Best UI Design Courses Online 2024

14 best UI design courses online for web developers + graphic designers.

In the beginning, website developers put a lot less thought into the look, feel, and functionality of their sites. Largely, just having a website up and running was exciting enough. The spike in popularity – and population – of the internet in the 21st century sparked the creativity of builders of interfaces.

With all the competition for attention, the look and style of your software directly impact every aspect of user interaction. Poor design can impact sales and repute, among other critical business considerations. We put together a list of the best UI Design courses online that can help you become more competitive in the field.

UI Design Courses Online – Overview

Standing Out from the Crowd

Think about a website or app you can easily remember for being exceptionally easy to understand and highly functional. With the flood of websites, apps, and software available to us today, just remembering one that stands out is a feat. If one does come to mind, it is probably because excellent User Interface, or UI Design, is behind it.

Jocks vs Geeks

An interface specifically refers to the “touchpoints a person uses to engage with a digital product”, says the UX Design Institute. The interface of a piece of software – that is the collection screens, links, buttons, information text, icons, etc. – is the somewhat tangible collection of features that UI Design is concerned with.

Recall a humorous metaphor from ABC’s hospital sitcom Scrubs. In one episode, Dr. Chris Turk (played by Donald Faison) described himself – a surgical intern – as a jock. He explained to his buddy Dr. John Dorian (Zack Braff’s character) that in this high school social class analogy, the medical interns are the geeks.

Indeed, physicians strive to make patients feel better, just like UX designers seek to evoke positive feelings in users. A surgeon’s objective, on the other hand, is to improve how the body (or an organ) functions. Great UI Design helps users get things done efficiently. That said, it may be a stretch to liken a tech professional to a jock.

A Common Visual Language

UI designers are like a permanent staple of tech. They bring humankind and machines into a harmonious relationship as they “compose a visual language of effective interactions” between them. For a UI designer, hard skills such as prototyping come face to face with the soft skills needed for effective collaboration and customer service.

The average salary for this role is around $78,000 a year in the US according to Career Foundry. Glassdoor.com puts the average closer to $95K with Google, Apple, and eBay listed as the three highest-paying companies offering thousands of jobs.

Best UI Design Courses Online 2024 – Top Picks

DesignLab	Domestika	Springboard	Coursera
$399	from $11.99/course	from $11.99/course	$59/month
UI Design	Intro to UI Design	UI Design Bootcamp	UI Design Specialization
Visit Website	Visit Website	Visit Website	Visit Website

*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Read the full disclosure at the end of this post.

Note: This list aims to give an overview of the best UI Design courses online. We cannot claim comprehensiveness as there are many other UI Design classes available. Wrong topic? Browse our list of UX Design courses.

1. UI Design Course – DesignLab

DesignLab’s UI Design Course (visit website) promises to make you a master of the art. Their four-week course is crafted for working UI Design professionals who want to upskill the look and feel of their work. Learners are paired with professional mentors who offer feedback and advice to further strengthen student design work.

The course sets out to improve learners’ fluency in color, imagery, and typography while promising to bring them to mastery of current UI trends. DesignLab’s objective is to help graduates set themselves apart in the explosive UI Design labor pool. 

In Week 1, the course covers the origins of UI Design, interactive patterns, and common tools and principles used in the field. Over the ensuing weeks, learners explore visual hierarchy, responsive web design, iconography, and prototyping. You’ll then learn how to hand off your designs to other members of a product team.

Your certificate comes in the form of a custom landing page where you can show off your portfolio designs and project work. This is one of the best UI Design courses online to get started with a career in this field.

Platform: Design Lab | Style: Online course + 1:1 mentorship
Level: Intermediate | Price: $399
Info: Visit website to browse all UI design courses and certifications.

2. Introduction to UI Design – Domestika

Introduction to UI Design (visit website) is taught by Christian Vizcarra, a senior UX/UI product designer and digital strategist. His first course covers app design from start to finish, whereas he created this third course to help build both mindsets and skillsets in budding designers in 21 lessons.

No prior experience is necessary. Suitable for beginners, the course covers wireframes, layouts, colors, buttons, icons, and forms. To conclude, the course project challenges learners to create a UI design for an e-commerce business. You can learn in English or Spanish, and subtitles are available in six other languages.

