UI/UX design covers two related but distinct disciplines that often share the same person. UX design is research-led: understanding what users need, mapping their workflows, prototyping flows, and validating that the design works before pixels get polished. UI design is the visual side: typography, color systems, spacing, components, and the design system that keeps it consistent.
The toolset is now standardized around Figma for visual work, Maze or Lookback for usability testing, FigJam or Miro for ideation, and increasingly AI-assisted tools (Galileo, Magician for Figma, v0) for first-pass component generation. The differentiator between competent and excellent design work is rarely tool fluency — it's research depth and the willingness to delete designs that aren't working.
What you'll work with in these 25 courses
- Design fundamentals: typography hierarchy, color theory, layout grids
- Component design: Figma auto-layout, variants, properties, design tokens
- UX research: user interviews, JTBD framework, usability testing
- Prototyping: Figma interactive prototypes, Framer, Principle, ProtoPie
- Design systems: token architecture, governance, contribution models
- Accessibility: WCAG 2.2, color contrast, keyboard navigation, screen-reader testing
