Springboard

Initially, what I had in mind was to find a UX course that wouldn’t affect my work schedule and offers a reasonable course fee. I came across Springboard online and decide to give it a try since they charge on a monthly subscription basics. Everything turns out amazing for me within just 4 months. I graduated with a UX certificate, made useful connections with liked minded people over the springboard community and also get to learn UX from an industry expert who is patience and provide career guidance throughout the course.

Pros

• Springboard will assign a mentor who is a subject expert in the field or areas that you are interested in.
• You don’t have to worry about time zone differences. In my case, Springboard assigned a mentor who has a time zone close to mine.
• Don’t have to fret over busy work schedule since it’s an online course. Communicate with your mentor to plan ahead in time.
• Weekly calls with mentor to discuss ideas and give you feedbacks on your course work.
• There are mini projects to get you started with understanding UX and the quickest way to learn is to get your hands on it.
• The Springboard community is useful to share ideas, find volunteers (eg. Interviewees) and get feedbacks for your assignments.
• Since the final submission is a capstone project, you will get to choose your own topic and build a full fledge UX portfolio (Which I find extremely useful especially for starters)

Cons
 

• I find some of the course materials really time consuming such as long videos and lots of readings in some chapters. But some of the materials are optional and also it is not mandatory to complete 100% of the course materials (Although it will be good to)

Overall, I find this course really interesting and the concepts are relatively easy to understand.

I would rate Springboard a 4.5/5 ! I’m really glad I joined Springboard and I would recommend anybody who is interested in learning UX or wants to be a UI/UX designer to take the course!

I completed the Springboard UX course in December of 2018, and as a previous graphic/web designer I could not be happier with it. I recently took some time off from work to stay home with my small kids, and am looking to get back into the field. Springboard gave my resume a boost and helped me fill in some gaps, as well as the confidence boost I needed! I worked with a terrific mentor, Michelle, who was able to give me advice and feedback that I needed to complete my Capstone project! If you are looking to move into UX  from a similar field, then I do recommend Springboard. 

I'd heard that the Springboard mentors were great, and I was not let down. My mentor had a huge amount of UX experience and was happy to share it with me. He was super supportive the entire time, and I'm sure will be there to offer advice as time passes.

I was surprised that most of the course was sourced from online resources. There is no original content, but this was not a bad thing. The conent they have currated is of a high quality and would have taken me a long time to find myself.

Over-all I had a great experience with Springboard and would highly recommend! 

Springboard was a great overview to the UX design process. The curriculum was thorough and my mentor helped me to focus on what really matters based on his experience in the field. I work full time and have a family, so the course took me a little less than 4 months. For the $2000 I paid, I wish I had more than the one capstone project to add to my portfolio. I am thankful that I have access to the curriculum after the course is done so that I can go through the process for another project on my own. One suggestion I have is to facilitate relationships between non profits who need UX volunteer work and students, allowing for real-world projects and case studies. 

o I completed my Bachelors, went directly into my Masters, but then was really struggling with landing a job. I was failing the technical interviews, and then a good friend of mine recommended Springboard.

I took the entrance exam (At the time it was timed exam with a few simple to moderate coding problems) and was accepted into the program.

In my first week I was assigned a mentor and introduced to all of the software / learning platforms.

The first month was centered around learning python, SQL, and completing a slew of DataCamp courses (You get a DataCamp membership with your Springboard course) that really prepare you for your big projects, the Capstone Projects.

You work with your mentor to choose your projects (The first one is intended for a simple but deep data set, a good example is the Capital Bikeshare dataset from the UCI Repository, feel free to checkout my github for an example Username: JonOrr . Meanwhile the second project requires a bit more data cleaning, think along the lines of a kaggle competition.) then you follow up through weekly calls that keep you on point.

Throughout the course you'll also learn how to better conduct your job search, interviews, and role targeting (Do you want to be a Data Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, Data Scientist, Data Analyst, etc.). There is a job guarantee that gave me a lot of confidence while I was doing the course, it has a good amount of terms and conditions, but all of them are reasonable. They include but aren't limited to: Apply to 5 jobs a week, don't skip any interviews, etc. The career team works hard to make sure you get into a role that both fits your skill level, and your career goals. Let's say you want to be a Data Engineer and are quite suited to it, they won't push you to be a Data Analyst instead.

