UI/UX Design or Product Design? Choosing between our two design courses.
Obrix Academy
18 September, 2026
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Our Design track has two courses, and they are meant to be taken in order rather than as alternatives. Here is what each one covers, so you can tell where you should start.
UI/UX Design for Product Teams: the craft
This is the entry point, with no design or coding experience needed. Over four to five weeks, in sessions of an hour to an hour and a half, you take a design problem from research all the way to a tested, high-fidelity clickable prototype in Figma. You learn to:
- Run user research and turn findings into insight statements, personas and empathy maps.
- Structure a product with user flows, task flows, sitemaps and navigation models.
- Build interfaces with layout, grid, spacing, colour and typography systems, and work with auto layout, components and design systems.
- Run a usability test, rate the severity of what you find, and apply accessibility basics before a clean developer handoff.
Product Design: the decisions
Product Design picks up where the craft ends. It asks what is worth building and how you would know. Over five to six weeks you take a product from problem framing and research through strategy and metrics to a validated prototype, defending each decision with evidence.
Topics include business models, jobs to be done, competitor analysis, prioritisation, defining an MVP with an explicit out-of-scope list, metrics such as a North Star metric and the HEART framework, experiments, and working with engineers through sprints and handoff. It also covers designing AI features responsibly, including how they fail.
One rule defines the project week: in Session 26, every claim in the project has to be traced back to a source.
Side by side
| At a glance | UI/UX Design for Product Teams | Product Design |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 4 to 5 weeks | 5 to 6 weeks |
| Prerequisites | None | Figma familiarity, or the UI/UX course |
| Focus | Research, structure, interface and prototype | Strategy, scope, metrics, validation and shipping |
| Final deliverable | Case study, Figma file and clickable prototype | Case study, product brief, Figma file and pitch |
| Typical roles | UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, junior Product Designer | Product Designer, Associate Product Manager, Design Lead in a small team |
How to choose
If you are new to design, or you are a graphic designer, developer or QA engineer who wants interface skills, begin with UI/UX Design. If you can already build interfaces in Figma and want to justify them commercially, or you are a product manager, business analyst or founder deciding what to build, go straight to Product Design.
Both courses are assessed on five checkpoint deliverables that you build as you go, so you finish with a case study you can show an employer.
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