UI/UX Design Career Track 

Syllabus & Course Overview

 
 
Introduction 
Does a career that combines creativity with impact appeal to you? If so, then UI/UX would be 
perfect for you. As a UI/UX designer, you’ll be focused on building products that users love - both 
aesthetically and functionally - to achieve user, business and product goals.  
 
The demand for UI/UX designers is at an all-time high. Companies are constantly seeking out 
digital opportunities to improve their product experience. As a result, competition is growing 
amongst employers for designers who can build products that are both beautiful and easy to use. 
Today,​ UI and UX designers enjoy high job satisfaction, varied creative challenges, a chance to 
work with ever evolving technologies, and great pay. 
 
Springboard’s ​UI/UX Design Career Track​ is designed to train you on job ready UI/UX skills, 
including core design principles, tools and best practices. You’ll work on 4
​ portfolio projects 
covering different types of design techniques that you’ll use as a UI/UX designer. By the end of 
the course, you’ll have a complete UI/UX skill set to succeed in any design role.  
 
We’re so confident in our program that we’ll refund your tuition if you don’t find a job within 6 
months of graduating! G ​ et a job in the UI/UX design industry or your money back.  

Who’s It For? 
The UI/UX Career Track is for people who demonstrate strong visual, creativity and 
communication skills. All backgrounds are welcome. 
 
 
How It Works 

1. Cost and schedule: ​The course costs $ ​ 1,099 per month​. It is fully online and 
flexibly paced, so that you can study anytime, anywhere, even if you have a 
full-time job. Most students complete the course in 9 months if they dedicate 15 to 
20 hours of work per week. You’re welcome to complete in less or more time — 
you pay only for the months you’re enrolled.  
2. Enrollment: W ​ e have monthly cohorts — enrollments open a few weeks before 
each class is set to begin. If enrollments are closed, you can sign up for a future 
cohort.  
3. Mentor-matching process:​ Once you enroll, you’ll be asked to fill out a profile, 
which includes questions about your background, your availability during the week, 
and the skills you want to develop. Your student advisor will use this information 
to match you with a mentor who suits your specific needs.  
 4. A curriculum curated by experts:​ ​We believe that diverse perspectives lead to 
better learning outcomes. Our online curriculum is packed with quality UI/UX 
design resources, some are handpicked from around the web by industry experts 
and others created by Springboard. Our instructional designers then build these 
resources into a curriculum that includes projects and quizzes.  
5. A Springboard support team​ that includes a student advisor, mentor, community 
manager, and career coach.  
a. Your s ​ tudent advisor​ will match you with a mentor, help you prepare for the 
course, and answer your general questions.  
b. You’ll have 1-on-1 calls with your ​mentor ​each week. They’ll provide 
feedback on projects, answer questions about the curriculum, and give you 
career advice and industry insight.  
c. Your​ ​community manager​ can answer questions about the curriculum and 
UI/UX industry. 
d. Your c ​ areer coach​ will help you during your job hunt and can give you tips 
about how to network, create a strong UI/UX resume, and more.  
6. The Springboard community:​ While online learning may sound isolating, it’s 
important to remember that you have a whole community learning alongside you. 
You’ll get access to this community so you can share triumphs and trials, get 
feedback, and attend weekly live Office Hours.  
7. Career services:​ In addition to learning about UI/UX, you’ll also work through 
sections of the curriculum that cover career material that will guide you through 
your job search. 
8. Certification: O ​ nce you finish the course material and submit your capstone 
project, you’ll get a certificate of completion. 
9. Job guarantee: ​We guarantee that you’ll have a job offer within 6 months of 
graduating, or you can get 100% of your tuition refunded. Eligibility criteria and 
terms ​here​.

 
 
 
 
 
How is it different from the UX Design Career Track?
The UI/UX Design Career Track will prepare you to succeed in both UI and UX roles while 
the UX Career Track focuses solely on preparing you for UX roles.  
 
