Startup Design Accelerator

About the Program:

Every year, we sponsor 2 remote design accelerator apprentices from anywhere in the world to join us for 7 months, either in the fall or spring seasons or online. Our design apprentices work through the end-to-end digital design and research process for a startup idea of their choice.

Apprentices take our program for free and receive 1:1 mentorship throughout the 7-month program. We are committed to helping women, immigrants, POC, and LGBTQ folks break into tech and build an idea they are passionate about!

Apprenticeship Requirements:

This apprenticeship program is open to business owners, startup founders, new grads and career changers looking for creative outlets! Here are some apprenticeship requirements to keep in mind before applying:

• Interested in entrepreneurship, building a digital app, AI app, or digital startup idea
• Willing to commit 5-10 hours of work per week to complete program deliverables
• Willing to attend 2-3 hour weekend lectures to learn the end-to-end design process OR willing to complete online video course modules
• Open to feedback from mentors and demonstrates a willingness to revise design work

Apprenticeship Program Learnings:

• Build digital products and services 0-1
• Lead end-to-end design process for a startup idea or topic of your choice
• Lead product scoping and feature scoping, as well as entire project management
• Identify target market for product and position product for launch success
• Incorporate AI tools into your UX design process
• Design AI features and products by considering AI specific design parameters and heuristics
• Understand how AI works and advocate for ethical AI design that builds trust without over-reliance with users
• Develop a business model for the product or service and demonstrate how the product/service will scale as the business model scales
• Lead discovery research by managing user recruitment, creating research plans, writing interview guides, leading 8-16 discovery interviews, and synthesizing interview insights
• Deliver a compelling UX design and business pitch for your startup idea, showcasing both qualitative and quantitative data to justify the problem space and the solution
• Tell a compelling story about users by showcasing user types, personas, stakeholder maps, journey maps, process maps, service blueprints, ideation matrixes, sketches, wireframes, UX workflows, prototypes and other visual deliverables
• Lead user testing of wireframes and prototypes to improve product/service usability and constantly iterate on your startup idea
• Design a unique design system for your solution from scratch, creating components, a style guide, and branding for your solution
• Analyze direct and indirect competitors to clearly articulate your solution's differentiators and why your solution is innovative and more likely to succeed over competing options
• Consult with startups to create a scope of work and fulfill UX research, UX design, product design and service design work based on your scope of work.

How to Apply:

Please fill out our application form to apply for UX Woman sponsoring your participation in the program. The application takes 5 minutes to complete and will ask you to send in your LinkedIn profile and resume, as well as ask you about why you are interested in this program. You do NOT need to have a UX resume or portfolio to apply- we consider folks who are at the very beginning of their career change, who are still exploring multiple career options.

You will receive UX and business tips and challenges via email and will be contacted by us if you are being considered for the apprentice program. Once contacted, you will go through a brief interview process before joining the cohort. Due to the large volume of applicants, we cannot contact all applicants about their application status. If you don't hear from us about an interview within 2 months of applying, please consider your application closed. We consider applicants on a rolling basis.