Beesy Academy

Interface Design Foundations

Learn the craft behind screens that feel obvious: layout, type, color, states and the words on the buttons.

Level
Beginner
Duration
6 weeks
Price
$349
Course code
DS-140
Overview

Interfaces that feel obvious are not accidents. They are the result of a small number of decisions made consistently: how space is used, how type establishes hierarchy, how color carries meaning rather than decoration, and whether somebody drew the screens that appear when things go wrong.

This course teaches those decisions from the ground up, for people with no formal design training. You will redesign a real screen you work with, week by week, and present it to the cohort for critique. Critique is a taught skill here rather than an assumed one, because most design feedback fails for reasons that are fixable.

Any design tool is fine, including paper and a spreadsheet grid. The judgment transfers; the software does not matter as much as people expect.

Who this is for
  • Developers who end up designing the screens they build
  • Founders and product managers making interface decisions
  • Marketers and analysts building internal tools and pages
  • People moving into design from an adjacent role

Next Cohort

Applications open
  • Q4 2026Monday 5 October 2026
  • Q1 2027Monday 11 January 2027
  • Q2 2027Monday 12 April 2027
  • Q3 2027Monday 5 July 2027

Applications for the Q4 2026 cohort close on Friday 18 September 2026. We reply to every application within two business days.

Soren Klepacki

Interface design and front end craft

Nothing is finished until the empty state, the error state and the loading state are drawn. Those are the screens your users will actually meet.

Read the full profile
Beginner, no prior training assumed. One live session of ninety minutes each week, plus about three hours applying it to your own work. Sixteen seats. Full details on how enrollment works.
Apply for DS-140
Module plan

6 modules across 6 weeks.

Each module has one live session and one piece of practice applied to your own work.

  1. Week 1

    Space, Grid and Alignment

    Using a spacing scale instead of arbitrary numbers, and why most crowded screens are a grouping problem rather than a size problem.

  2. Week 2

    Typography for Interfaces

    Building a type scale, setting line length and line height for reading, and creating hierarchy with weight before size.

  3. Week 3

    Color That Carries Meaning

    A restrained palette, semantic color for status, and meeting contrast requirements without the interface turning gray.

  4. Week 4

    The States Nobody Draws

    Empty, loading, error, success and disabled, and why these are the screens your users are most likely to meet on a bad day.

  5. Week 5

    The Words Are Part of the Design

    Labeling controls by what they do, writing an error that tells somebody how to recover, and keeping one name for one action.

  6. Week 6

    Critique as a Skill

    Giving feedback against a stated intention, receiving it without defending, and running a critique session that produces decisions.

Outcomes

What you will be able to do.

By the last session of Interface Design Foundations you will have practised each of these on your own work, not on a case study.

  • Apply a spacing scale and grid consistently across a screen
  • Build a readable type scale and use weight for hierarchy
  • Use color semantically and pass contrast requirements
  • Design the empty, loading, error and success states of a real feature
  • Write interface copy that names actions clearly and consistently
  • Run a design critique that ends in decisions rather than opinions
Same field

Also in Design

The craft behind interfaces people find obvious, from single screens to a shared component library.

Where to next

Ready to take Interface Design Foundations?

Applications for the Q4 2026 cohort close on Friday 18 September 2026 and we reply within two business days. Questions about fit or prerequisites go to hello@beesy-academy.com.