  UX Career Track  UI/UX Design Career Track 

Duration  6 months  9 months 

# of hours  ~350  ~700 

     

Curriculum     

UX foundations  Yes  Yes 

Advanced UX topics  Yes  Yes 

Business of UX    Yes 

UI foundations  Yes  Yes 

Advanced UI topics    Yes 

UI/visual design practices    Yes 

     

Projects     

Capstone  Yes  Yes 

Capstone 2    Yes 

Design Sprint  Yes  Yes 

Industry Design Project  Yes  Yes 

     

Job Guarantee     

UX roles  Yes  Yes 

UI roles    Yes 
 
Syllabus 
Each module of this 700+ hour course covers key aspects of user experience and user 
interface design. Each module features a combination of materials, including resources 
that teach crucial theory, design exercises, and career-related coursework. The 
recommended time allocation is based on a total of 700 hours of work and can be scaled 
according to your needs.  
 
Modules Include:  

Foundations of Design  
 
Grounded in empathy and a hands-on, iterative approach to problem-solving, design 
thinking is the mindset designers like you will use to create effective user experiences. 
This section of the course will introduce you to the core stages of design thinking. You’ll 
also learn about UI/UX design roles and the skills every designer needs to be successful.  
 
Topics Covered: 
 
1. UI and UX Design Roles and the Skills You Need to Land Them 
2. UI vs. UX Design 
3. Design Tools: Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD 
4. The Core Stages of Design Thinking 
a. Empathy 
b. Define 
c. Ideate 
d. Prototype 
e. Test 
5. Divergent and Convergent Thinking 
6. Brainstorming and Gamestorming  
7. Observational Empathy 
 
 
 
Conducting Research  
 
At its core, design is about solving problems, so identifying the problem and the user 
you’re solving it for will help you to create an exceptional solution. When you begin a new 
design project, you’ll frequently need to conduct research to understand the problem 
space you’re working in and form a hypothesis. You’ll also need to conduct user research 
by talking with users and synthesizing their feedback to understand why the problem 
exists and what users want to see resolved. Of course, once you’ve collected all this 
information, it’ll be time to synthesize your findings through the use of tools like empathy 
maps and personas before presenting your findings to stakeholders.  
 
Topics Covered: 
 
1. UX Research Methods and How to Choose the Right One for Your Work 
a. Generative Research 
b. Secondary Research 
c. Competitive Research 
d. Quantitative Research 
e. Qualitative Research 
2. Competitive Usability Testing 
3. Usability Heuristics 
4. Research Plans  
5. Recruiting Users with Screener Surveys 
6. Conducting Interviews  
7. Synthesizing Your Research  
8. Empathy Mapping 
9. Creating Personas 
10. Writing Problem Statements 
11. Creating Journey Maps 
12. Presenting Your Synthesized Research to Stakeholders  
 
 
 
Designing, Ideating, & Information Architecture   
 
In this section of the course, you’ll learn how to make design decisions and ideate a 
variety of solutions to the problem you’ve identified through your synthesized research. 
One tool you’ll use to do this is user stories, which will help you identify the functional 
needs of your product. Once you’ve identified a solution, you’ll use information 
architecture best practices to figure out how your user will move through and interact 
with your product.  
 
 
 
 
Topics Covered: 
 
1. Solution Ideation 
2. Creating User Stories 
3. Information Architecture  
a. Navigation 
b. Sitemaps  
c. User Flows  
d. Content through Card Sorting  
 
 
 
Foundations of UI Design  
 
From the beginning of the course, you’ll build out your UI design toolbox with the help of 
UI exercises woven throughout the course. In this section, you’ll begin to apply these skills 
to your designs, digging deep into the fundamental and advanced UI design techniques 
every UI designer should know.  
 
User Interface (UI) design is what makes a design engaging and delightful to use; it 
inspires a user to feel a particular way when engaging with a product. Using typography, 
colors, and layouts, you can inspire feelings of trust and delight as users navigate your 
site or app. You’ll develop style guides that define the visual language of your projects.  
 
