There is a ton of online UX design courses. Some of those courses are very expensive, like hundreds and even thousands of dollars, but there are also some great free online courses for beginners out there.
If you are just getting started in UX Design these free courses will be perfect for you. You can learn more about UX design and decide for yourself if that’s something you want to pursue before you invest money and more time into learning.
And don’t be put off by the word free. The free courses I chose to list here are of exceptionally high quality. In many cases they are no worse than the paid ones. The only difference is that they might not offer a certificate on completion. Actually, many of them do, but it is optional.
This list is complementary to my article How to become a UX designer by learning UX design on your own. I encourage you to read it if you haven’t done so already.
These free courses will be a great starting point if you are a beginner in UX design. You can get your feet wet without paying a dime. Sounds like a great deal to me!
So here we go, 10 free UX design courses for beginners. They are very similar in terms of content, but different in terms of delivery. I’d recommend you to start a couple of them and see which one speaks to you the most.
1. UX Design: from Concept to Prototype (Coursera)
The course is offered by University of Michigan through Coursera, and takes about 19 hours to complete. The course is especially great for beginners because it covers a wide range of topics. As the name suggests you will learn about the design process from concept to research to ideation to prototyping.
Coursera courses are free to audit. That means you get access to all the course materials, but you don’t get to submit projects for review, and you don’t get a certificate. Actually certificates are optional, so you can get one upon completion if you really want .
2. UX Design Fundamentals (Coursera)
UX Design Fundamentals is another beginner course on Coursera. This one is run by California Institute of Arts. It takes a little longer to complete (about 23 hours), and the content is very similar to the first course.
3. Introduction to User Experience Design (Coursera)
The course if offered by Georgia Tech, and is fairly condensed (only about 7 hours to complete). It does cover most of the same topics as the other courses (gathering requirements, exploring solutions and options, prototyping and usability evaluation), but not as in depth. Because this course is shorter, it might work well as a general review of the main steps of the design process.
4. Intro to the Design of Everyday Things (Udacity)
The number of UX courses offered on Udacity is fairly limited as it is targeted mostly at developers, but the ones that are there are pure gems! The Intro to the Design of Everyday Things is done by Don Norman himself!
The course covers main concepts from the first chapters of Norman’s book The Design of Everyday Things: affordances and signifiers, conceptual models and the system image, gulfs of evaluation and gulfs of execution.
5. Product Design (Udacity)
Product Design course by Chris Saden and Amir Shevat stands out because it introduces Design Sprint process, approach to design that was created in Google Ventures. It is labeled as intermediate but most beginners shouldn’t have any trouble following the course.
7. Rapid Prototyping (Udacity)
Course is offered by Google and build on the Product Design course. This course takes a different approach to teaching UX design, basically throwing the students into the deep water. It is labeled as Intermediate because it requires a bit more technical skills than other courses, but it should be accessible to most beginners.
6. UX Design for Mobile Developers (Udacity)
This course is also from Google. It is tailored to Android developers looking to learn UX design, but programming skills are not required, so it is really suitable for anyone interested in learning more about UX design for mobile apps.
8. Hack Design
This course is a compilation of lessons and articles by various contributors, leading designers and educators, like Kate Rutter, Nir Eyal, Whitney Hess, David Kadavy, and many others. It is less structured than other courses, and is mostly text based. It is a great resource for anyone looking to learn from practicing designers!
9. Getting Started with User Experience Design (Springboard)
Springboard that runs those expensive bootcamps offers a free UX course for beginners! It is very similar to other in contents. The goal of the course is to show students what UX designers do, and to take student through a lifecycle of a project from user research to ideation to wireframing.
10. Become a UX Designer (CareerFoundary)
CareerFoundary offers a short free mini course (6 lessons of about 15 minutes each) that will introduce you to UX, and what it takes to transition into UX design. The course contains some exercises to get your creative juices flowing, and figure out if UX design is the right career option for you.
11. Digital Skills: User Experience (FutureLearn)
This course is presented by Accenture Digital Skills and is hosted on FutureLearn platform. It is another great introductory course to UX design. It teaches you the basic concepts and practices you will need to succeed as a UX designer.
These 11 courses should keep you busy for a while, but if you feel this is not enough to get you started read on!
UX design courses on Skillshare
There is also a number of good UX courses on Skillshare. Skillshare is not free. It is a subscription based service kind of like Netflix for courses, but subscription is fairly inexpensive, and you can access premium membership for 2 months for free by using links below:
- UX Design Fundamentals by Joe Natoli
- User Experience Design Essentials by Daniel Scott
- UX Design Process and Theory by Lindsay Marsh
- Intro to UX: Fundamentals of Usability by Marieke McCloskey
- Intro to UX: Conducting Smart User Research by Janelle Estes
Skillshare does require your credit card information, and you will get charged a subscription fee once your trial is over if you don’t cancel, so watch out for that.
UX courses on LinkedIn
There is good number of UX courses on LinkedIn.com (formerly Lynda.com).
LinkedIn Learning is not free but you might be able to get access to their website through your local library. And if you are a student you might have access to it through your university. And failing that you can take advantage of their 1 month free trial.
Have you taken any of the courses listed above? Do you know of any other free UX design courses? Let me know in the comments below! And check out other UX design resources like books, UX Youtube channels, UX podcasts, UX Communities, etc.