One month after the completion of my course I was offered a Data Scientist position with a competitive salary (going to keep the number confidential but it was strong) in one of the regions of my choice (You choose 2-3 regions at the start of the course, I chose: Boston & San Francisco) I could not be happier with my experience.

 

If you found my review helpful and decide to pursue a Springboard course please consider using the following referral link: https://www.springboard.com/invite/6HPPV

The springboard UX Design online course is a cheap alternative to the in-person bootcamps. The course goes through the basics of UX design, allows students to complete 1 full project, and pairs students with mentors. Mentors are extremely knowledgeable and helpful and are well-connected in the industry. The project goes through the full UX design process, and gives you material to put onto your portfolio at the end of the course. The online forums, or community, is composed of fellow classmates who are available to give feedback and provide information or help.
The concept of UX design relies on obtaining feedback for any work you have created, and this is one area that Springboard struggles with. Students who have completed some work need to spend a lot of valuable time finding people to help them with things like surveys, interviews, user testing, card sorting. Additionally, some of the curriculum can be repetitive and overlapping.

I attended the Springboard UX Design program from September 2017 to April 2018 and had a great experience. I initially started my course in 2016 for three months before pausing the program. Since that time the curriculum was significantly revamped for the better. The strongest aspect of the course are the mentors providing weekly coaching. I had three mentors throughout my Springboard courses, two of which had experience in the game development industry, which was important to me. One of my mentors did not have much experience in the industry and as a result I requested a change in mentors. This was the only negative experience I had with the course, and resulted in some duplicated work when I transitioned to my next mentor. Even though this mentor did not have game development experience, they had plenty of Fortune 500 UX knowledge and if my desired job was not so niche, I believe the mentor relationship would have been excellent.

The curriculum has a relatively short beginner's guide to UX concepts before introducing the capstone project. The capstone will take up most of your time, and all of the small assignments build to this final project. I felt like the training content (largely through Lynda videos) was applicable and engaging. It helped to apply the ideas from the video directly to my project as I took notes. Having a capstone to constantly build on while studying these concepts provided constant motivation. My mentor also helped take concepts and apply them to my project. I found it easy to speed through sections I was already well versed in, and enjoyed being able to take my time in sections that were new to me.

Overall, I'd recommend this program with the caveat that if your mentor doesn't feel right for you in your gut don't feel afraid to contact Springboard support immediately and talk it out with them. They are very responsive and immediately placed me with a mentor that fit my needs. I'm glad I learned the skills I did, and was able to create a professional portfolio from my learning experiences.

Something they don't mention in the on-boarding/ marketing material is that you also get a year's Lynda.com subscription with your Springboard course. This is a great resource to access if you have other disciplines you want to study.

I completed the introduction to data science course in 3 months. The course used the R programming language and covered important skills required of data scientist. This included data wrangling, data visualizations, data story telling, probability and statistics, and machine learning. The course also provided career resources. The material in this course was good and I believe I learned a lot. There is also a capstone project you are required to complete. This is where you bring all the skills you learned together. 

The best part of the course was a mentor who’s is a professional data scientist where you get 1:1 calls once per week. You can chat about anything data science related. The mentor helps guide you and motivate you, especially on the capstone project.

All in all I thought the learning experience was really good. 

Pros:
1:1 mentor call
Capstone project
Learn r programming

Cons:
I wish some of the assignments where hands on (a lot where) but some were assigned through datacamp

Pros

- Mentor was great. Really guided me and showed me how someone in the field thinks. Also put my name in at the start up that she works at and they hired me as a contractor!

-Lots of practice on the analytics side. I feel like I'm pretty knowledgeable now

-Mock interviews and career coaches, especially Allison, were great for preparing for interviews. 

Cons

-Was unemployed and finished in 4.5 months. I find it quite hard to believe someone can finish within 6 months with a full time job.

-Second half of course seemed disjointed and unfocused, though that could've been because of the track I chose. 

-They focus on us contacting random people on LinkedIn as a means of "growing our network", which in turn will allow us to get a job eventually. They don't really do much in terms of actually putting you in contact with people who are looking to hire or are open to meeting someone new to the field.