6 Online UX Courses From Beginner to Specialized UX Design

If you’re interested in learning about UX design, you have plenty of UX courses to choose from.

With more and more companies realizing that a positive user experience is essential for a high-performing website, there’s a growing demand for talented UX designers who can create functional, intuitive designs.

Baymard Institute’s researchers have attended — and led — countless UX training programs. We know that some are more effective than others, and it’s not easy to sort through all the options.

To point you in the right direction, we’re sharing some reputable UX design courses with different specializations, from UX fundamentals to advanced professional workshops.

The Benefits of Studying UX Design

If you currently work with digital products or e-commerce, taking a UX course to increase your skills is a great investment. Here are just a few of the benefits:

Understand Users Better

UX designers spend much of their time getting feedback from users to learn about their needs, wants, feelings, and behaviors. That research is then used to create the best possible user experiences.

By understanding the people you’re creating products for and taking their daily circumstances, emotions, and priorities into account, you can improve your designs dramatically.

Step Up Your Career

The market for UX design jobs has grown over 70% in the last year, and all signs indicate this trend isn’t cooling down any time soon. Companies are realizing the importance of focusing on users and creating better experiences. UX skills can help you advance in your current organization or land a new job.

If you’re looking to switch careers, studying UX could also provide a shorter learning curve into the tech industry than other career paths.

Create Useful, Intuitive Designs

By taking UX design courses, you can transform mediocre designs into products that solve problems and delight users. This helps users, benefits the organization you work for, and expands your sense of engagement and satisfaction in your work.

Gain Focus

UX design is a process of continual testing and refinement. Like scientists, UX designers are constantly building, testing, and iterating their designs. This process improves your designs and gives you a more defined focus for developing digital products.

Now that you know why now is a great time to become a UX professional, let’s look at some of the leading online UX design programs, so you can pick a course that fits your goals.

Best E-Commerce UX Course: Baymard UX Certification

Baymard Institute’s Certified E-Commerce UX Professional certification program is the best way to develop concrete UX skills specifically for e-commerce.

The curriculum is based on extensive UX research and up-to-date actionable insights. You’ll be studying the same research and UX guidelines currently used by many of the world’s top-performing e-commerce sites.

All course content is distilled from our 78,000+ hours of large-scale user experience research. To begin the self-paced program, simply access our research catalog, with over 50 hours of video-based training modules and 600+ e-commerce UX guidelines. Each UX guideline includes step-by-step explanations and screenshot examples of positive and negative implementations, including mobile interfaces.

This program is valuable for current or prospective:

• UX designers
• UX managers
• Web developers
• Web designers
• E-commerce site owners
• User interface (UI) designers
• Product designers

Full certification requires successfully completing six comprehensive exams on multiple e-commerce UX topics; this is not another “get a certificate for showing up” course.

The course is self-paced, but most people successfully complete the exams in one to four months and join the list of E-Commerce UX Professionals.

Certification, including all curriculum and exams, is available to all users on Medium or Large Baymard Premium subscription plans, starting at $130 per month. (Individuals on a Personal plan can add our UX course by upgrading for an additional fee of $200.)

Find out more about our E-Commerce UX Certification, and learn how you can gain the concrete UX design skills top employers are hiring for right now.

Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate: Fundamentals of UX

The Google UX certificate is a well-respected and accessible place to start. It’s geared towards those with no experience who want to develop skills for an entry-level UX design job.

You will learn the fundamentals of UX design, including empathizing with users, conducting research, building wireframes and prototypes, and testing your designs. Students who complete the program will earn a certification they can share with their professional network.

Google developed its UX Design Professional Certificate program in conjunction with Coursera, a popular online learning platform.

After a seven-day trial, Coursera charges $39 a month to access their courses. The UX design course can be completed in approximately six months of part-time study, so most students complete their certification for around $300.

Learn more about Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate on the Coursera page.

General Assembly: A Closer Look at UX Design

General Assembly (GA) offers a more structured learning and support system that’s a good fit for those who want a more in-depth course on the fundamentals of UX design.

GA offers a self-paced, on-demand UX design course that combines video training modules with expert mentors in one-on-one sessions. GA’s course teaches students the basics of UX design, including user research, information architecture, sketching and wireframing, prototyping, and testing.

The course fee is $950, and you get 12 months of online access to the program.

Find out more about General Assembly’s UX Design program and their learning path.

CareerFoundry: Intensive Program to Prepare For a UX Design Job

If you’re interested in making a bigger investment in a program designed to get you job-ready, CareerFoundry has a good track record.

With CareerFoundry’s 10-month UX Design Program, you can get the skills needed to become a UX designer. Their program does not require a background in technology — just a desire to learn more about UX design.

This bootcamp-style program combines the flexibility of virtual learning with built-in accountability and mentoring from student advisors and tutors.

You will also get assigned to a career specialist to support you with your job search, and they claim a 97% success rate of graduates able to land jobs within six months.

The program's cost is approximately $7,000, and CareerFoundry offers some scholarships and financing options. After successful completion of the program, you will be a certified CareerFoundry UX designer.

Read more about what CareerFoundry’s UX Design Program has to offer.

Interaction Design Foundation: Hone Your UX Skills in Specific Areas

The Interaction Design Foundation (IDF) offers specialized courses aimed at those working in UX design and closely related fields like product management, visual design, and front-end development.

With a variety of UX courses, master classes, and bootcamps, IDF is respected in the industry as a source of ongoing professional UX training.

Many of their UX courses are accessible for a flat fee of $16 per month (or $200 per month if you want access to one of IDF’s personal coaches), and additional one-time master classes are available to members for around $5.

For $2,500, IDF offers intensive virtual bootcamps that teach topics in more depth, like User Interface Design, User Research, and UX Fundamentals.

The IDF catalog includes courses and bootcamps for beginners, intermediate designers, and advanced learners. IDF offers course certificates to show you completed the necessary requirements.

Take a closer look at Interaction Design Foundation.

Smashing Conference: Live Professional UX Workshops

For anyone in the UX design field, Smashing Conference is the place to keep up to date with the latest trends and developments. It’s an online version of the type of live workshops you’d encounter at an in-person conference, led by established experts in the industry.

Smashing Conference offers live online UX workshops that include video recording, slides, handouts, and examples. Each interactive workshop is a series of two and a half-hour sessions, and each session includes a Q&A with the instructor.

Early bird prices for most live workshops are $350, and regular prices are around $450 (and there’s a convenient template on their website for asking your boss to pay for it).

Keep up to date with the latest UX trends and developments at Smashing Conference.

Take the Next Step in Your UX Career

UX is a field worth studying, whether you’re brand new to UX, an established professional, or just curious about how UX can help you make better websites and apps.

For a specialized course based on real-world usability testing of the world’s top-performing e-commerce sites, check out Baymard Premium.