A self-paced course that can get you off to a good start in roughly two weeks, Introduction to UI Design may be a good jumpstart to a career. For those who simply want to improve their own websites, this UI design online course presents a way that is both expeditious and cost-effective.

Instructor: Christian Vizcarra | Level: Beginners | Lessons: 21 | Time: 2.5 hours
Info: View course. From $14.90. Up to 75% off. Browse category UI Design.

3. User Interface Design Specialization – University of Minnesota, Coursera

User Interface Design Specialization (visit website) is a four-part UI design course by the University of Minnesota’s Computer Science and Engineering Department. A team of 5 highly qualified instructors take you through User Research and Design, Prototyping, and Evaluating User Interfaces.

They cover essential concepts including contextual inquiry, design psychology, paper prototyping, and “robust techniques for helping you evaluate your design choices,” concluding with “an in-depth Capstone Project” (not described on the course’s page).

Coursera’s specializations provide MOOC learners with an opportunity to deep dive into a topic and emerge with higher knowledge and a certificate from an accredited institution. This is one of the best UI design courses online to get started.

Provider: University of Minnesota, Coursera | Type: Specialization
Pricing: Free trial. $59/month Coursera Plus. | Review: 4.6 ★★★★☆
Info: View course. Browse: Search all UI Design courses on Coursera.

4. UI Design Bootcamp – Springboard

Springboard’s UX UI Design Bootcamp (visit website) takes learners through the rigors of UX and UI Design from start to finish. It opens with user research and design problem identification and guides learners through wireframes, high-fidelity mockups, methods for increasing usability and “designs that delight users”, and a range of design tools.

Learners are introduced to prototyping and animations, collaborating with developers, and making presentations. UI design is the focus of Topic 11, where the course covers interaction and mobile design principles. They even show you how to deploy Artificial Intelligence as a UX/UI Designer and discuss current and future AI-meets-UX trends.

Toward the end, learners build a style guide and create high-fidelity mockups, while learning how to test, collaborate, and present their work. The course description promises you’ll come out with a “design-thinking mindset” and a four-week externship with a startup sourced from a high-ranking business accelerator (you work remotely).

This is among the best UI design courses if you seriously plan to become a UI designer and look for jobs in the field of product design.

Duration: 9 months | Certificate: Yes. | Info: Hands-on experience. Career support.
1:1 Mentoring: Yes | Job Guarantee: Yes | Fee: from $1,540/month or $11,900.
Info: View course page.

5. UX/UI Design Specialization – Calarts, Coursera

UX/UI Design Specialization (visit website) by Calarts is a four-course series on Coursera offering an opportunity to deep dive into key UI concepts and earn a Calarts career certificate. Crafted for graphic or visual designers who wish to upskill in this discipline, the specialization provides lessons from a “visual communications perspective”.

The first course in the series gives an overview of the concept of “interface” and what role you’ll play in creating it as a designer. It promises to teach you how to describe key formal elements of UI design and apply your skills to designing a static, screen-based interface. Ensuing courses delve further into UX while still providing relevant UI design knowledge.

Exercises from the UI design courses can be compiled into a digital prototype and a complex website plan you can show to prospective clients and employers. As a bonus, enrolled students will get an extended free trial of Optimal Workshop’s UX Tool products.

Provider: California Institute of the Arts, Coursera | Type: Specialization
Pricing: Free trial. $59/month Coursera Plus. | Review: 4.7 ★★★★☆
Info: View course. Browse: Search all UI design courses on Coursera.

6. Figma UI Design Essentials – Udemy

In Figma UI Design Essentials (visit website) on Udemy, learners practice making fully interactive prototypes and creating simple wireframes using Figma, one of the most popular design tools for developers in the field.

Dan Scott, Adobe Certified Instructor and Expert, brings this content-filled UI design course with the promise to take you from “Figma Zero to Figma Hero”. You’ll pick up UX/UI design vocab and learn how to create your own icons, buttons, and other UI components.

Along the way, you’ll learn to test your designs on a mobile phone, export production-ready assets, and use workflow shortcuts. The class also covers UX Design in over 11 hours of content that should take you a little over a month to complete. No prior experience is required, but you’ll need to download Figma.

