Product Design Bootcamp

Introduction to Design Techniques

This course covers the fundamentals of design, using Figma to build your skills. You’ll learn visual design basics, create layouts, add typography and color, and build interactive prototypes. The course concludes with a project where you develop your own design, apply feedback, and use design methodologies and project management frameworks to prepare for a product design career.

What You’ll Learn:

• Compare user research (UR), user experience (UX), and user interface (UI) as elements of the product design skill set
• Implement fundamental designs with industry standard tools like Figma
• Apply product design frameworks to a design project

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Introduction to Responsible Design

This course teaches you to integrate responsible design methods into your projects, focusing on ethical, inclusive, and accessible solutions. You’ll explore product design pillars, common methodologies, and the product life cycle, emphasizing iteration and user-centered design. The course concludes with a project where you’ll assess the ethical impacts of a product solution and make recommendations. You’ll gain skills to critically examine product choices and contribute responsibly to a design team.

What You’ll Learn:

• Utilize frameworks and approaches for solving design problems while balancing user and business needs
• Implement foundational methodologies and techniques to creating ethical, inclusive, and accessible products
• Apply foundational design principles

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‍Integrating Art and Visual Design

This course focuses on visual design for product development, covering principles of visual hierarchy, composition, color, typography, imagery, and layout grids. You’ll learn to create balanced, informative designs for web and mobile interfaces. The course concludes with a project where you’ll apply your knowledge to develop a user-friendly layout based on user and business goals, incorporating accessible, industry-standard practices.

What You’ll Learn:

• Apply visual principles to improve a design layout
• Integrate accessible and inclusive visual design choices
• Demonstrate the ability to balance responsible design methodologies with user and business goals in design solutions

User Research

This course teaches you to excel in user research, including designing research plans, crafting surveys and interviews, and recruiting participants. You’ll evaluate existing research materials to ensure they meet best practices. The course culminates in a project where you’ll assess research artifacts and provide feedback to improve overall research objectives.

What you’ll learn:

• Define the initial research approach.
• Evaluate initial user research plan.
• Integrate methodologies for conducting research.
• Strategize to develop and communicate the direction of the research design.

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‍Navigating the User Research Process

This course focuses on evaluating research data and communicating findings to stakeholders. You’ll learn to assess existing research and present data clearly and effectively to various audiences. The course concludes with a project where you’ll prepare a stakeholder presentation for a user research project.

What you’ll learn:

• Define the approach to evaluating research data.
• Evaluate research data.
• Integrate methodologies for analyzing and synthesizing research.
• Strategize to communicate research findings to stakeholder.

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‍User Experience Design

This course introduces Lean UX, focusing on user-centered design through continuous feedback and iteration. You’ll learn to turn ideas into testable prototypes, conduct user testing, and validate design solutions. The course ends with a project where you’ll apply UX recommendations to improve existing prototypes.

What you’ll learn:

• Define Lean UX and explain the role of MVPs (Minimum Viable Product) in generating continuous feedback.
• Identify strategies to ideate and converge on a solution for an initial problem.
• Assess how well prototypes address established design objectives.

Information Architecture

This course dives into Lean UX, emphasizing user-centered design through continuous feedback and iteration. You’ll learn to turn ideas into testable prototypes, conduct user testing, and validate design solutions. The course concludes with a project where you’ll apply UX recommendations to improve existing prototypes.

What you’ll learn:

• Explain how secondary research provides context to a design problem.
• Evaluate information architecture.
• Evaluate effectiveness of usability testing approach against research objectives.
• Communicate UI designs to teammates and stakeholders.

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‍User Interface Design

This course covers UI design principles, including usability heuristics, responsive design, and accessibility. You’ll learn to evaluate interfaces, implement UI patterns, and ensure designs are accessible. The course project involves performing a heuristic evaluation, assessing accessibility and usability issues, and providing recommendations to improve existing UI patterns.

What you’ll learn:

• Perform a heuristic evaluation.
• Evaluate pattern implementation and accessibility.
• Provide recommendations for improving the usability and accessibility.

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‍Design Systems

This course teaches you to design beautiful and functional interfaces, focusing on user-centered design principles. You’ll learn usability checks, responsive layouts, clear UI messaging, and design systems. The course covers testing to ensure your designs are intuitive, accessible, and meet user needs and business goals.

What you’ll learn:

• Create designs that adhere to the rules of a design system.
• Create feedback about results of interactions.
• Annotate designs to communicate implementation concerns .
• Provide recommendations for improving the usability and accessibility.

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‍Portfolio and Case Studies

This course helps you launch your design career by crafting a compelling portfolio and case studies. You’ll learn to showcase your skills, tell engaging stories, master interview techniques, and apply industry best practices to secure your ideal design job. By the end, you’ll be well-prepared to impress potential employers.

What you’ll learn:

• Create a case study that illustrates the value of completed work.
• Develop a product designer portfolio.
• Solve for design challenges in the interview process.

Product Design Capstone

In this intensive capstone, you’ll develop three projects focused on solving business problems, integrating skills from previous courses. You’ll execute research, apply UX design methods, use visual and interaction design principles, and communicate findings to stakeholders. The course culminates in creating a case study and incorporating it into your design portfolio.

• Execute a research plan, synthesize for a user research project.
• Execute appropriate methods of iteration and testing to generate insights to a UX design.
• Execute visual design and interaction principles to create an intuitive interface.
• Communicate findings for the appropriate stakeholders.
• Create a case study and integrate into design portfolio.

You’ll receive a certificate of completion upon passing each program. Once you complete all programs — Essentials through Capstone — you’ll be ready to jump head-first into the job search with the help of your dedicated Flatiron School career coach.