Now here, as you can see on the left, we have courses, and under this, we have practitioner, which is the basic level. Under this, you will have different lessons, including an introduction, and they’re also teaching you how to plan your entire design thinking process, which I’ve rarely seen. You also get a badge or a certificate with this, so I’ll show you something on-screen.

This is how the IBM badge looks like, and you can post this on LinkedIn and other platforms. Now, as we keep on moving down, you get a 3–6 week course once you've done practitioner. At the start, you will have zero badges on top, but as you keep on moving, you will get to learn great UX and get the badges, and you can post them on LinkedIn.

Apart from that, they also introduce their framework for design thinking. So the way they solve problems at IBM, you can learn with their framework in mind, which seems like that infinity loop or the double diamond method. So again, a great course that not many people know about, and I feel you should take this course. It’s short, it’s sweet, and it’s made for beginners as well.

№2 — Course from CalArts

This course is as good, if not better, than the UX design certificate that Google does. Now, this course is by CalArts. Now, I believe this course will be helpful because of two reasons. One, it starts with actual professors or actual educators, so you’ll have a different experience with them. Also, this isn’t one of those structured courses that go from one point to the other. It basically teaches you not only the fundamentals of UX and UI Design but also teaches you web design and strategies. It teaches you wireframes and prototyping, so it focuses more on the web design side, and it’s more focused on creating great websites and designing great experiences on that end. Instead of getting the Google certificate, you get a California Arts College Certificate, which I think is also very valuable.

And did I mention that it’s much shorter than the Google UX certificate? So if you can’t really spend months on end on the UX certificate and you want something a little more linear as well as lenient, then this is the kind, of course, you should go for. Also, if you’re wondering about the fees, if you already are a Coursera user, which I assume some of you might be, you can get this for free, or you can get financial aid from CalArts. So you’ll get financial aid, and you can do it for free essentially.

№3 — Course from SkillShop

Now let’s come to the fun part of the article. A UX certificate from Google that mostly Google employees do. Now, this platform is called Skill Shop, and it has a Google Portal as well. So Google has hosted its exams and certificates here. Now, this is called the Mobile Experience Certificate examination. So if you’ve already taken, say, the Google Experience Design Certificate, this is the next thing to do because they certify your skills based on what you’ve learned. It has a mobile experience certification exam, which is a 1.3hr total exam. You can do three attempts, so if you fail at once, you can do it two more times, which I think is really cool, and then you also have optional courses for which you get better credits on the exams. You get to develop a user-focused organization, deliver a seamless mobile user journey. Now, if you search on LinkedIn, mostly Google employees will have these certificates.

Not only this, you can browse the other topics that they have. So you have things like YouTube, Google ads, so if you’re into marketing, you can get into that as well. You can even plan out your certificates on this website. So it’s an exciting way to have everything on the kind of like a personal dashboard of yours, and anybody can start here.

№4 — Course from an OmniCourse

Here is a really cool app that I found on Product Hunt, and many people are talking about it. It’s basically a mobile app that you can download, and you can listen to the courses instead of watching something on the screen. So if you’re getting into something like UX, UI, marketing, whatever it is, you can get courses on this platform; a lot of them are free, and you can listen to things rather than watching things. So if you’re the kind of person who likes listening to podcasts a lot, or if you want to put in your earphones and learn something new rather than having to sit in front of a computer, this is the solution. Most of the learning content is short, so these are not very long courses spread across many topics.

It’s basically 5 to 15-minute audio lessons that you can hear on the go, and not only that if you are a UX designer and want to start teaching on their platform, which has thousands of users. They’re all listening, but this is also a platform that you want to be on for something different, for something unique, and if you want to get free access to this app, you should join their beta invite. It’s not fully come out on the App Store yet, but you can get the beta app before it launches.

№5 — Mixed Reality Course

Now I’m really excited about the next course because it is an AR course. AR and mixed reality have become a huge topic in the past two years. Because of the pandemic, everybody is moving to VR, AR solutions, and this course will get you started in the design of AR in the design of VR. It’s called the exploding mixed reality landscape, and this is by the prestigious Pacific Northwest College for Arts. The course is being conducted by Thomas, who is an instructor and faculty at this college itself. Not only will you learn AR, but you’ll also learn the psychology behind mixed reality, the psychology behind what you see in AR or VR space. You can get the certificate if you pay the $20 a month premium, or you can stick to the free plan where you won’t get a certificate, but you’ll get all the course material like everyone else. You’ll also be getting into tools like Unity to teach how, you know, real 3D experiences come to life.

So if you’re also interested in Unity, this will add that to your skillset. Now, before we even move on, AR is a huge space, and UX and UI designers are being hired by a lot of these AR, VR, MR solutions that are out there. So if you’re interested in this field, if it fascinates you, this is a course that you should start with and build from there.

№6 — Course from IdeoU

So IdeoU is a trendy platform for certificate courses and giving boot camps and stuff like that. Now, most of their courses are great, but some of them are paid. So if you want to take paid courses, it’s great. However, they have some free resources which act as readable or legible courses.

Here as you can see, we have something called brainstorming resources. So if you want to become an expert at brainstorming, this page has everything laid out for you—the phases of brainstorming and relevant links of videos and articles that you need to read upon.