How to Learn UX Design Online

If you’re just starting to learn a new skill, you can find dozens of tips and resources online; learning UX design is no different.UX design skills assure that digital applications feel responsive and accessible to users. UX design emphasizes collecting data and feedback concerning user behavior to help designers make more informed choices when building digital applications. If you’ve always wanted to learn UX design, there are plenty of options at your fingertips. From free tutorials to live classes, your options are outlined here so you can decide how to learn in a way that works best for you.

What is UX Design?

User experience design (UX design) is a field of web design dealing with how a website, application, or other digital product feels to its users. User experience design ensures that an application feels easy and accessible to operate. It is a heavily invested field in user behavior research, prototype testing, and data analysis. It is useful to think of it as the more hands-on counterpart to its visually-oriented sister skill, user interface design. Often, user experience design isn’t isolated to work on a single webpage or digital application and instead refers to a subset of data science that strictly examines user preference and behavior regarding web applications.

Rather than simply gauging how a digital application looks, user experience design aims to rigorously test that application to understand how it feels once it is in the hands of real-life users. Learning user experience design will involve learning how to conduct research, analyze data, and use that data to make informed decisions about the interface design process. User experience design also coincides with market research, as User Experience Designers will gauge how users perceive a web application’s desirability or how they perceive that application communicating brand awareness. UX design also covers attempts to make web applications easier to use and more accessible for users with disabilities or who have other challenges accessing and navigating digital applications.

Read more about what UX design is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with UX Design?

UX design skills will allow you to build better digital applications and contribute to a larger pool of knowledge that helps other designers build better web applications. Whether one is working on individual projects or attempting to improve digital design as a whole, user experience training will help professionals build digital applications that are more user-friendly, accessible, and memorable than ever before.

Within the field of UX design, trained professionals will be able to fine-tune and iterate upon designs for digital applications to produce interfaces that respond to user behavior and feedback. This means they can apply their knowledge and expertise to a wide variety of projects to ensure that the finished product is functional, responsive, and accessible. UX design is a particularly enticing field for anyone who feels that digital applications need to be doing more to respond to the needs of their users, as this is the field that gathers the data that demonstrates these needs.

UX design is also the field that affords Digital Designers the most opportunity to engage directly with their users and customers. Between focus groups, user surveys, and interviews, many UX designers will spend more time interacting with the public than they will with their team of designers and developers. This makes the field particularly appealing to students interested in learning the difference between how we think users interact with technology and how they interact with it. For the empirically minded designer, UX design will open many doors for producing compelling research about user habits and behaviors.

Live Online UX Design Training

One alternative for students who cannot attend live in-person classes is live online classes. These classes hold onto many of the advantages offered by in-person instruction, as students can still interact directly with expert instructors who are there to answer questions and provide feedback. Also, since they aren’t tied to specific campuses, students can pick the class that best suits their needs and enroll regardless of location. The major drawback to these courses is that service providers won’t provide students with the hardware and software required for their training, so they will need to supply and maintain their technology.

Noble offers all of its in-person classes through a live online instruction model, so students can take these courses regardless of whether or not they can commute to Manhattan. Whether a student is hoping to enroll in a one-day UX bootcamp or a multi-week career certificate program, students will be able to take these courses from the comfort of their own homes. Plus, even online, Noble maintains small class sizes so that students can have ample opportunities to take advantage of their live instructors' time and attention. For more information on live online UX design classes, consult Noble’s Classes Near Me tool.

On-Demand UX Design Classes

Attending a regularly scheduled UX design course isn’t in the cards for many students, particularly those with family and work obligations. These students who still want to learn UX design may wish to consider on-demand asynchronous UX design training. These classes are ideal for students who want to control the pace of their learning or who need to be able to start and stop their training at a moment’s notice. The drawback to these courses is that without a live instructor, students will have to do outside research and consult other sources to overcome obstacles.

More so than live instruction, on-demand training courses vary in style and content. Some of them will be a series of pre-recorded lectures, while others will be interactive computer modules or workbooks. Students interested in these courses will have several options to choose from. Interested students can find and compare their on-demand UX design training options by visiting Noble’s on-demand class search page.

Free Intro Courses & Tutorials

Interested in learning more about the philosophy behind UX design but unsure if you want to enroll in a professional training course? Students can use many free online learning resources to learn UX design basics. Since UX design is such a research-heavy field, these courses won’t be able to cover everything you will need to know, particularly concerning practical issues of testing and interviewing. Still, they can give users a solid introduction to the field of UX design.

Noble provides users with many pre-recorded lecture courses that will provide users with an introduction to the concepts and tools most commonly used within the field of UX design. For example, Noble offers a Getting Started in Digital Design tutorial explaining the basic tools and career paths open to those studying digital design. For students looking for more specific user experience instruction, Noble offers a free Intro to UX Design course that will teach students the philosophy behind user research, user testing, and other important UX design concepts. These courses and many more are available on both Noble’s website and the Web Development and Development playlist on their official YouTube page.

Free online UX design courses are also available through service providers such as General Assembly, CareerFoundry, and LinkedIn Learning. These courses will all vary in content and scope, so users are encouraged to see what kinds of offerings are available.

Read about more free UX Design videos and online tutorials.

