01 — Overview
After 4 years of teaching UX design, I kept seeing the same pattern: students who were genuinely talented but let down by the programs they'd paid for. Too much theory too soon, tools taught before thinking, and no real feedback until it was too late to course-correct.
Element Education was born from that frustration. I built it to be the program I would have wanted as a student — rigorous enough to compete with $15,000 bootcamps, structured around how designers actually think, and designed to get people hired.
Most online UX programs fail in the same three ways: they teach tools instead of thinking, they overwhelm students with theory before practice, and they provide no real feedback loop. Students finish knowing Figma but not knowing how to design.
I'd watched this play out firsthand with students who came to me after completing other programs, frustrated and underprepared. I knew exactly what was broken — and I knew I could fix it.
My Role
Lead Curriculum Designer
Program architecture, learning outcomes, project briefs, assessment frameworks
Timeline
6 months
Discovery through pilot cohort launch — Feb to Aug 2024
Team
4 people
1 curriculum lead, 1 instructional designer, 1 industry advisor, 1 dev
Deliverables
Full Curriculum
12-week syllabus, 36 lesson plans, 6 major projects, rubrics
Tools Used
Figma, Notion, Miro
Curriculum mapping, prototype projects, student journey flows
Pilot Cohort
28 students
Mixed background — career changers, graphic designers, developers
02 — Research
Before writing a single lesson plan, I spent 6 weeks in discovery. I interviewed 24 people who had completed online UX programs — asking not what they learned, but what failed them. The patterns were consistent and damning.
87% of interviewees said their program introduced Figma in week 1. By week 4, they could make components but couldn't articulate why a design decision was correct. I resolved to teach design thinking first, tools second.
Completion rates in competitor programs dropped sharply at the midpoint. Research showed this is where students hit their first real project without enough scaffolding. I designed deliberate "launch pads" at weeks 4, 8, and 11 to counteract this.
Students described automated feedback as "feeling like shouting into a void." High-quality, timely critique was the single biggest predictor of program satisfaction and job placement. I built a weekly peer-critique ritual into every module.
Most graduates had work but no story. They could show you screens but couldn't narrate the decisions behind them. I embedded portfolio documentation into every project from week 1 — so by graduation, the case study writes itself.
03 — Curriculum Design
I structured the program around three deliberate phases — each building cognitive scaffolding before introducing the next layer of complexity. No week stands alone; every lesson is a brick in a wall.
Week 01
Mental models, design thinking intro, observing the world as a designer
Week 02
Interview techniques, empathy mapping, research synthesis
Week 03
HMW statements, affinity diagrams, problem framing
Week 04
First end-to-end brief: research a real problem, define, present findings
Week 05
Sketching, sitemaps, user flows, content hierarchy
Week 06
Lo-fi to mid-fi, Figma fundamentals, layout principles
Week 07
Typography, colour, spacing, gestalt, design systems intro
Week 08
Full mobile app design: research → wireframe → hi-fi screens
Week 09
Interactive prototypes, usability testing scripts, synthesis
Week 10
Design systems, component libraries, design tokens
Week 11
Case study structure, presenting decisions, portfolio site setup
Week 12
Full case study presentation to industry panel, portfolio review
04 — Design Process
Discovery — Weeks 1–2
I audited 9 competitor programs end-to-end, interviewed 24 past students, and ran a survey with 60 hiring managers to understand what skills were actually missing in junior UX hires. Four years of classroom experience told me where to look — the data confirmed it.
Architecture — Weeks 3–5
Using a modified backward design approach, I started with graduation outcomes — what does a job-ready junior designer know and do? — then worked backward to map the cognitive sequence needed to get there. Every lesson had to earn its place.
Content Creation — Weeks 6–14
Each lesson followed a strict 4-part structure: concept introduction, worked example, independent practice, reflection prompt. I piloted early lessons with a group of 8 beta students to pressure-test pacing and clarity before committing to full production.
Pilot — Weeks 15–26
28 students. 12 weeks. I ran live critique sessions, tracked NPS weekly, and made real-time curriculum adjustments when data showed confusion or dropout risk. By week 6 — historically the danger zone — retention was 96%.
Iteration — Post-pilot
Post-cohort, I conducted exit interviews with all 28 students and 11 of their subsequent hiring managers. The feedback drove a 40% rewrite of weeks 7–9, and the introduction of a peer-critique protocol that became the program's signature.
05 — Outcomes
The pilot cohort exceeded every benchmark I set. More importantly, it validated the core thesis I'd developed across 4 years of teaching: when you design the learning experience with the same rigour you'd apply to a product, students don't just learn — they transform.
84%
Course Completion Rate
3×
Industry Avg. Hire Rate
4.9
Student Satisfaction / 5
96%
Week 6 Retention
"I've hired from bootcamps, self-taught designers, and university programs for 8 years. The Element Education graduates stood out immediately — not because their Figma was polished, but because they could articulate why every decision was made. That's rare at the junior level."
06 — Reflection
Designing a curriculum is humbling. You're not the expert in the room — your students are. The moments I was most wrong were the moments I assumed I knew better than the data. The weekly NPS check-ins became the most important design artefact in the project.
The biggest win wasn't the completion rate. It was watching a cohort of career-changers, in week 12, present work that could stand alongside mid-level professionals. That doesn't happen by accident — it happens by design.
Element Education is scaling to 3 cohorts per year with a new part-time track for working professionals. I'm currently designing the advanced module — a 4-week intensive focused on systems design and design leadership for those who've completed the core program.
I'm also exploring an AI-assisted feedback layer that can provide in-the-moment critique between live sessions, without replacing the human element that makes the program work.