Instructor: Dan Scott | Skill Level: Beginners
Lectures: 111 | Video: 11.5 hours | User Rating: 4.7 ★★★★☆
Price: View course. From $11.99. Up to 95% off. Browse category on Udemy.

7. Intro to User Interface Design – SuperHi

Intro to User Interface Design by SuperHi (the name is cut from a 1994 YouTube video titled informationsuperhighway) is a beginner’s UI design course presented on a page with a splashy, ’80s-inspired design, where learners are guided through the basics of user interfaces, web design tools, and a range of best practices. Don’t let the quixotic look of their site fool you.

The module on “How to reduce design debt in your own designs” brings a highly practical edge to the course, as does the Mood Ring project, which allows you to apply learning in real-time. Instructor Paras Memon teaches you “to spot and analyze pattern-level thinking and design systems in everyday web” and touches on prioritizing the user experience.

It doesn’t require any prior experience or study as a prerequisite. Nevertheless, the UI design course is designed for creative and tech industry professionals and learners are advised to have a grasp of Figma and UX. You’ll also need at least Max OS X 10.15 or Windows 10.

After roughly two weeks of study, you’ll have a complete project to start or add to your portfolio, access to SuperHi’s global Slack network, and continued help from SuperHi’s “expert instructors” even after you graduate.

Platform: SuperHi | Style: Video lessons
Level: Advanced Beginners | Price: $149 | Info: View website.

8. Professional Certificate in UI Design – UX Design Institute

Professional Certificate in UI Design is a self-paced course by the UX Design Institute that, in over three months, aims to build confidence in “visually-minded people” looking to enter the IT industry.

Generally targeted at graphic design professionals and people already working in the field of UI Design, the course takes learners through brand and personality, layout fundamentals, typography, iconography, and imagery. A unit on “Interactivity” explores the components that help make digital design more interactive.

You’ll work with popular industry tools Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch along the way, as well as a mentor from the UI industry who will meet with you to conduct live online feedback sessions. The course material takes you from sketch to presentation and handover of a polished interface and sets you up with a UI design portfolio.

Moreover, the UX Design Institute is credit-rated by Glasgow Caledonian University. This is among the best UI design courses online if you are looking for professional education to create promising job prospects afterward.

Platform: UX Design Institute | Style: Online; self-paced
Level: Intermediate | Price: $1,850

9. UI Design Program – CareerFoundry

CareerFoundry’s UI Design Program is an intense regiment that can be completed in five months full-time (10-20 hours/week of study) and has a few unique features. Like other UI design courses, it covers the most widely used tools and teaches the necessary skills, such as wireframing, prototyping, and visual design basics.

The course covers pixel precision and preparation for handoff to developers while also providing one-on-one mentorship, career support, AI integration, and a capstone project for portfolio building. What sets them apart is a selection of specialization courses designed to help learners drill down into a specific area of expertise.

Specialization options include Animation for UI Designers, Frontend Development for Designers, and Voice User Interface Design. CareerFoundry also provides apprenticeships with TechFleet, Democracylab & Digital Product School. They also take you deeper into the use of tools in their “Advanced Design Tool Features” module.

While no prerequisites are specified, it appears that learners should have some graphic or web design knowledge to get the most out of this class. A free UI Design course is available to give you a taste before you dive in. If cost is an issue, at the time of writing, CareerFoundry is partnering with 100 Women in Tech to offer a partial scholarship.

Platform: CareerFoundry | Style: Online lessons + 1:1 mentorship
Level: Intermediate | Price: Various packages. From $7,505

10. UX/UI Design Course – UX Academy

UX/UI Design Course is London-based UX Academy’s CPD-certified, eight-week online UI design course to help you “master the design process with a user-centered approach”. It is a guided course delivered via weekly three-hour workshops on Zoom that include lectures from industry professionals and team exercises done on a shared whiteboard.

Topics covered include discovery research and user interviews, mapping, wireframes, user testing, and project iteration. Since it is guided, sessions are scheduled in eight-week intervals, as are the workshops and (presumably) deadlines. Also, note that the scheduled sessions are on UK time and account for the time difference depending on where you live.

