BrainStation

I’ve been working as a designer for the last 12 years, I got my start as an intern at a design firm where I went on to work as Sr Graphic Design, this gave me a great foundation for visual design before moving on to focus solely on User Experience and... Read More Product design. My career was mostly self-started and I felt like I reached a stage in my career where I wanted some fundamental training in User Experience design to address some areas where I thought I could improve.

As a designer it's very important to have strong instincts that will help guide you through the design process. Knowing what steps to take next could sometimes mean researching, sketching, gathering feedback, iterating or handing off designs to be implemented. It is crucial for a designer to be able to see projects through by knowing when to move into certain phases of the design cycle. On the job these learnings would come at a great cost to both the company and the designer, not knowing what to do next can really put you at a disadvantage when your team is looking at you to decide next steps.

Brainstations curriculum shows the learner how to move a project from ideation to implementation. The course is focused on the design thinking process and how that relates to User Experience design. Empathizing with the user as the first step in the UX design process helps the designer define what the problem looks like. Then using UX design principles like information architecture, sketching, wireframing, and prototyping to build on those insights. Finally testing, presenting and gathering feedback are all used to help the designer communicate their ideas in a way that allows them to iterate and push the designs further.

Additionally Brainstation’s User Experience design course helps you speak the language of user experience design so you can communicate design decisions with your product team. Vocabulary is such an important part of understanding the design industry and when you finish this course you will have an intimate knowledge of terminology used daily by ux design professionals.

My cohort features 2 instructors, one who worked at an e-commerce giant and the other who worked at a well known design agency. They were extremely engaging with the course material offering plenty of opportunities to work with the class and try out the techniques that were covered. They both gave the students a lot of room to ask questions and even stayed on after the class to answer more questions.

The class project will leave you with work that you could put in your portfolio if you are just starting off. These will make great conversation pieces in interviews because you will be able to speak about the entire process of design whereas some work that designers get when they are just starting off will be mostly visual and not include the important research steps that interviews want to hear about.

Overall the course covers a lot of material in a very short amount of time, I recommend taking lots of notes that you can refer back to. Each lesson also comes with some resources and demos of products that you can use to help you as a designer. Lastly the course is a great networking opportunity, I was able to meet a lot of passionate design learners as well as the 2 instructors and being part of the brainstation alum community gets you access to even more networking events, which is valuable in itself.

I took the 5 week part time Data Science Online Live course at BrainStation. Overall it was a great experience and I definitely completed the course feeling more knowledgeable about python and the data science field. I went into the course with 0 python... Read More knowledge, just some brief computer science introduction courses from the past. It was definitely a challenging course, but the instructors were really helpful in my learning experience.

The final project really tested your knowledge on what you have learned and definitely helped me with the learning process. Python and data science requires a lot of practice and I really enjoyed all of the exercises that were provided.

BrainStation’s program was also really organized and I enjoyed having the different workbooks in advance so we can do some pre-reading prior to the class. Communication through Slack with the instructors and program coordinators was also really helpful!

This is my second course with Brainstation and I hope to do another. The instructors or very knowledgeable and helpful and you leave the course with a wealth of new knowledge. I did not know anything about Product Management before I took that course... Read More but that was not a problem. I was able to keep up and thoroughly enjoyed the course.

I took the 10-week Product Management course at BrainStation in Summer 2020. I have also taken Data Analytics in-person, which was a great experience, but taking this class online was a fantastic experience as well. As someone who works in high-tech,... Read More I was able to gain a lot of value from this course. The course material was relevant to the industry and designed to be practiced at work. My course had two instructors with two different backgrounds in Product Management and each brought their perspective and breadth of knowledge in Product Management to the course.

The class had an amazing support network and wasn’t only limited to Canadian students. I got to know talented people from the industry and learn from their practice.

I enjoyed my time in this course and I had valuable takeaways from the classes. Courses at BrainStation always exceed my expectations and I would highly recommend their classes to anyone who is interested to grow their career in the high-tech industry.

I was happy with my Digital Marketing Course. Scott is an excellent instructor very thorough and Haeri is very helpful and very informative. I learned a lot and Ihope to invest on another course and hopefully add to my existing skills in the near future.... Read More Excellent class.

I would really recommend BrainStation. The best learning experience I have has to date. As an adult who is making a career change, I was introduced to BrainStation as an option to take courses online. I learnt more than I expected and our instructors... Read More were phenomenal. They allow you to learn cutting-edge techniques that the instructors have so much experience with while working in the field. You get to learn the most in-demand concepts, skills, and tools. You gain Hands-On Experience and work on projects in a collaborative setting (both online or in class sessions) to apply current concepts and techniques and develop your skills. The Digital Marketing course included topics like:
Brand Strategy
Social Media
Analytics
Search Marketing
Email Marketing
I would really recommend it for anyone who is busy with life, but still wants to learn something new or like many of my peers who took it as a refresher course. Things are always changing in Marketing so this is really an excellent opportunity for anyone.

Wow, what a great value taking this course has been!

I am a seasoned product designer with a background in UX/UI but my roles recently have required more product thinking, vision and strategy. I was looking to expand my knowledge about product management... Read More and decided to enroll in the 10-week online course at Brainstation.

Throughout the class, there were so many insights and I acquired through the course content and exercises. I also created a personal product project that defined vision, strategy, success metrics, go-to-market, an MVP and a prototype for my product idea. Going through the real-world examples which included lots of relevant professional experience from the instructors really helped me think about product development from a different viewpoint. Overall I've added some great skillsets to my experience as a designer.

One of the best parts of the program was connecting with other students across Canada and the U.S. and learning about and seeing their product visions come to life. It's been a great way to connect with new people outside of my circle and be inspired by their ideas. I really appreciate everyone in our class for making it such a memorable and valuable experience and to the instructors who made learning new things engaging and fun.

Initially I was not expecting much in terms of engagement and receiving a hands-on experience via an online course. However, my instructor Paul Pittman was excellent at keeping students engaged and interactive as we go through each slide. Paul was fantastic... Read More at providing both general UX knowledge as well as pulling from his own experience as a designer when teaching the course. This course provided a great foundation and skeleton to UX design. Would definitely recommend this class to those who are looking to start in the UX/UI industry, or those looking to gain more perspective in this role for product design and tech.

I chose to do the full-time online Product Management course to better understand and communicate with the different stakeholders about new ideas and software products at my work.
I was really impressed by the amount of knowledge the course offered, the... Read More way it was all organized and most importantly, the way it was delivered. The instructors were very knowledgeable and experienced in the field and had a ton of useful insights and real-world examples to offer on every subject covered. The class environment was great and truly engaging, with a lot of active discussions and a lot of group activities. The assignments and final project really helped turn those key concepts into practice and was also a good opportunity to work with a group of outstanding students from different industries.
This was my second course at BrainStation and would totally go back for more.

Thrilled to have completed the intensive Data Analytics course.
I’m now much more confident in my SQL skills and have experienced Tableau’s power.

How does this course add value to professionals?

After spending 2 days of my own time researching, investigating,... Read More and detective work trying to sove a problem, my instructor solved it in just 5min – that is the true power and value add of instructor led training. At the end, you get to do a major project and present your data analysis to the instructors who will provide pesonalized feedback on how you can improve your presentation to stakeholders, c-suite people, and clients. As a professional, this type of feedback was invaluable!

Very impressed by the calibre, competency, and professionalism of Brainstation’s instructors.

Main thing is that this course is not for the faint of heart. You definitely need to be an proactive learner, ask questions, and do the work needed to upskill yourself.