Comparing Online Methods with In-Person Learning

Once students have decided that they want to learn UX design, they may find the number of options available to them intimidating. Before choosing a training provider, students must choose whether they want to learn live or asynchronously, in-person or online. Each learning method has advantages and disadvantages, so students should know how to make an informed decision on an issue that may greatly affect their future.

Live instruction is ideal for students with the time required to enroll in a regularly scheduled training program. These courses let students interact directly with live instructors, and whether in-person or online, students will be able to receive feedback, ask questions, and get help from experienced instructors. These courses tend to be the most expensive but are also the most detailed and immersive. The only other significant barrier is that these courses require students to commit certain blocks of time to their training.

In-person training courses come with a few specific advantages. Students will have access to a computer lab and a cohort of fellow students whom they can turn to for assistance. There are also meaningful networking opportunities to be had. The drawback is that these courses are only available in fixed locations, and there are hidden costs, such as a commute. Online courses address many of these drawbacks but come with a few. Students must provide their hardware and software and lose access to many in-person socializing opportunities.

On-demand courses are ideal for students who can’t commit to the time requirements of a live instruction course. These courses let students control their learning pace, and they can pick up and put down their lessons as their schedule allows. The drawback to these courses is that without a live instructor, students will be responsible for troubleshooting their problems as they arise, which can be difficult, especially for beginners who might not be sure where to look or how to research these answers.

Finally, free UX design resources and tutorials are available for students hoping to dip their feet into the field. These tutorials are ideal for students who aren’t yet sure they want to invest in more costly training options but still want to learn the lay of the land in UX design. These courses will provide a top-down understanding of the basic elements of the field, perfect for preparing to enroll in a bootcamp or other training program. However, these free tutorials are necessarily limited, especially for learning a subject as complex as UX design. Anyone hoping to work professionally with UX design will need more professional training.

Tips to Succeed when Learning UX Design Online

Learning a new skill online can be challenging, especially for students unfamiliar with online learning environments. Students must control their learning environment, maintain their own technology, troubleshoot obstacles, and potentially find their own research subjects.

One of the advantages of in-person training courses is that the classroom environment is built to minimize outside distractions, freeing students up to focus more directly on their lessons. This isn’t the case regarding online learning, so students must ensure that their learning environment is minimally distracting. What this will look like will vary from student to student, but some students may find that they need to put a lot of effort into assuring that their workspace is not hindering their learning ability.

Students learning UX design online will also need to furnish their technology. They will not only need a computer, but they will also need to acquire a design application that they can use to build their prototypes. UX design won’t require a lot of specific or system-intensive programs, but students should be able to navigate a computer and understand how to address problems that arise. No one wants to miss an important lesson because their computer fails them and they can’t fix it.

Students will also need to learn how to quickly research answers to questions and concerns that they may have, particularly in an on-demand course. While live instruction classes will have instructors who can respond to issues during the lessons, they may be unavailable when students work on homework or other assignments outside the class. Students will likely have to learn to look up and find reputable answers to their questions.

In particular, learning UX design online will require students to learn how to conduct user research without direct access to subjects, or it will require students to find their test subjects, which can be difficult. While some online courses will have students work together on user testing lessons, students should consider who they may need to consult to examine and look over prototypes during their training.

Key Insights

• User Experience design is a sub-field of digital design focused on the feel and function of a digital application. UX design emphasizes how users directly interact with an application and whether or not those interactions are positive and straightforward.
• Learning UX design online is a great way to learn the principles of the field from the comfort of your home. UX online training can take many forms, and both live and self-paced courses are available.
• Online learning options will require students to maintain their workspace and learn how to troubleshoot their problems as they arise. This can be helpful for UX students who will need to do this with their research methods but can be a challenge for new online learners.
• Online students will also need to supply their technology and possibly collect user data outside the classroom.
• Students looking to learn UX design online can enroll in any UX design courses offered through Noble Desktop.

Learn UX Design with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers students many user experience design courses and bootcamps. These courses, available both in-person and online, offer in-depth, career-focused UX design training and are all taught by expert instructors in real-time. Even taken online, these courses will allow students to interact directly with their instructor in the classroom and during one-on-one mentoring sessions. The small class sizes ensure students won’t get lost in crowded lecture halls. In addition, students can retake any course they enroll in for free within one year. This means students can take their courses a second time to review lessons, cover material they found difficult, or get more hands-on user experience design practice.

For students looking to learn the basics of UX Design, Noble offers a UX Design in a Day, in which students will learn the basic elements of the UX design process. They will learn key terms and ideas, like personas and scenarios, and how to conduct basic user research and interview participants to receive feedback. They will also learn the basic process of sketching and building prototype applications for testing. This is an introductory course, so it will only scratch the surface of the tests and research work involved in UX design, but it is an important course for laying the foundation for more immersive training.

Students looking for a more detailed, career-focused training course can enroll in Noble’s UX & UI Design Certificate. This course prepares students for employment in the UX/UI design field and will provide students with hands-on experience building and testing user interfaces. Users will receive training in advanced research techniques, including conducting interviews, producing written user reports, and running surveys. Then, students will be taught how to interrupt this data so that they may return to their designs and iterate on them in light of the feedback. Students will also be given hands-on training in prototyping and design software, such as Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD. At the end of the course, students will have the opportunity to build a portfolio of sample interface designs and user experience case studies. In addition to this portfolio, students will receive one-on-one career mentorship, and by the end of the course, they will be ready to enter the workforce in the field of user experience design.