The Best Design Resources, Bootcamp, and Courses to Learn Design in the New Year
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital experiences, mastering UI/UX design is no longer just a skill — it’s a strategic advantage. As we approach 2024, the demand for user-centric design expertise continues to surge, making it a prime moment to explore the best resources, bootcamps, and courses that can propel your UX journey to new heights.
We’ve teamed up with Springboard — an online education platform offering a UI/UX design bootcamp with a money-back guarantee — to curate the following list of UI/UX design learning opportunities. Whether you’re a seasoned designer looking to stay ahead of the curve or someone taking the first step into the captivating world of user experience, these recommendations are tailored to inspire, challenge, and ultimately, elevate your skills.
Best Resources:
Check out the following resources for learning new design skills.
The Inside Design Blog and Newsletter
The Inside Design Blog and Newsletter is built by Invision, the wireframing and design application. It’s a free resource that involves deep dives into design thinking, design practice, and career tips for designers.
Dribbble
Dribbble is the world’s leading community for designers. They’ve begun pioneering a learning section that is filled with workshops, courses, and more. Dribbble is a great place to showcase your portfolio and look for a design job.
Designer News
Designer News offers a Hacker News-like community for designers specifically. Users can go and upvote articles and resources they find most helpful — it’s a good curated location for design news and comments about different design topics.
Sketch
The Sketch blog (“Beyond the Canvas”) offers a learning design section that includes foundational resources, from icon design to prototyping. Since it’s Sketch’s blog, you can expect that all resources will interweave the Sketch platform to teach. There is a 30-day free trial to try the Sketch tool.
YouTube
YouTube channels created by design influencers offer a behind-the-scenes look at design practices and culture in top companies and an opportunity to sharpen learning and resources in the design space. They’ll often delve into what it’s like to refine design systems at companies they work at or have worked at before.
Examples of this include:
Design School by Canva
Another resource provided by a design tool. In this case, it is mostly focused on visual design resources working with Canva. The good thing is that Canva has a free option. With Canva and the Design School, you can play around with visual design elements like typography and color and see the results live in your own sandbox.
UI design fundamentals by freeCodeCamp
freeCodeCamp is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing free resources. They are mostly focused on development and coding resources, though they have a section on their blog devoted to UI/UX design, including this helpful, 1-hour summary of UI design fundamentals.
Best Bootcamp:
If you want to combine your learning and dedicate yourself to “learning by doing” by upskilling into a new role, a bootcamp might be your best choice. There are many resources and learning materials out there, however: a bootcamp brings it all together and brings you the personalized human support you need to make the leap from learning to career.
Springboard (New Year’s Promo — $1,500 off design bootcamps)
Springboard is the leading design bootcamp for those seeking a proven money-back job guarantee. You either get a job or your money back. The bootcamp offers 1:1 mentorship from a design expert who works in the industry, as well as a proven career coaching approach that has ensured 92% of job-eligible individuals have found a job within 12 months, with an increase on average of more than $28,000. If you want to see candid student reviews and perhaps a selection of other bootcamps, there is CourseReport. For a limited time (until January 2nd), all Springboard design bootcamps will have a $1,500 credit applied to them. Use code uxplanetshine2024 to claim this offer.
Best Courses:
Sometimes the right format to learn is somewhere in between free resources (which tend to offer a relatively shallow perspective on a topic, unconnected from other topics) and a full bootcamp (which will help you comprehensively get from A to Z in a topic, and perhaps prepare you for a career, but taking focus and time to get there). For that medium, there are courses that can help you dive deeper into specific topics.
Uxcel
Uxcel focuses on providing a gamified and cohesive experience for learning essential design practices such as good UX copywriting, design systems, and how to design responsively. The platform offers a variety of courses, and you can add certifications that you earn to your LinkedIn profile, providing a welcome way to learn and then recognize your accomplishments.
Grow with Google UX Design
Google offers a certification program for people looking to get into UX design. While it doesn’t feature mentorship, dedicated job support, or a money-back guarantee for those looking to get into design roles, the certificate, delivered through Coursera, can be a first good step for those looking to entrench their learning into a new career.
What stage of learning are you at?
At the end of the day, which resources will be most helpful to you will really depend on your goals and what stage of learning you’re at. If you’re at the beginning of your learning journey into design or are looking for a relatively well-organized read for a few hours to dive deeper into specific topics, the free resources at the top of this article are probably the best.
If you’re looking for a more organized deeper dive that might take you a few days or even a few weeks to dive deeper, a course would be more useful. This is especially true if you’re already a designer or in a design-facing role and require specific training on a few topics.
Finally, if you’re at the beginning of curating resources and courses and need support to get a job (and a money-back job guarantee behind you so that you’re guaranteed return on your money), a bootcamp like Springboard is a great option.
