How it works

A real brief. A real client. A real presentation back.

People calling us usually already know what a UX course covers. What is not clear from the outside is the shape of the 8 weeks: what happens on day one, what a normal week looks like, and what you are actually working towards. This is that story, in order, start to finish.

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Brief to deliverable

The eight weeks, in order.

Told as one continuous project, the way it actually runs -- not as a list of modules.

Day one: you get a real brief

Your team receives a brief from a real client at the start of the course, not at the end as a bonus exercise. The client sets the brief and the constraints, the same way they would for any agency or in-house team. You are not designing a made-up app for a made-up company.

You work in a small team

You work in a small team, usually three to four people, and that team owns the project for the rest of the course. You research, design and present together, the way a real design team does.

Each week: learn it, then apply it

Every week covers a stage of user-centred design -- research, information architecture, wireframing, testing and so on -- and you apply that week's learning directly to your own project the same week. The course material and the client project are the same track, not a syllabus running alongside a separate assignment.

A weekly live check-in with a mentor

Your team meets a mentor live each week, for around 30 minutes, to review where the project has got to: what you have found, what you have designed, and what is not working yet. This is a team session, not one-to-one -- your mentor is reviewing the project with the whole team in the room.

Between sessions, the work continues

The course does not pause between live sessions. Your team is expected to communicate and move the project forward during the week -- dividing up research, reviewing each other's work, preparing for the next check-in -- the way any real project runs.

You get access to the client

This is not a brief you interpret in isolation. There is an opportunity to put questions to the client during the eight weeks and check in with them if you need to, the way you would on a real engagement.

Your portfolio builds throughout

You are ultimately building your own portfolio, not just completing a project. We support you on the portfolio work and the project work together, so what you finish with is something you can show, not just something you did.

The end: you present back to the client

The course closes with your team presenting the finished project back to the client and getting real feedback and insight from them, not a simulated critique. That presentation, and the case study it produces, is what goes in your portfolio.

Weeks, one live session each

3-4

People on your project team

5-6

Hours a week, including project work

Live

Every session -- never pre-recorded

This actually happens

Real companies. Real briefs.

Every cohort works on a brief from a real company, not a simulated exercise. Here is what that looked like for three of the most fully documented projects.

Wellbeing & confidence coaching

HopStair Limited

A nudge-based mobile app helping people build authentic, lasting confidence through daily prompts, peer support and, in time, a coaching marketplace.

“We would like a final and user tested design that is attractive and sticky, and that starts to maximise user retention within the app.”

Read the full case study →Recruitment & talent marketplace

Welfound

A referral-driven, AI-powered talent marketplace where professionals refer people in their network to highly relevant UK jobs.

“As we are going against the grain of the traditional recruitment process and have such a reliance on the networking effect for this to really work, the UX needs to be intuitive and super simple to drive its usability.”

Read the full case study →PropTech & rental

Avasa

A transparent, end-to-end platform for finding a UK rental home, supported by local rental experts ("Sherpas") and lifestyle-based property search.

“We aren't another real estate agency. Our objective is to find properties that match the needs of the tenants and be on their side if they need help at every step of the rental process.”

Read the full case study →

Other real client briefs our cohorts have worked on include Mayfair Aesthetics, Loop Not Luck, Oh Lily!, Academator, Blindlee, Charrli, EXabler (Parkway Logic Ltd) and Fledglink. See every project at Student Work.

Before a company gets a cohort

Not every brief makes the cut.

A real client project only works if it is a project your team can actually complete and actually publish. So before we bring a company on, we check it against a short set of criteria.

•We validate the project itself before we take the company on -- not every brief that comes to us gets used.
•The company needs an existing prototype or working product. We do not build projects from a blank page with a company that has nothing yet, and most of the companies we work with are early-stage.
•The company has to agree upfront that your team can publish the work in a portfolio case study -- that is non-negotiable, and it is agreed before the project starts.
•The business normally provides the users for testing, so your team is testing with real people who actually use or would use the product.
•We turn down briefs whose users would be too hard for a student team to recruit -- a brief that needs a nuclear scientist or a senior accountant is not one we take on.

The practical details

What you need to know before you join.

•8 weeks, one live session a week -- wednesday evenings, 6:00 to 8:30pm uk time.
•Every session is live. Nothing is pre-recorded, though sessions are recorded so you can catch up if you miss one.
•Around 5 to 6 hours a week in total, including the independent project work you do between sessions.
•A small team, usually three to four people, working on one client brief together for the whole course.
•A mentor reviews your team's project live, once a week, for around 30 minutes. It is a team check-in, not one-to-one mentorship.
•The course ends with your team presenting the finished project back to the client and getting their real feedback.
•No prior design experience is required. If you have already done some free or self-paced UX learning, that helps -- the course is intensive and practical, and people who arrive already comfortable with the basics tend to get more out of it.
•Cohorts are capped at 15 people, though in practice a typical cohort runs smaller -- usually around nine to twelve.
•You receive a certificate confirming you completed the course. It is a certificate of completion, not an accredited qualification.
•UX Academy has partnerships with design software companies, so students get free access to some tools while studying -- not every tool, but a genuine saving on the ones we can secure.

A question we get on this

Testing, answered.

Who actually tests the prototypes you build in the course?

It depends on the brief. For usability testing you generally do not need more than five people to get a clear read -- it is rare to get a split like two-two-one, so five people nearly always gives you a clear majority view, which our lead instructor Natalia Veretenyk teaches as a rule of thumb. In a real business, teams often test with tools such as usertesting.com, where you set a target persona and get feedback on your interface from people who match it. For a B2B brief specifically, the testers are usually people who are realistic to find -- a product manager or another designer, for example -- rather than a specialist role that would be too hard to recruit. That is also one of the reasons we turn down a brief if its real users would be too hard for a student team to reach.

Still have questions

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The fastest way to know whether this is the right move for you is a short call, not another page of copy.

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