A 12-week online program for Canadians moving into UX and product design. You graduate with a live app in the App Store, the strongest portfolio piece a career changer can walk into an interview with.
Applications close Aug 24 · No coding required
Canada's tech sector keeps hiring designers even through hiring slowdowns: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Calgary all have growing product teams at banks, telecoms, health-tech firms, and startups. And unlike many careers, UX design is genuinely open to career changers: hiring managers care about your portfolio and your thinking far more than your degree.
The compensation reflects the demand. Product design roles in Canada typically pay well above the national median income, and the ceiling rises quickly with experience:
Ranges are typical CAD salaries based on public Canadian job-market data; actual offers vary by city, company, and experience.
Here's what nobody tells career changers: every UX bootcamp graduate has the same portfolio. A redesign of a food-delivery app. A case study with personas and a journey map. A Figma prototype nobody ever used. Hiring managers in Canada see hundreds of these.
Element takes a different approach. Over 12 weeks you learn the full UX process (research, information architecture, wireframing, visual design, prototyping, usability testing), but you apply it to a real product that actually ships. By graduation you have a live app in the App Store, real users, and usage data. When an interviewer asks "walk me through your process," you're not describing a class exercise. You're describing your product.
You'll also graduate fluent in the AI design workflow: Figma plus tools like Claude, Midjourney, and v0, which is quickly becoming a baseline expectation on Canadian product teams. Browse the full curriculum or see exactly what you'll ship.
Interviews, surveys, and problem mapping. Learn to find out what users need before you design anything.
Information architecture, user flows, and wireframes that make products feel obvious instead of confusing.
Typography, color, layout, and a full design system in Figma, the craft skills portfolios are judged on.
Clickable prototypes and structured usability tests, so your design decisions are backed by evidence.
Use Claude, ChatGPT, Midjourney, and v0 the way modern product teams do, as accelerators, not crutches.
Turn the design into a working app and launch it. The step that separates your portfolio from everyone else's.
The concrete deliverables: a live app in the App Store, a complete Figma design system, two strategy documents, a marketing landing page, and a documented case study of the entire process, from first user interview to launch metrics. That's a portfolio built from one coherent real project instead of scattered exercises.
Just as important is what the process trains: presenting work in weekly live critiques (the core ritual of every design team), scoping under deadline, defending decisions with research, and working alongside AI tools without leaning on them. Those are the behaviors Canadian hiring managers screen for in portfolio reviews and whiteboard interviews, and they're hard to fake if you've never actually shipped.
Graduates also keep lifetime access to the community and all future curriculum updates, so the network and the material keep working after the cohort ends.
Comparing options? These guides will help:
Cohort 05 starts Sept 7. Applications close Aug 24, with 6 spots remaining.
Apply for Cohort 05Questions first? Get in touch. We reply within one business day.