Topics Covered: 
 
1. Visual Principles 
a. Balance  
b. Scale and Proximity 
c. Alignment 
d. Visual Hierarchy 
e. Repetition 
f. Contrast 
g. Negative and Implied Space 
h. Color Theory 
2. UI Principles 
a. Usability Heuristics 
b. Ease-of-Use 
c. Consistency 
d. Progressive Disclosure 
 e. Reducing Cognitive Load 
f. Information Hierarchy 
g. Space Distribution 
h. Discoverability 
i. Feedback — Error and Success Responses  
3. UI Elements 
4. UI Patterns 
5. Material and iOS Guidelines 
6. Interaction Behaviors and Principles 
7. Designing for the Different States 
8. Understanding Brand Platforms 
9. Using Brand Platforms to Define a Product’s Visual Style  
10. Developing Design Systems 
11. Style Guides 
a. Logo 
b. Color Palettes 
c. Fonts 
d. Grids 
e. Iconography 
f. Photography and Imagery  
 
 
 
Sketching & Wireframing 
 
Creating low fidelity design sketches is the first step in the march towards high fidelity 
designs. Sketching is an easy, affordable way to get your ideas out of your head and onto 
paper, where you’ll more easily be able to see the changes or adjustments that you’ll need 
to make. Once you’ve created sketches of your product, the next step is to create 
wireframes. Wireframes are often digitized versions of your sketches. Creating a low 
fidelity digital version of your product will enable you to identify critical design decisions 
that you need to make, while still offering enough flexibility that you don’t need to fixate 
on perfecting your designs yet. 
 
Topics Covered: 
 
1. Sketching Principles 
2. Sketching Red Routes 
3. Guerilla Usability Testing 
 4. Responsive Design 
5. Wireframing 
6. Creating Wireflows  
 
 
 
High-Fidelity Design  
 
Once you have your style guide sorted out and a series of wireframes to work with, it’s 
time to create high-fidelity mockups of your design. However, this doesn’t just mean 
making your designs look beautiful (which you’ll do — don’t worry!); it also means making 
your designs accessible and inclusive so that everyone can use your product. You’ll refine 
your style guide as you work on your screens and you’ll also learn how to create 
animations that align with your style guide and brand platform.  
 
Topics Covered: 
 
1. Inclusive Design and Designing for Accessibility 
2. Building High-Fidelity Mockups 
3. Designing Efficiently with Tools 
4. Interaction Patterns 
5. Animation tools 
6. Designing animations and interactions 
 
 
 
Prototyping & Testing 
 
As any designer will tell you, prototyping and testing are essential tools used to identify 
problems and validate design decisions. In this section of the course, you’ll build a 
clickable prototype, learn how to set up and facilitate usability test sessions, and 
synthesize your findings to determine if you need to redesign your prototype.  
 
Topics Covered: 
 
1. Building a Prototype 
2. Conducting Usability Tests 
a. Remote Usability Testing  
b. Moderated Usability Testing 
 3. Other Evaluative User Research Methods 
4. Synthesizing Test Findings 
5. Prototype Iteration 
 
Communication Best Practices 
 
As a UI/UX designer, you’ll be in frequent communication with developers, team 
members, clients, and other project stakeholders so being able to collaborate and be a 
team player is essential. It’s also important to be able to share information about the 
work you’ve done and tell a compelling story about your designs. This section of the 
course will teach you how to effectively communicate with different audiences.  
 
Topics Covered: 
 
1. Collaborating and Communicating with Developers 
2. How to Prepare for Handing Off Designs  
3. Handoff Tools like Zeplin  
4. Presenting Your Work to Different Stakeholders  
5. The Components of an Effective Presentation  
6. Creating a Case Study   
7. Receiving and Giving Feedback 
8. Email and In-Person Communication  
9. Prioritization and Time Management  
 
 
 
Special Topics 
 
This course will go beyond the basics of UI/UX design to take on some of the specialized 
skills that hiring managers find highly valuable. You’ll use these specialized skills to show 
off your knowledge and experience with the latest trends in UX and UI design.  
 
