Frequently Asked Questions
UX Academy delivers highly interactive 6 to 8-week evening and online courses taught by industry-leading UX practitioners and designed to fully equip you with all of the tools and knowledge you need to succeed in UX. Taught in a small, friendly environment, UX Academy will enhance your knowledge, confidence and understanding of UX Design. If you are still looking for an answer to any questions, feel free to send us specific questions using the form at the bottom of the page.
Below you will find answers to our UX Academy frequently asked questions which should fill in all the gaps you might have about UX.
Standard Questions
No coding skills are required. You will be using industry-standard tools such as Figma and Invision which require no coding ability.
If you miss class time, slides from the UX lectures will be provided. You will also be able to contact the teachers if you have any further questions. You are also welcome to retake a particular session in the next beginner course batch, as we run two to three beginner UX courses per year.
Our part-time UX Design Courses will run online once a week. All our UX Courses begin at 6:00 pm and end at 8:30 pm (London time).
Thanks to specialised industry tools and software we use, our course tutors will still be able to allocate you into groups, where you will all virtually be able to participate in simultaneous hands-on exercises and perform real-time interactions, as if you were in class offline.
Currently, courses are running remotely via live video with hands-on exercises and real-time interaction with tutors. Using shared whiteboard, team projects and remote team mentorship.
Our intermediate course requires 1+ years of dedicated UX design work in the industry. Our beginners course are suitable for UX newcomers and individuals from design and non-design backgrounds.
Read about our latest UX insights to learn more.
For Beginner UX Course and Voice Design Course: These courses require no previous UX knowledge or experience. People attending the UX or conversational design course come from a range of different backgrounds.
For the Intermediate UX Course: The intermediate program is perfect for those who have existing experience in UX. It will help them take their careers to the next stage and continue to build on their UX knowledge.
Learn more about our UX alumni who come from different backgrounds here.
You will need your own laptop (PC or MAC). The tools used in our UX Design Courses will be provided and are SAAS based so these work on both PCs & MACs.
We will be offering pre-course reading for all our UX Design courses so you can get familiarized prior to the course start. These are some books recommended by the trainers:
1. The Design Of Everyday Things, by Don Norman
2. Design Is a Job, by Mike Monteiro
3. Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug
4. About Face: The Essentials Of Interaction Design, by Alan Cooper
5. Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience, by Jeff Gothelf.
Our Intermediate UX, Product Design, and Voice Design Course at UX Academy are £1050 per person. Our 8-week Beginner UX Course is £1250 per person. Our 2-day courses are £250 per person.
Yes. Group discounts are available for our UX design courses based in London. You should reach out to us for more information if you seek any group discounts.
Invoices can be provided on request for any of our UX Design Courses. Please contact us for more information.
Yes. You can view our payment plans page to read about the plans offered at UX Academy.
Yes, you can pay a deposit of £199 and that will save you a spot in one of our UX Design training courses. The remaining amount will need to be covered 2 weeks after the course starts. You can pay the deposit here.
Refunds will be provided up to 14 days in advance. Alternatively, you will be able to sign up for our next UX training class, as we run two to three courses per year.
General UX Questions
User experience (UX) is the experience a person has when using a product or service. Sounds self-explanatory but there’s a lot more to it than that! It can be understood qualitatively (asking people in interviews what they thought) or quantitatively (anything involving hard numbers such as questionnaire scores) and it can take into account psychology, market research, and even anatomy. But ultimately UX always comes back to the core question – how an individual felt interacting with an app, website, shop etc.
They are related but they are definitely different! User experience (UX) is the experience a person has when using a product or service whilst user interface (UI) is the specific product an individual interacts with. This is best understood though an example – let’s take an online retailer. The UX is about the customer journey, how they find products, how they decide whether to buy, how easy it is to check out. Whereas the UI is the site they are actually dealing with, which buttons are pressed, how they look, the graphic design. UX and UI, different but one can’t exist without the other.
This depends on the company, the role, the sector. Frankly every designer’s day is different and every position unique! They could be conducting research and testing, focussing on project management, designing user flows, making prototypes, or determining architecture. Though, as a general rule, they aren’t involved in the visual and graphic design work. Instead focussing instead on the user journey specifically. Each designer will have their own areas of interest or specialties within such a broad field but each will bring something unique to the table.
They make products and services easier, better, more enjoyable to use by always putting the customer first and applying the lessons drawn from UX. It is an incredibly varied role and can be hard to pin down. They could be involved in the initial design and built of a product long before any customers have even used it. Equally, they could be constantly tinkering and improving a long running service based upon real time user feedback. Sometimes it is best to think of a UX designer as translating, and then actioning, what customers want from a business.
