CareerFoundry

Online education is not for everyone, and it can be very hard to find an organization that can effectively convey useful information and help establish a skill set. That said, Career Foundry does an excellent job at taking someone (such as myself) with little, to no UI design background and points them in the right direction. Career Foundry helps establish a knowledge base that makes that "where do I even start?" feeling, much more manageable.

A word of warning, if you are new to UI, this course will not be easy. The first few months I was able to keep up and even get considerably ahead of my scheduled end date. However, you have to keep pressing throughout the whole course because it gets particularly demanding towards the end. You will likely spend around 7-10 hours a week for the first couple of months. Towards the end of the course, however, I was logging 20 hours or more a week. So you will definitely do a good amount of work. 

The staff is professional and excellent to work with. Responses come quick considering different time-zones and the fact you depend a lot on emailing. Cicely was particularly great to work with. You can tell she takes her job very seriously and she always responds in a timely manner.

My mentor Eric was also awesome! We had around 8 or so conversations and he was always able to spot mistakes I hadn't noticed, or he brought things to my attention that could be improved upon. Initially, I may have had some pushback to some of his suggestions, but far more often than not they ended up improving upon what I had originally built. He was also very quick about getting back to me and offering feedback.

If you are looking to become a certified pro on Sketch and are even remotely interested in the awesome world of UI, this course is well worth your time. 

I am originally a translator, with a humanities background and a good flair for technology. I had been working as helpdesk support in a wellknown company for years. I never felt realised with this job, though, on the contrary I was feeling stuck in a dead-end.I thought I had to become more technical and I always felt an affinity to web technologies, although I only knew HTML and CSS so far. I got in touch with CareerFoundry almost by chance, I started getting info and reviews about this online school and I found them all positive. Besides, the course fee was still reasonable for my pockets and being an online course, it was ideal for me as a working student. The assistance of my mentor had always been punctual, friendly and motivating. It was not easy at CareerFoundry, especially for someone who, like me, had 0 coding experience. I was not certainly afraid of learning Ruby on Rails, Javascript, Angular, but I found a great support in their international student community. That is awesome, the way CareerFoundry with a simple slack team created a friendly network of aspiring webdevelopers all over the world. With some of them I remained in touch and even developed some projects together. Learning a new profession from scratch when you are already working is not simple, it is hard, it is effort and self-esteem consuming as well, particularly if you're over 40 years old, like I was and am. Finally I had a new professional perspective, and I really need to thank CareerFoundry , if I was able to leave my old job and land my first job as Junior Web Developer with Rails. I have to thank them for their courses, obviously, but also for the motivation network, if I can say so, that they were able to build up through their international students and mentors community.

I enrolled in Career Foundry for two reasons: 1-It was 100% focused on UX design which is what I wanted to do. 2-It would give me the flexibility to take care of my family and still work on the side.

It was by far the best decision I ever made! I have learned more than I could have ever imagined in the past 3 1/2 months. The great thing about CF is that you learn by doing. The lessons are brief and then you jump in and do a project. 66 to be exact. Is hard work? Yes. But do I feel prepared? Absolutely! CF prepares you for design challenges you will face in the real world. Not to mention the fact that you will get an awesome tutor and mentor. If you are ready to change your life, CF is the way to go!

Today I'm quitting Career Foundry and these are my reasons.

1) I signed up thinking I could do the course at my own pace. CF shouldn't advertise their courses saying "study online at your own pace", it is a misleading statement. 

2) When my laptop crashed and I had no computer for 2 weeks, I asked for an extension and was declined on the basis that I wasn't keeping track. If felt like they were saying to me "you're a bad student, and bad students get punished", and this left me stressed. 

3) Once I became aware of the time limit, I started rushing my assignments, the quality of my work suffered, and I stopped enjoying it. I was doing the course based on my own app idea, so it was really important that I did it properly and took my time.

4) A lot of people on Course Report have been saying that the course takes 2-3 times longer than the stated 15 hours per week. I don't have a spare 15-30 hours more each week, and I am not willing to pay 2-3 times the amount of money to finish it. 

In summary, my experience of CF is that you use misleading advertising jargon, don't put your students learning needs at the core of your value proposition, have poor customer service, and care more about money than a good student experience. I think your company culture comes across as defensive. The only thing that gives your company a heart is your course tutors, they bring life to the subject, where your content is lacking in depth.

I highly recommend Career Foundry's Web development course. I had some background in coding, mostly by learning through Codacademy. However, I was looking for something a bit more substantial. 

This course is intense, but in the good way. The exercises, topics and skills covered give you a good basic understanding of the webdevelopment spectrum, and leave room for more exploration if you want to dive deeper. Every expersice includes theory, and hands on coding. The results are submitted to your mentor. If something is not working, you will have to fix it. This urges you to learn and think as a coder, where can the bug be?! Sometimes it's frustrating and time consuming, but the eureka (!) moment you 'get it' is very gratifying. By urging you to get it right, Career Foundry also maintains the quality of the curriculum. 

My mentor was very helpful. He wrote me long emails explaining where I could improve. Or we used video chat over slack when I got really stuck. He always helped me progress and was very encouraging. 

I'm a college graduate, I'm used to communicating in English and I'm used to study by my self. I took the 'part-time' course. I have a full time job (40+) hours a week. Be prepared to spend two night and a weekend-day, or your whole weekend on coursework. I finished within 6 months, it's doable but you have to commit serious time and effort. 

