Designlab Avis 24

Super profit driven and materials they provide were very disappointing.

I had a series of mentor problems and changes that I had NO control over or part in over the course of my enrollment at DesignLab. DesignLab let me down and I'm deeply hurt.

I was forced to change mentors 3 times!, 2 of them in the middle of a capstone project.

The first one was badly affected due to the change of styles between mentors. And then I had the same problem again with the second project!

I was not happy at all with my progress or the quality of my work, unfortunately.

I lost a lot of sessions thinking that a 30 mins session would count as a half session plus due to my pause I really needed help to improve and move forward faster to meet my already delayed deadline to graduate which I failed to meet my deadline because I had to change jobs and countries at the same time too!
I wasn't lazy or slacking or dragging things. I was still determined to finish the program, but they canceled my program and took away my remaining mentor's sessions.
they took away my mentor's sessions, and my career service and haven't even offered to partially refund me! I'm still stuck in the last project for almost a year with no guidance and still struggling to pay off a loan I had to take to be able to join that program.

I'm a UX professional and I used to mentor at DesignLab. Sorry, would-be UX designers, don’t believe the marketing hype, UX bootcamps won’t do it for most of you. I wrote an article about this and I encourage you to read it. Search for "The UX bootcamp model is broken" on Medium.

The bottom line for students is, don't get your hopes up. This bootcamp will NOT prepare you for a real-world job, despite the marketing hype. Don't fall for it.

They do an exceptional job of over-promising. However, the proof is in the pudding and the numbers aren’t pretty. They’re massively underdelivering. Fudging track-record numbers, they tend to prey on unsuspecting UX students by wrapping their offerings in honey-dipped, virtue-laden marketing ballyhoo, like “future-proofing your career,” and how their “graduates have been hired by the biggest names in tech.” Don't believe it.

No one should have any delusions about the fact that these bootcamps are in it for the money. Many of these bootcamps are for-profit, ed-tech startups financed by venture capitalists who demand profits before anything else. When we look past the virtue-signaling, noble-sounding slogans, DesignLab doesn’t care much if a graduate actually lands a job or not. It’s all about profit.

Mentor quality has also dropped. In recent years most highly skilled UX mentors with deep industry experience have quit UX bootcamps in large numbers.

UX bootcamps delude students into thinking they’re going to walk into a job shortly after graduation. In reality, anecdotal evidence from UX mentors says only 30–50% of graduates are proficient enough to get an entry-level job. Many struggle for years to find jobs in UX largely because they lack the “job-ready skills employers are looking for.”

Myth, legend, and razzle-dazzle all rolled into one, many of these UX bootcamps splash “build a stellar portfolio curated from hands-on projects with clients” on their pages — yet, no one has actually seen one. Truth be told, most graduate portfolios harm students because they’re teeming with “UX-bootcampy” case studies that don’t demonstrate the ability to solve real-world UX challenges. Hiring managers and design managers are not impressed by UX deliverables piled into a jumble of case studies.

All in all, I do not recommend UX students spend their money on these bootcamps.