Topics Covered: 
 
1. Product Types: Best practices and solutions 
a. Ecommerce & Browsing 
b. Social Media & Messaging 
c. Dashboards & Data Design 
d. Music & Media 
 e. Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer Products 
2. The Psychology of Design  
a. Persuasive Design 
b. Anticipatory Design  
c. Gamification and Behavior Change  
d. Dark Patterns  
3. The Business of UX 
a. The Product Life Cycle  
b. Working with Constraints  
c. Competitors and Success Criteria 
d. Competitive Research 
 
 
  
Career Components ​(35+ hours) 

Our career material is designed to help you create a tailored job search strategy based on 
your background and goals. You’ll learn how to craft a resume that stands out from the 
pack, evaluate companies and roles, ace interviews, and negotiate the best possible 
salary. Your career coach will be with you every step of the way, offering feedback and 
providing personalized tips based on your goals. 
 
Topics Covered:  
 
1. Types of UI/UX Roles  
2. Job Search Strategies for the UI/UX Industry 
3. Building a Network and Using It to Land 
Interviews 
4. Creating a High-Quality Resume, LinkedIn 
Profile, and Cover Letter 
5. Preparing for Technical and Nontechnical 
Interviews 
6. Successful Negotiation  
7. Building Your Portfolio  
 
 
Building a Portfolio ​(20+ hours) 

Your portfolio is the key to landing a role in the UI industry. A good portfolio will allow you 
to showcase your skills and demonstrate your expertise to potential employers. We will 
teach you how to create a portfolio that incorporates all the projects you will work on as a 
part of this course, including your Industry Design Project.  
 
You’ll work through the process of what to include and what to leave out to create a 
cohesive, in-depth, and engaging collection of work. You’ll also tailor your portfolio to 
show off your unique skills and interests. While working on your portfolio, you’ll learn how 
to: 
● Refine your case studies and get your work portfolio-ready 
● Write an engaging bio and create a personal logo 
● Build your portfolio site   
● Critique and review your portfolio  
 
 
 
UI Practice  
 
Visual skill takes time to develop and requires a lot of practice! To that end, you’ll be 
introduced to industry-standard design tools early on in order to complete UI exercises 
that have been woven throughout the course. These UI exercises are designed to help 
you build your visual skills, including how to evaluate designs as well as improve designs 
based on visual principles (such as balance, scale, alignment, hierarchy, and others). 
 
End-to-End Projects  
 
While working through this course, you will 
complete four projects that you can showcase in 
your design portfolio: three end-to-end projects 
(two Capstone projects and a Design Sprint 
project) and an Industry Design Project. 
 
These projects are an integral part of the 
curriculum that will allow you to apply all of the 
skills you develop while working through the 
course. While working on the portfolio projects, you’ll gain hands-on experience with each 
stage of the design process, from identifying a problem and building high-fidelity 
mockups, to testing your prototype and communicating your findings.  
 
Design Sprint Project  
While working on the Design Sprint, you’ll use agile design processes to answer key 
business questions by quickly designing, prototyping, and testing your ideas.  
 
Industry Design Project​ (40 hours) 

We know how crucial real-world experience is for an aspiring UI/UX designer. Yo help you 
gain that experience and build a job-ready portfolio, we’ve partnered with a number of 
companies and accelerator programs that will ask for your insights and support to 
develop new products and improve their existing solutions. The work you create while 
working on the Industry Design Project will be a fantastic addition to your portfolio, 
especially if you have limited real-world UI/UX design experience.  
 
Other benefits include:  
 
● Exposure to the industry by working with a company 
● An opportunity to dive deeper into an aspect of the UI/UX design process 
● Experience working in collaboration with design teams and/or directly with clients 
● Experience that will distinguish you from other bootcamp graduates 
 
 
 
 

Ready for the next step? Learn more and​ a

​ pply here​.  

 
Email us at ​hello@springboard.com​ with any questions.