research from a variety of backgrounds, including physical therapy, education, marketing, sales, HR and office management, graphic design, customer success, and many other non-traditional backgrounds! In the cases of our most successful students, they were able to rebrand their past experiences to define them in UX terms and terminology. Check out our video on skills and characteristics our most successful students had that led them to pivot into UX in 7 months.

3. How long does it take to learn UX design?

There are self-paced UX courses and UX bootcamps available, like the Google Coursera UX course and our Self-Paced UX course. There are also mini UX courses and bootcamps available that last 4-6 weeks. However, most UX courses and UX bootcamps with a comprehensive UX curriculum tend to have a duration of 3-9 months. It is possible to pivot into UX in as little as 3-4 months as part of an accelerated or self paced program, however it is more common for folks to pivot into UX design in 6-9 months.

4. Which UX course is best?

It depends on what you are looking for- if you are interested in learning UX/UI design and frontend development, then Columbia University’s program might be a good option. If you are more interested in UX research and UX/UI design, as well as product management and business strategy, then Ideate Labs could be good option. You should also vet your options based on cost and accessibility to see what’s best for you.

5. What’s a good UX course with job guarantees?

While a few programs do provide job guarantees, they only do so for students who receive high grades within their programs. Students who do not receive high grades tend to self-select out of qualifying for the job guarantee. Certain UX programs also connect students with unpaid internships as part of their job guarantee program, rather than connecting them with paid opportunities, so be sure to read through the fine print in detail when looking at a UX program that offers a job guarantee.