Creativity is the magic of an artistic mind unravelling the secrets of the universal ethos of experiencing the eternity of energetic existence. In the pragmatic realm of modern human endeavours, riding in the boat of design, compassionately creative artists are weaving the magic of technological marvels putting them at the touch of your finger to be discovered and fully experienced.

Behind every app you use and every website you visit, some mysterious minds, hearts, and artistic hands at work have designed them to solve your problems in a user-friendly, intuitively operable, seamless, and smooth way. In your heart, you always thank the UI/UX designer constantly for ensuring that you can navigate those smooth-sailing apps and websites as easily as a piece of cake.

The vital role of a UX (User Experience) designer is to create a highly engaging and innately magical experience for the user. At the same time, a UI (User Interface) designer focuses on the layout of the app/website, including elements like scrolling buttons and icons.

DesignBoat UI/UX School’s Founder and CEO, Harsha Kakkeri, says, “Designing a product is more of an art than science. A good UX designer would focus on understanding human behaviour, scrolling patterns, researching the end user needs, and designing the product. This is an art that needs to be practised. The actual implementation of the art is mere science that can be easily learned.”

Unleash the Artist in You

DesignBoat School for UI/UX Training is a Bangalore-based EdTech company located in HSR Layout with training classrooms in Mumbai, Pune, Gurugram and Chennai. The training is offered for freshers, dropouts and working professionals as well. Candidates can choose between weekday and weekend sessions that suit their schedule.

“I was someone who always swam against the tide,” says Harsha reflecting on his educational entrepreneurship journey. “I was always fascinated with design and drawing from an early age, and while my family recommended that I complete formal education before experimenting with my hobby, I dropped out of college to work as a graphic designer with no formal training. When I started, there weren’t many options to learn these skills. I learned in on-the-job training and soon became ‘Head of Product Design’ at a startup.”

During his decade-long experience, Harsha conducted numerous interviews and led a team of designers. Finding the right candidate was the biggest challenge he faced in his career. “While the candidates had much enthusiasm to work in the design space, they lacked the formal training and knowledge of tools available in the market. “We had to hire the candidates and then train them over a span of two-three months before they could become productive. And no training institutes in India offered the right training for designers. EdTech was still booming in 2016,” recalls Harsha.

Uncover the Creative Force Within

This gap in the market pursued Harsha to quit his job and start DesignBoat School for UI/UX along with Co-founders Akshay Bukka, Chetan Deshmukh and Sneha Akshay. Both Akshay and Chetan are close family members, and this has led to close bonding between the founders with a singular aim of training candidates in the art and science of UI/UX design.

DesignBoat started with just two students, and with word of mouth, they soon got dozens of monthly admissions. Initial marketing leveraged only social media like YouTube channel, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Quora. DesignBoat has trained over 7200 students and placed close to 6900 students across 1000s of companies. With placement partnerships across India, DesignBoat has a successful track record for placing candidates in attractive roles.

“We have companies reaching out for freshers as well as experienced candidates. Our training and portfolio have always been attractive for companies as they get job-ready candidates who can work on projects from day one,” says Sneha, Co-founder and Placement Head.

“We organize a recruitment drive every Thursday with over 40-50 companies participating in the placements. That’s close to 200 companies per month,” she adds.

Unify the Design Thinking

DesignBoat’s unique training model offers an exclusive blend of classroom training and practical hands-on experience. Right from day one, each candidate is assigned a mentor and a working project to help candidates build a design portfolio. “In the world of UI/UX, it’s only the portfolio that speaks volumes about candidates,” says Akshay, who manages Training and Onboarding. “When a candidate sits for an interview, the interviewer would ask some technical questions and soon jump to analyzing their portfolio, which would speak volumes about the candidate’s expertise in design,” he adds.

“This is a very dynamic industry, and we must continuously evolve our training to fit the market needs. Like, At DesignBoat, our focus is to help candidates learn all the latest happenings in the design world,” says Chetan, who manages Operations and Industry Relations at DesignBoat.

Understand the Evolution

“Any change from Apple in their Human Interface Guidelines or new additions from Google on Material Design for Android will be quickly incorporated in our training curriculum,” informs Chetan, adding, “We would be in continuous touch with our hiring partners to understand their needs and train the candidates accordingly.”

Akshay furthers, “We see many enquiries from students from the mechanical, civil background who want to start a career in the IT sector but do not want to pursue coding. For such candidates, UI/UX design is a great choice. We also get a lot of inquiries from working professionals who want to pivot to alternate careers. We have ongoing weekend batches for such candidates.”

DesignBoat had also pivoted to a fully online training model at the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown and is successfully transitioning back to an offline model. “We have been an adaptive company which has focused on pivoting itself for the industry needs,” says Harsha, adding, “We have been lean and bootstrapped all along.”

Unwind the Stream Ahead

“We also organize workshops and networking events every week where we invite industry design experts to talk to our students and help them upgrade their skill sets. These meetups and cohorts also act as networking events for our students and get placement opportunities,” concludes Chetan.

With the advent of tons of design training institutes over the last decade, DesignBoat is still standing tall with its unique course offering, legacy knowledge, and lean business model.

DesignBoat is all set to capture the training market for UX design with its relentless pursuit of innovation, excellence, and the drive to enhance the course offerings. The team focuses on offering related courses, expanding to newer cities and helping candidates find the right career path.

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