User experience (UX) design involves optimizing elements of a product, system, website, or service, focusing on how users navigate and interact with those elements. 

Along with user interface (UI) design, UX design is one of the fastest-growing careers and, according to Glassdoor, one of the 50 best jobs in the United States. 

If you plan to make a career change or improve your skills as a UX designer, here are some UX design courses to sharpen your skills and create better designs. 

What is UX design?

UX design develops the visual appearance of a product or service to encourage emotional or cognitive responses from users. This assists in the overall usability of websites, communication of brand messaging, ecommerce sales, and product design. 

Whether people view sites on their smartphone, laptop, or other devices, UX design influences how users interact with online content, so UX designers must be adept at:

• Creating product structures and strategies
• Customer and competitor analysis
• User research
• UX prototyping and wireframing
• Testing and iterations
• Refining existing designs based on user feedback

Why should you become a UX designer?

Becoming a UX designer means putting the user and their needs at the forefront of the design process, but that's just one of many reasons to consider this career. As a UX designer, you can:

• Make an impact. UX design offers many opportunities to effect change that enhances lives through accessibility and inclusivity.
• Use creative logic. UX design offers creative and logical thinkers opportunities to use those skills to find innovative solutions.
• Learn how tools are evolving. Stay up to date with the latest technologies and how you can leverage them to provide better experiences. 
• Gain growth opportunities. UX design is a broad field that connects with a variety of related skills like design process, design thinking, UX research,  information architecture,  so the opportunities for UX designers continue to expand.
• Improve your work/life balance. UX design is a popular remote job, saving you a commute or time spent in-office.

6 online courses in UX design

The hands-on nature of UX design courses teaches you how to shape our digital world. These courses offer different levels of education and require varying time commitments. Choose the one that works best for you. 

1. Udemy UX & Web Design Master Course: Strategy, Design, Development

This certificate program offers 23.5 hours of on-demand video, 17 downloadable resources, and a certificate of completion. You'll learn the principles of good UX and a strategy for optimizing website design to increase conversions. This course also teaches basic coding in HTML and CSS.

Course length: 23.5 hours

Intended for: Beginners

Cost: $129.99

Top benefit: Udemy offers thousands of online courses, and the on-demand nature of its technical courses makes it a great launchpad for your educational journey.

2. Google UX Design Professional Certificate

This Google certification includes seven courses and is perfect for beginners looking to make a career change. It teaches all the fundamentals of UX design, with hands-on projects and quizzes along the way. You can also add these projects to your portfolio to prove what you’ve learned to potential clients. You'll receive a Google UX Design Certification and enter a job market able to showcase your work.

Course length: 6 months (10 hours a week) with set registration dates

Intended for: Beginners

Cost: $39 a month (for a Coursera subscription)

Top benefit: A Google UX Design Certificate is a valuable certification to list on your resume, as the Google brand carries weight in the web design industry.

3. Intro to User Experience Design - SuperHi

This short course focuses on a range of UX-related topics in just over 8 hours of video lessons to cover 10 fundamentals. You’ll learn skills like creating prototypes, conducting research methods, and user testing within the Figma UX design tool. It also teaches you how to turn wireframes into full-fledged designs, which you can submit at the end of the course to receive your certificate. SuperHi offers real-world projects, a community of students and alumni, and continued help and resources to keep you up to date after completing the course. 

Course length: 4-6 hours per lesson

Intended for: Beginners

Cost: $149

Top benefit: SuperHi offers short lessons and a massive community of users, making it a solid choice if you prefer peer support.

4. Fundamentals of UX Design course - Envatotuts+

This entry-level course is taught by Sarah Kahn, UX Engineer for Adzerk. The Fundamentals of UX Design presents the basics, including creating user personas and running usability tests, and is a great way to see if this career path is right for you. The two-hour course is free and teaches theories of usability, how to work with clients, usability testing, creating user profiles, and identifying users to let you gauge your interest in UX design. 

Course length: 2 hours

Intended for: Beginners

Cost: Free

Top benefit: You can take this course to sample UX design fundamentals without a financial commitment. 

5. UX Foundations - DesignLab

The UX foundations course directly leads to DesignLab's UX Academy. If you follow that path, the cost of the UX Foundations course is applied toward the UX Academy courses. UX Academy is a comprehensive UX training course that requires some UX design knowledge, which DesignLab offers with its Foundations course. In Foundations, you get to work one-on-one with an expert designer, get free student access to Figma, Adobe XD, and 50% off Sketch. You'll learn visual design basics, UI design principles, UI design elements, design evaluation and critique, creating design briefs, and more.

Course length: 10 hours a week for 8 weeks, or 20 hours a week for 4 weeks

Intended for: Beginners looking to switch careers

Cost: $499

Top benefit: UX Foundations offers 35 hands-on projects to keep you busy and learning, culminating with certification and an option to continue your education at UX Academy.

6. Mobile User Experience Design - Interaction Design Foundation

This course focuses on designing mobile interfaces based on usability best practices and is the next step in your UX design career after completing a beginner course. This course also teaches personas and task modeling, UI interactions with different platforms, and how to evaluate and implement mobile design strategies.

Completing the course results in a certificate, which you can show off on your LinkedIn profile. It's also self-paced.

Course length: 5 weeks (25 hours 48 minutes distributed)

Intended for: Intermediate/Advanced

Cost: Free for members (membership $16/month billed annually)

Top benefit: A bit more advanced than the beginner options, this course is for experienced UX designers who want to focus more on mobile design.

Thrive in the UX design field

These online courses are only the beginning of your UX design education. And the more you expand your knowledge base, the more opportunities you'll find. From design tips to direct courses taught at Webflow University, we have plenty of resources to help you on your path to a career in UX design.