The trainers are both UX professionals, so expect the material to lean more towards preparing you for that range of job responsibilities.

Platform: UX Academy | Style: Scheduled live Zoom workshops
Level: Beginners | Price: £1,500 + £199 deposit | Info: View website.

11. Skillshare UI Design Classes

Skillshare (browse courses) is a prolific learning platform that offers around 40 different UX + UI online classes, among which are courses for beginners and working professionals alike. Two that are specific to UI stand out in particular.

Web and UI Design Using Figma and Webflow, taught in four parts by web designer Vako Shvili, covers visual hierarchy, including a focused exploration of typography and color.

Intro to UI Design is a short but information-rich overview of the discipline. Moon Learning’s Christine Vallaure introduces the Gestalt Principles (the psychological theory about how we see the whole, not the parts) and discusses the laws of similarity, proximity, common region, common fate, and the Von Restorff Effect (drawing attention to where you need it).

The lion’s share of Skillshare’s offerings, like many other UI design courses, cover both UX and UI design with a good number of them offering a specific area of focus. A few zero in on case studies, while others train learners in handing off, color schemes, or how to work with a specific design tool. Moon Learning and Arash Ahadzadeh each offer an array of such specialist short UI design courses.

Instructor: Various | Level: All 
Info: Browse full category.
Price: $15/month. Get 30% Off Premium to try all UI Design courses online.

12. UI Design Course – Learn UI Design

Learn UI Design is a series of video lessons that should take you about four to six weeks to complete, where learners get “strategies and live examples covering all major areas of UI design”. Your instructor Erik, an accomplished designer himself, urges you from the start to throw out concepts such as color theory, the golden ratio, and grids.

Instead, he starts you off with intros to Figma and Sketch, “How to Build Your Design Gut Instinct”, and “3 Ways to Design Above Your Level”. He builds on these with lessons on alignment, sizing, lighting, and shadows, and deep dives into color, typography, and UI components. His final unit adds a segment on “Finding Clients”. 

Well-crafted for the “watch and do” type of learner, Erik demonstrates his own design process from start to finish in numerous examples. He invites you to look over his shoulder as he creates layouts, color schemes, and elements while sharing frameworks and his own tips that have turned him into a successful designer. There are also exercises you can try.

Feedback is given via Learn UI Design’s student community platform. Indeed, as they say, success leaves clues. Speaking of clues, you will find the user interface on learnui.design to be satisfyingly sharp.

On the whole, their UI design course page speaks to you like a friend buying you a drink at your local watering hole. You identify with the tone of the writing and feel like what seemed so inaccessible about UI design is suddenly within your reach.

Platform: Learn UI Design | Style: Video-based lessons
Level: All | Price: Various packages. From $995 | Info: View website.

13. UX / UI Design Bootcamp – Thinkful

Thinkful’s UX / UI Design Bootcamp reads more like a UX path in which you’ll also (almost incidentally) pick up UI skills. From the start, learners are exposed to UX research and visual design alongside UI’s core concern: usability.

The description of the first unit promises to develop in you “the ability to use industry tools to integrate user experience knowledge to analyze, evaluate and define solutions.” As you progress through the full cycle of the design process, you’ll pick up best practices, such as research planning, wireframing, and prototyping.

UI skills specified include information architecture and interactive design. Soon thereafter, in the “Designing for a Client” unit, you’ll design for a real client to practice presenting your design and get valuable feedback.

Thinkful’s six-month training allows learners to study with a cohort and the capstone project challenges them to complete an entire design cycle on a product they choose. This allows them to apply their learning by creating sound technical and design solutions and rounds off a solid portfolio of case studies and content. It also comes with 1:1 mentorship.

Scaffolded career service comes in the form of mock presentations, interview prep, job searches, cover letter editing, and more. Thinkful supports you every step of the way from application to offer acceptance. If you’re not sure you’re ready to commit your time and money fully to this learning journey, you can take their free intro course to test the waters.

Platform: Thinkful | Style: Video sessions + 1:1 mentorship
Level: Beginners | Price: Various packages. From $3,294

14. UI Design Course Online – BrainStation

UI Design Course Online on BrainStation is an eight-week guided course led by experts in live online classrooms, with key skills being design presentations, design handoffs, and UI design trends. Handoff skill lessons expose learners to industry communication tools for connecting with developers, product managers, and other key players.

