Looking to learn UX design or UI design to improve your design skills for websites, apps and software during the pandemic?
UX design is an umbrella term that includes UI design and usability but also considers the whole product creation process, including branding, design, usability, and features.
Good UX design should be easy to use and intuitive. Your website, on the other hand, has 15-30 seconds to engage with your visitors. It is important to have a good user experience.
In no particular order, here are our top six free UX design courses you can take this year amid the pandemic.
1. Coursera
Coursera provides access to over 3,500 online courses in a variety of fields. They have collaborated with top universities and organizations all over the world, including Stanford, Princeton, and Yale in the United States, as well as foreign institutions including the University of London and the University of Zurich.
Their courses are designed and taught by faculty from some of the world’s top universities and colleges. Courses include lecture videos, text, quizzes, projects, peer-reviewed assignments, and discussion boards. When you complete each one, you will receive official recognition in the form of a shareable electronic course certificate.
Coursera provides the ability to receive an online degree if you want to fully commit to a new profession or shake up your current one. For example, you can receive an accredited master’s degree from the comfort of your own home in 1 to 3 years. The cost of a degree ranges from $15,000 to $25,000 per year.
Multiple courses within the same subject make up a specialization. If you need to learn a particular skill, you can enroll in a specialization and receive a specialization certificate to post on social media and present to potential employers. Prices vary from $39 to $79 per month, depending on the specialization.
2. Udemy
When it comes to sheer variety, Udemy has a massive 100,000-course library that leaves other online course platforms in the dust. This figure is made possible by Udemy’s ability to encourage instructors to develop courses based on the fields in which they claim to be experts. Once courses have been developed, instructors can launch them and charge students a fee. Udemy, unlike many other course sites, does not have courses produced by universities and educational institutions.
Since nearly everyone can build and publish courses on the Udemy platform, the standard of the courses varies from mediocre to world-class. Before enrolling, read the course feedback and watch the course preview video to get a sense of what to expect.
In contrast to the UX-specific learning platforms discussed in this article, Udemy covers a broad range of topics. This has ramifications for the course certificates obtained by completing their UX courses. Unfortunately, an Udemy course certificate on your resume or LinkedIn profile will not hold much weight in the UX industry.
3. LinkedIn Learning
In 2015, LinkedIn purchased Lynda.com (one of the leading online course platforms). LinkedIn Learning was released the following year, with content sourced from Lynda.com. LinkedIn Learning now has a massive library of 8,600 online courses that is growing by the day. 167 of these are UX-related.
LinkedIn Learning’s comprehensive educational content is divided into two categories: Courses and Learning Paths.
Individual online courses cover one or more subjects and consist of text, videos, and practical exercises. When you complete each course, you will obtain a certificate to display on your LinkedIn profile and demonstrate your newly gained knowledge to colleagues and prospective employers.
Instead of searching for random courses in your field of interest, you can search through the platform’s available learning paths and get a more organized learning experience. Learning paths are made up of video courses that are similar to one another within a particular area. For example, if you choose the “User Experience” learning path, you will be presented with a list of seven possible routes to take.
4. Skillshare
Skillshare is one of the world’s largest training sites, with over 27,000 online courses.
To provide a rich learning environment, each of their courses includes an instructional video that usually lasts 45 minutes to an hour, as well as tasks, a class group, and class projects.
Skillshare, unlike many of the other learning sites reviewed in this article, does not include certificates or evidence of completion, making it difficult to highlight your newly learned skills on your resume or during a work interview.
Another disadvantage is that there is no instructor-led training, which means that students and teachers cannot interact directly via the platform. As a result, don’t expect to receive direct input from teachers.
Almost anyone can create and publish a class on the platform. This means that you can expect to see a wide variety of classes of varying levels of quality ranging from world-class to amateur. Before you pay to use the site, make sure to read feedback on the classes you want to take.
The comparison table at the bottom provides a summary of the learning tools under consideration and allows you to see how Skillshare, in particular, compares to the competition.
5. Pluralsight
Pluralsight is a technology learning tool that is used by 70% of the Fortune 500. They provide access to over 6,000 online courses in subjects such as software, creative design, information technology, and business. Their business experts have developed video-based courses to help students develop new skills and improve their current ones from the comfort of their own homes.
Pluralsight also provides its students with learning pathways to help them navigate their vast library of courses. These pathways combine courses and resources to create a single experience, making it much easier for students to decide the courses to take and in what order to get the best learning experience.
6. UX Design Institute
The UX Design Institute in Dublin offers a university-accredited online UX education. You can get certified as a UX professional here.
This, they claim, is the world’s only university-accredited online UX course.
You can learn about UX principles, user research, analysis frameworks, and interaction design as you progress through this course. Online learning takes place through video and text-based content, as well as realistic activities that you can complete on your own time and at your speed.
There are world-class mentors available to assist you via monthly webinars, and you can also rely on fellow students and a student success team to ensure you remain on track and finish the course.
Companies like Slack, Dell, Mastercard, and SAP are on their Industry Advisory Council to ensure the diploma you receive meets the expectations of the UX industry. Students who completed this course have gone on to work for some of the world’s biggest technology firms, including Accenture, Intel, Salesforce, Booking.com, and Mastercard.