
Changing a career is not an easy step but it’s so much easier nowadays. You can take an online course and get the needed skills—but which company to choose? Considering a career in UX Design, or Web Development? Then, take a look at this Career Foundry review to understand what this company has to offer.
What is Career Foundry
Career Foundry is an e-learning company with the main focus on UX and UI design. CF has online programs to help students change their careers to become UX / UI designers and also advanced courses within this field. Meanwhile, the company offers online programs in Web Development, Data Analytics, and Digital Marketing as well as introductory courses on these subjects.
CF is a German company based in Berlin. It was founded in 2013 and now has about 3000 active students.
How Career Foundry Works
The company offers online programs that prepare students to start a new career as well as single courses to improve skills. You pay for the course (you can do it upfront or pay on a monthly basis) and start the learning process.
Career Foundry has single courses for beginners and experienced students. These courses take about a month to two to complete. Meanwhile, the company offers long-term programs that last 4 to 10 months to get fully prepared for a new career.
Long programs are self-paced and you can choose part-time (e.g. 10 months at 15-20 hours/week) or full-time (e.g. 6 months at 30-40 hours/week) involvement. In any case, you have a set of tasks to finish and deadlines. Each program ends with building a portfolio.
Also, you get a mentor and a tutor who provide each student with personalized feedback. These people might change over time so you probably will have 2 to 4 different people as mentors and tutors. Tutors are responsible for theory and mentors are people who currently work within the industry and help you with industry-related questions and check your final project.
Additionally, you have a Slack community to get advice or feedback.
Career Foundry Courses
Long (career) programs
The company offers longer programs that are designed to prepare for a new career. One program takes about 4 to 10 months to complete and includes mentorship and additional services like career coaching and a job guarantee.
Here is the list of programs by Career Foundry:
- UX Design. This 10-month program (or 6 months if learning full time) explores the entire UX design process including user research prototyping, interaction design, responsive design, etc. It covers design tools like Sketch, Figma, Balsamiq, and others.
- UI Design. This 9-month program (5 months if learning full time) includes such topics as responsive design and designing for different platforms, visual design principles, prototyping, wireframing, mockups, prototyping as well as testing. The tools used within the program are Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, Balsamiq, InVision, Balsamiq, and more.
- Web Development. This 7-month program (or 4 months alternatively) covers different aspects of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (including such frameworks as Node, React, Angular, Vue, and Bootstrap) along with GitHub. It also explores server-side development, API building, progressive web apps, native app development, and more.
- Data Analytics. This 8-month program (or 5 months if full-time) covers statistical analysis and predictive analysis, data visualization, and data querying. It includes topics on Python as the main programming language for data analysis as well as tools like Excel and Tableau.
- Digital Marketing. This 7-month program (or 5 months alternatively) goes through such topics as building a digital marketing strategy, developing a buyer persona and the concept of branding, marketing analytics, and includes content marketing, SEO, email marketing, social media, and more.
Single courses
CF also has a list of introductory courses for each of the programs listed above. Each course takes about a month to complete at your own pace and also includes mentorship for hands-on tasks.
Moreover, Career Foundry offers advanced courses, particularly for designers (there are no advanced courses for analytics or marketing). One such course lasts for about 2 months and finishes with a practical task that can be included in your portfolio.
Here is the task of advanced design courses by Career Foundry:
- Voice User Interface Design
- UI for UX Designers
- Frontend Development for Designers
- Animation for UI Designers
Career Foundry Pricing
Career Foundry Programs Price
- UX Design or UI Design: €6500 or €6175 if paid upfront
- Web Development: €6900 or €6555 upfront
- Data Analytics or Digital Marketing: €5900 or €5600 upfront
So, as you see, the most expensive program is Web Development with UI Design and UX Design being closer to the highest pricing bar. The cheapest programs are Data Analytics and Digital Marketing.
Career Foundry Courses Price
All the introductory courses like Intro to UX Design or Intro to Frontend Development cost €590 and advanced ones like Voice User Interface Design or Frontend Development for Designers are €1615.
Career Foundry UX Design Review
The UX-Design program consists of three parts:
- 1-month Fundamentals part that covers the basics of the UX design (user research, user prototype, wireframing and prototyping, etc) and ends with the tasks to design a vocabulary learning app.
- 7-month Immersion part where you learn the UX design process in detail by applying it to one of the projects you selected to work on; it includes 6 steps and a final project where you need to apply the design skills you learned.
- 2-month Specialization part that shows a deeper insight into UI, Frontend Development, and Voice User Interface.
So, the learning process looks the following way: you do about 30-40 minutes of reading and then complete a task to practice. The tasks are checked by tutors whom you can ask about theoretical aspects. Meanwhile, you have your mentor (an expert working in the field) with whom you can schedule a call and discuss practical questions. A mentor is a person who will also check your final project and will provide you with personalized feedback.
Meanwhile, you have access to the Slack channel where you can find your study buddy and get help with the tasks.
The course is self-paced and you can choose between full-time or part-time studying. The company claims that you need about 5 months at 30 hrs/week or 10 months at 15 hrs/week to complete the program. However, many students say this time isn’t enough to finish the UX design program.
On the SF course platform, you see the progress timeline and the estimation of how many tasks you should complete per week to reach the deadline on time.
All in all, the program is worth it as you not only get the needed knowledge and skills, you also are able to build a UX designer mindset within this time, which is essential to later be successful in your job. You also meet the community of current and future designers.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a Career Foundry alternative, consider Designlab UX Academy which is a bit costlier but provides knowledge of the same quality. It has mentorship but also has a unique feature–group crits. These are group discussions where you can get peer review which is very useful for every designer.
Read the full Designlab review.
Additional career services by Career Foundry
- Job guarantee. This means if you don’t get a job within six months of graduation, the company we’ll refund your full tuition. To participate in the Job guarantee, you need to take on the job preparation course.
- Job preparation is an optional course that is worth taking. It prepares you for job interviews in the design industry and helps to improve your CV and portfolio.
- Career coaching means working 1:1 with a career specialist who helps to understand the basics (strategies and tools) of finding a good job.
FAQ
How much is Career Foundry? It depends on the type of program you choose. A single introductory course costs €590, an advanced course is €1615, and a long-term career program costs €5900 to €6900.
How long is the UX course at Career Foundry? The UX design course takes 6 to 10 months to complete–depending on how much time you are able to devote.
How many exercises in UX specialization Career Foundry? There were 8 exercises in total in the UX-design program.
How good is Career Foundry? The company is good, especially if you plan to learn UX or UI design. The company offers a good curriculum and mentorship that is helpful in building skills in this field.
Is CareerFoundry a BootCamp? Yes, CareerFoundry is an online bootcamp with self-paced programs on UX and UI design and as well as on data analysis and online marketing.