An exploration of trends covers new interfaces, such as voice and wearables, to help learners identify opportunities for continued professional growth. From the beginning, learners are introduced to Gestalt principles (how human beings perceive visual elements) and other ideas about the psychology of human interaction with information and design.

You’ll also study UI wireframing, supporting accessibility, creating a visual identity, and responsive design. In the final unit, “Design Career Development”, learners contribute designs to a large, collaborative project and also explore how to prepare for the handoff.

With a partner list that reads like a tech top 500 list (Facebook, Spotify, Google & Microsoft, to name a few), opportunities for learners to glean the best success clues abound.

Platform: BrainStation | Style: Live classes | Info: View website.
Level: Beginners | Price: Various packages. From $16,500

How to Choose the Best UI Design Course?

Demand for UI designers has been surging in contrast to recent Big Tech layoffs. Hundreds of these jobs are remote, affording UI designers more flexibility and a greater opportunity to strike an optimal work-life balance. How to get it right?

The main differences among the plethora of online UI Design courses boil down to two aspects. You’ll need to decide whether you want to cover UX together with UI, or if you only want (or require) the UI skills.

Furthermore, the other difference is in the level of support you are looking for in a UI design course. Here are some essential questions to ask yourself:

Do I need a beginner course? If you are a UX professional already or have experience in web development or graphic design, you certainly don’t need to start learning UI Design from scratch. A beginner UI design course may be too elementary if you’re a working designer looking to upskill. Also, consider if you need mentoring or career support.

Am I ready to commit? If you’re unsure about pursuing this career path, short courses, such as those available on Skillshare and Udemy, give a solid overview that may help you get closer to a final decision. For those unsure about a specific class of study, a few of the bootcamps and longer UI design courses offer a free introductory lesson for you to try.

Does it make financial sense for me right now? The longer, more serious and comprehensive UI design online courses cost a pretty penny. You should be sure it’s worth it – will a pay increase offset this? Will your job reimburse you?

Can I make the time commitment? Again, the bootcamps and other longer courses ask for anywhere between 10-25 hours/week. Consider whether you can keep up. Also, for guided online UI design courses that require attendance in live online sessions, find out what time those convene in your time zone. Can you accommodate that in your schedule?

Can I invest in the design tools I will need? While free trial versions of some of the tools can carry you through the majority of a course, it is worthwhile to consider buying once trial periods expire. As a professional, if you don’t already own design tools, such as Figma or Adobe XD, you should strongly consider them as key to your success.

Do these guys know what they’re talking about? For courses on MOOCs, their name should be recognizable, such as Calarts on Coursera. For independent courses, the quality of the course page will tell you a great deal. Learn UI Design and BrainStation, for example, both have unique and beautiful UI designs. The proof is in the pudding.

Best UI Design Courses Online 2024 – Summary

Wrapping up our tour of the best UI Design courses online in 2024. UI Design is an exciting field to be in right now. UX appears to be the new trend, as it were, but UI Design is presently a standard for all tech companies who want to be and remain competitive.

Once you’ve answered your basic questions, the key is to get an edge in a market that is quickly becoming saturated with competition. Among the wide variety of options for learning and leveling up in UI design, careful scrutiny of course pages should point you to a learning option that can offer you enough to lift your head and shoulders above the rest.

With salaries and job prospects on an upswing, even the costliest UI design online courses are probably worth every dollar and every minute you’ll spend on them.

Other UI Design Courses Online

• Rachel How – YouTube – View
• befront.io – TikTok – View
• User Interface Design – RMIT
• User Interface UI and Visual Design Online Short Course – UAL

What are the best UI Design courses online for 2024, in your opinion? Which UI Design online programs have you taken? What have you learned? Please let us know in the comments below, or contact us via email for questions.

Sources: What is wireframing? – 1 | What is prototyping? – 2 | What is typography? – 3

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to some providers of online UI design courses and classes. courselounge may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. It does not add any extra costs. All reviews, opinions, descriptions and comparisons expressed here are our own.