A product designer is concerned with the entire user experience of a product and factors in the business needs of the organisation. This can include UX design but also UI, research and design. It is a much more generalist position whilst UX design is a specialist focus.
Becoming A UX Designer – What You Need To Know
The good news is that there’s an incredibly broad range of skills that are useful. As a job that is fundamentally about understanding people, a background in psychology, anthropology, and the humanities is always useful, likewise having good emotional intelligence and empathy. Enjoying problem solving or having an analytical bent is key as it forms a large part of the job. Being interested in technology and the digital space is a must. Whether that can be backed up yet with those technical skills is less important than being curious and a willingness to learn what you need to. Commitment to always learning is the top skill for UX design!
In a word, no. UX design is far more concerned with understanding the user journey, providing strategic insight and actionable improvements. UX designers will never be asked to programme unless it’s a hybrid role or the employer misunderstands what the job actually is! That said having a bit of coding can’t hurt as it will be useful with regards to understanding how a digital product works and whether potential changes are feasible or not.
You can learn the basics, do your research into the field, and explore whether UX is right for you. Being proactive and entrepreneurial is a good thing! But it’s a rapidly growing sector with more and more to learn each day. To really progress an expert guide is needed, to clear the fog, and teach you what you really need to know. Like any career or vocation it’s best to learn from those with experience and know UX inside out. More than anything else a training course will give you the opportunity to do real work on live projects.
A resounding yes! Being a UX designer is about a willingness to learn, putting in the hard work, and understanding people. A diverse background and range of different experiences can only ever be a good thing.
It can be challenging but nothing worthwhile is ever easy. However the challenge will be satisfying and progress quicker than expected. Especially if you learn through doing!
Career Questions
We certainly think so! It is a career that promises great diversity with something new always around the corner. UX designers themselves are pretty happy with their careers choice. The 2020 Nielsen Norman Group’s User Experience Careers survey reports an average job satisfaction of 5.4 (on a scale on 1-7). Most importantly this figure has held steady since 2013 when the first survey was done. This means that even as the field has developed and changed UX designers have remained consistently happy with their choice!
Yes. According to uxdesignersalaries.com the average income for UX designers in the UK is £46,000. Though experience plays a significant role – the more a designer has, the more they get paid. For someone just starting out the yearly salary averages at around £31,000, increases to £44,000 after 5 years, and the mean at 10+ years is £61,500! Bearing in mind that the median (half earn more than this, half earn less) income in the UK is £30,000 then UX designers are doing very well.
Many experts think so. LinkedIn declared UX design as one of 2020’s most in demand skills. They said the same in 2019. InVision’s latest jobs report showed that 70% of hiring managers had increased the number of people in their design teams. Meanwhile Zartis.com has highlighted a significant number of UX designer roles going unfilled due to a knowledge gap. In short, there are currently more job openings than designers. The demand is most definitely there!
Whilst there are currently more roles than designers, competition for the top jobs is fierce. That’s the difference between earing a good income and a great income. Moreover the field is a mix of permanent roles and contract work with many designers operating as freelancers. This all may sound rather daunting but don’t be put off. Each designer offers something unique and different, standing out from the crowd is a matter of playing to individual strengths and finding a niche. Portfolios play a key part in hiring decisions but their content doesn’t all need to be paid work. A very good portfolio can be produced by even a beginner and it will really set them on the path to success!
Voice Design Questions
Voice design is all about mapping out the conversation pathways that could happen between a voice interface and a user. These maps or models are then used to ensure a customer’s requests are understood and acted upon by the product. Think Alexa, Siri, and Cortana. It is a specialism within UX that requires a good understanding of the user and linguistics. What voice design is really about is how people communicate.
Voice user interface or VUI is the specific technology that allows a user’s voice to interact with the product. Think of it like the translator between you and the machine. Voice design is the job of designing for the VUI.
There is a subtle difference that becomes apparent when using a product. Voice design is geared towards function. Getting something done. Conversational design is aimed at creating a rapport with the user. Establishing a personal connection and imbuing a sense of personality. Of course these overlap significantly and often the aim is to design a product that has the best of both worlds.
According to Voicebot (2020) 87.7 million adults in the USA use smart speakers and by 2025 the voice recognition market will be worth $24.9 billion. Meanwhile Google reports that 72% of people who own a smart speaker use it in their daily routine. That sounds like a bright future indeed
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