Overal, I highly recommend Carreer Foundry

Pros:

• Self paced
• Supportive staff
• Job placement support

Cons:

• Curriculum needs work
• Dependent on mentor
• Not entirely "job-ready"

My frustration with the shortcomings of the UX course content was counter-balanced by the friendly, responsive staff at CF. They addressed all of my questions and concerns quickly and to my satisfaction. This included changing mentors after my first one was non-responsive, and ongoing job support even after I graduated.

After finishing this course I had one end-to-end project piece for my portfolio and a fairly good understanding of the UX design process, but you'll need more than that to get hired as a UX designer, especially if you're coming from an unrelated field.

Companies want to see client work samples, not just student projects. Cold applying to jobs doesn't get you very far - you'll need connections within the design industry to get much needed personal referrals. Unless you're already in a similar role (graphic design, visual design, product management, front-end development, etc.) plan to go to a lot of meetups, workshops, conferences and/or hackathons to build your network.

Before enrolling with CareerFoundry, I had tried to learn to program web applications on my own. It was a struggle to find material that guided you properly and made you feel like you could write apps later.

CareerFoundry's web development curriculum is great, it guides you just enough and it pushes you to explore interesting concepts on your own. 

My mentor was very nice and available relatively quickly to answer my questions. They would always be able to get me out of a jam. I was enrolled in the program before the tutor/mentor change was made, and I think that having someone to help you prepare for jobs is very important.

What I found to be the best part of the bootcamp is the community of students and staff. Students are encouraged to work together, help each other with issues. The placement staff is also very helpful, they help you setup a good online presence and have many tips and leads regarding finding your next job.

Overall, I was very satisfied with CareerFoundry and can't recommend it enough.

I'm currently doing an apprenticeship as a media designer and wanted to learn more about UI/UX Design. I browsed through the internet and found careerfoundry, so I decided to took this class.
I started in august, so I'm doing this course for 2 months now, and I already learned so much cool things.
The practically oriented exercises are so much fun and you can really learn a lot from them. If you stuck there's always a great community around you which will help you! The conversations in the slack channel and my fellow students are awesome and it makes a lot of fun to help and support each other! :) 
You'll have a mentor all over the course who will help you doing your exercises and designing your apps. My mentor is amazing and has an answer to all of my questions. Not only is he answering them, he's only giving me some further information, etc... He normaly replies faster than 24h after I asked him something, which is really cool. The feedback I' getting from him is also very helpful and you can learn so much from it! I can't recommend the mentor based approach enough. It's just amazing!

All in all I'm so happy that I took this class, because I already learned so much new and interesting stuff. If you're interested in UI design I can only recommend you taking this class! I'm really enjoying it!

Once upon a time.... I was sitting in my first real interview and it was good feeling to be with "the big cheeses" I did not get the job, but the UX Director gave me some really great advice. Terri, you have a solid background, but I think you need more UX, so I recommend you take a class. So that is where my story starts. I took his advice and I look, hunted, look, turn over rocks, check out bootcamps... Wholly crap! Talk about expensive. I would have to sell my left leg to get into a class like that. Fast forwarding now... I came across Careerfoundry... email them some questions they got back to me less then 24 hours. The price was right not too expensive plus I could make payments if I wanted to (paid in full). So I broke down and did the UX course. The UX course was a lot fun and yes some of was dry, not going to lie, but it was something that you had to do and understand what you are learning. They go over surveys, personas, wireframes, design, your resume to your portfolio. The best thing that Careerfoundry has going is the class comes with the mentor. I have to honestly say it is the mentor and the slack community makes a huge differences. The mentor is the key... gonna be honest not all mentors are the same but in my book if you don't gel with your mentor you can get another one. You just have to be proactive about it and let Careerfoundry know or even better tell your mentor what your want and what your needs are. They are there to help you. If you don't say anything nothing will happen they can not read your mind. I realize most students want out of their crappy jobs... trust me been there. There is a process you have to go through.. I know this part sucks you want to take the class and get out of your crappy job. Take your time with the class and learn.. if you can push it then you can... I would recommend Careerfoundry... actually I finish the UX course and yes worked off my tail. I was able to get a UI/UX visual designer job. I almost double my salary, but along the way I had tons of phone interviews some I bomb and some I did good. I had face to face yes some bomb and some was good and the more you have. The more you will be able to hone in your style of interviewing. So don't give up and keep moving forward. I love the UX class so much that I am taking the UI course now with my new gig. So if I can do it then you can do it as well. Don't waste months thinking about it like it... Dive in and click that button. I am glad I did.

I started the CareerFoundry course after already doing a UX design week-long short course with another company. It had been really hard to grasp the basics of UX in a week and althiugh I'd been working as a UX designer for about four months previously, I really needed a confidence boost.

Studying the CareerFoundry course was the making of me.  It is coursework-based and pupils are allowed to work on the UX project of their choice. I chose to redesign my company’s help and support offering which meant I got to learn and also positively impact the company too.

The main benefits for me were:

• the bite-sized lesson plans (I tried to do three each week after work)
• the bi-weekly Skype sessions with a mentor
• the after-care following the course.

I’m still in contact with my mentor Sophie Lepinoy who has been a real inspiration to me. I also love the Slack channel as it is a great way of keeping in contact with other graduates and learning about the latest UX developments.

Studying UX with CareerFoundry has given me the confidence that I actually have a useful skill, an identity and a career path. It has also opened doors for me. I got the travel bug in December 2015 and moved from the UK to Christchurch, New Zealand to work as a UX Designer for digital agency, NV Interactive. I then moved to Auckland to work as a UX Analyst for Datacom who are New Zealand’s largest IT company. I genuinely don’t think I would have had the confidence to apply for these roles overseas without my CareerFoundry training.