UX Design Classes for High School Students Near Me

User experience (UX) design is the aspect of building an application, webpage, or user interface that is attentive to how the end user interacts with the interface. When people talk about concepts like user-friendliness or responsive design, they are talking about the work of UX Designers. UX design is an iterative process and it involves conducting significant amounts of user testing to discover how real people end up interacting with an interface and whether or not they find it to be easy to use and navigate. UX design classes will teach students how to test interfaces, how to gather data from users, and how to visualize and communicate this data to other stakeholders. UX design is an essential part of almost any digital project, so learning these skills can help students open the door to future career opportunities or help them improve their own personal projects.

Why High School Students Should Learn UX Design

Learning UX design is an excellent way to set yourself up for future training and build skills that will open career doors and be transferable to various professional contexts. The interpersonal skills students learn will be applicable in any collaborative process, and the research methodologies have a wide range of uses outside of testing user interfaces. In addition to the obviously transferable skills, UX design is a big industry since most digital products live or die by the quality of their interface experience. This means that skilled UX Designers are in high demand, and students can either pursue additional training at a collegiate level or find work right out of high school.

In addition, learning UX design is a good way to participate in the collaborative process of making the internet (and all other digital services) more accessible and easy to use. As more and more essential services (and non-essential ones) are moving to digital platforms and portals, it is more important than ever that these interfaces are designed to be accessible and workable on a wide range of platforms. Learning UX design is a good way to help make the internet a place where more individuals can freely and easily access information and support.

In-Person UX Design Classes

Students looking to learn UX design in-person should explore the options being offered at local colleges, community centers, or training service providers. While options will vary from location to location, many higher education institutions offer pre-college summer courses, and many professional skills development training centers offer high school classes (or classes that are open to high school students). Students who don’t live near major cities may find their options slightly more limited, though many colleges offer on-campus courses that allow students to stay on-site during their courses. Students are encouraged to check out their local options and decide whether or not the challenges of commuting or traveling are worth it.

Virtual UX Design Classes

Students who can’t attend an in-person class or who aren’t satisfied with their options may want to consider attending a live online UX design class. These courses offer students the chance to get hands-on UX design training from professional instructors without having to leave their homes. This makes the courses ideal for students looking to master challenging UX design skills who cannot attend an in-person class, and with recent developments in online pedagogy, many students are opting for online courses even if in-person options are available. Students can get real-time feedback from live instructors who can provide personalized support. In addition, students enrolled in live online programs can work directly with their classmates on collaborative projects, giving them even greater opportunities to hone their UX design skills.

NextGen Bootcamp’s UX & UI Design Summer Program Online offers high school students the chance to learn foundational techniques for designing, testing, and iterating upon digital user interfaces. In this course, students will learn how to use the free prototyping and design application Figma to create working prototypes of user interfaces based on design principles that are attentive to ensuring that the interface itself is visually stunning. Then, students will share their designs, test them with other participants, and use their feedback to modify the prototype. This kind of hands-on, practical project work will ensure that students understand the fundamentals of UX design and have experience working on real-world projects. Plus, students will leave with a certificate of completion and a collection of sample designs that they can use as part of a college or job application portfolio.

How to Choose a UX Design Class

When looking at your options for a UX design class, there are several factors to consider. Students will want to pay attention to practical matters like cost and accessibility, and they will want to make sure that the course will fit their personal long-term goals.

Students will need to decide whether or not they want to enroll in an in-person or an online course and how accessible each option will be to them. While students may have access to in-person courses near them, they may come with added costs or challenges, including travel and potentially lodging and food. This can make online classes more appealing, though students will need to ensure that they can be online without interruption for several hours for multiple days in a row. Students should also consider the program's cost since online bootcamps and in-person training courses can be expensive. However, students enrolled in these classes receive the advantage of guided support and focused attention from real professional instructors who can provide them with personalized feedback and assistance. These options aren’t available in cheaper, asynchronous classes, so the added cost is often more than worth it.

Finally, students must consider personal, long-term goals when choosing a course. If they are confident that web and UX design are career paths they want to pursue, they should consider looking for courses that offer career support or that aim to produce practical example projects that they can add to college and job application materials. If students are less certain, they may want to find a course that teaches UX design alongside other aspects of the digital design process, like web development and coding. This will give them a taste of the work involved in UX design while letting them practice other skills and decide how to proceed with their training.