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Design Engineer

Turning product and design intent into production-quality software with AI — verified to work as designed.

16 Courses
View all Career PathsFree to start · Pro $40/mo or $300/yr

FROM YOUR FIRST LESSON TO A CREDENTIAL A HUMAN SIGNED

STARTOne free CourseIntroduction to UX Design is free on any account. No card, no trial clock.
PRACTISE7 Missions, 16 CoursesEach Mission unlocks the next, and each one ends in practice you actually produce.
BUILDYour first ProjectThe Small Project is self-assessed. Real work, but nobody has verified it yet.
HUMAN REVIEWA mentor scores your workFrom Medium Project 1 onward a person reads your submission and scores each Domain against a rubric. This is where gold starts.
CREDENTIAL8 Domains verified4 mentor approvals and a defended Capstone produce a publicly verifiable Professional Credential.

GOLD FAMILY = HUMAN OVERSIGHT → VERIFIED EVIDENCE

Professional outcome

Graduate able to turn design and product intent into an executable specification, implement it with and without AI assistance, review AI-generated changes with professional judgment, prove design fidelity and accessibility in real code, and independently verify behavior before shipping, backed by a mentor-reviewed portfolio and a MasarUX Professional Credential.

Missions
7
Formal Projects
4
Domains required
8
Courses
16

Mission sequence

The ordered Missions this Career Path is built from — each names its Courses, its practical outcome, and whether it ends in a mentor-reviewed Formal Project.

  1. Experience and Interface FoundationsEstablish the UX literacy, visual-system thinking, and component/state vocabulary a Design Engineer needs before touching implementation — all three Courses reused directly from the UX/UI Professional Career Path.
    Mission outcome

    UX literacy, visual-system thinking, and a shared component/state vocabulary applied consistently across every later Mission.

  2. Web Implementation FoundationsBuild the implementation literacy floor: accessibility foundations reused from UX/UI, then semantic markup, modern CSS and responsive implementation, design tokens in code, TypeScript reading literacy, components and state in code, and the git/pull-request/diff workflow.Formal Project
    Mission outcome

    The Design-to-Code Foundation Build Formal Project — a hand-written, agent-free implementation baseline proving real comprehension before any AI-assisted work begins.

  3. Specification and CollaborationTurn design and product intent into an implementation contract: interaction-state fundamentals and designer-side handoff reused from UX/UI, then executable specifications with implementation acceptance criteria, a definition of done, explicit scope constraint, and spec review before delegation.
    Mission outcome

    The ability to produce a complete, verifiable executable specification an agent or an engineer can implement from without re-deriving intent.

  4. AI-Assisted ImplementationBuild on instruction and context fundamentals reused from AI Product Designer to direct coding agents with real judgment — repository instruction and context files, delegation judgment, plan-review-execute loops, when not to delegate, and comprehension-preserving usage.Formal Project
    Mission outcome

    The AI-Assisted Feature Implementation Formal Project and Case Study 1 — From Design Intent to Production Code.

  5. Review and VerificationMake professional accept, reject, and rework decisions on AI-generated changes by reading the static change artifact — diff literacy, scope verification, hidden assumptions, hallucinated APIs and packages, dependency and secrets literacy, duplication, architecture drift, technical-debt classification, and review reporting.Formal Project
    Mission outcome

    The AI Codebase Review and Remediation Formal Project and Case Study 2 — Reviewing and Remediating AI-Generated Code.

  6. Fidelity and Accessibility EngineeringProve works-as-designed and accessibility quality in real code: design-system architecture and spec-level accessibility audit reused from UX/UI, then consuming tokens and components in code, state and responsive and RTL fidelity, visual regression, engineer-side Design QA, and code-level accessibility remediation with regression prevention.
    Mission outcome

    The ability to implement a design system faithfully in code and to prove both fidelity and accessibility with evidence a reviewer can check.

  7. Production Readiness and CapstoneProve dynamic behavior and ship with evidence — test strategy, independent verification, evaluating AI-written tests, systematic debugging, regression and visual-regression evidence, technical-debt remediation cycles, readiness gates, and the ship or no-ship decision — then integrate the entire path into one Capstone defended live.Formal Project
    Mission outcome

    The Design Engineer Capstone — Production-Ready Product Slice, defended in a live Viva, and the Design Engineer Professional Credential.

Formal Projects

The mentor-reviewed milestones submitted while progressing through this Career Path's Missions.

Design-to-Code Foundation Build

Implement a provided small design specification by hand — a component set and one page, with their states, responsive behavior, RTL support, semantic markup, and a fully keyboard-accessible implementation. This project must be completed WITHOUT a coding agent. Its purpose is to establish a human implementation and comprehension baseline before any AI-assisted work begins.

Mentor-reviewedUp to 2 revisions~20h of learner effort
SCENARIO

A designer has been handed a small, complete design specification and is expected to build it themselves — no agent, no scaffold, no copy-paste starter — so that the team can see what they actually understand before trusting them to review work an agent produced.

REQUIRED DELIVERABLES
  • Repository URL
  • Deployed preview URL
  • Component set and page implementation
  • State and responsive behavior coverage
  • RTL and semantic markup treatment
  • Keyboard accessibility walkthrough
  • Self-audit checklist
  • Implementation notes
DOMAINS THIS PROJECT ASSESSES
  • Visual & Systems Design
  • Interaction Design
  • High-Fidelity & Prototyping
  • Accessibility & Inclusive Design
REVIEW PROCESS
  1. Submitted
  2. In mentor review
  3. Reviewed
  4. Evidence accepted

§ 03

Professional Competency Domains

The 8 mentor-verified Domains shared by every MasarUX Career Path — this path develops toward all of them.

  • Research & Discovery

    EVIDENCE NEEDED

    Planning and running ethical user research, then turning raw observations into evidence a team can act on.

  • Structure & Flow

    EVIDENCE NEEDED

    Organizing content and interactions so a product is findable, predictable, and logically connected end to end.

  • Interaction Design

    EVIDENCE NEEDED

    Designing affordances, component states, forms, and motion that behave predictably under real conditions.

  • Visual & Systems Design

    EVIDENCE NEEDED

    Applying typography, color, and hierarchy as a coherent, documented, reusable design system rather than one-off screens.

  • High-Fidelity & Prototyping

    EVIDENCE NEEDED

    Building realistic, interactive, testable prototypes across web and mobile, structured for real design workflows.

  • Accessibility & Inclusive Design

    EVIDENCE NEEDED

    Designing for vision, motor, hearing, and cognitive differences, and checking real conformance against WCAG.

  • Testing & Validation

    EVIDENCE NEEDED

    Evaluating designs through heuristic review and moderated usability testing, and turning findings into prioritized action.

  • Professional Practice

    EVIDENCE NEEDED

    Writing for real interfaces, collaborating with product and engineering, and handing off work that survives development.

Path-Specific Skills

Curriculum-design skills specific to this Career Path, in addition to the 8 shared Domains above.

  • Executable Product Specification

    Turning design and product intent into an implementation contract — decomposed into verifiable units with implementation acceptance criteria, an explicit definition of done, stated scope constraints, and a spec review completed before any delegation.

  • AI-Assisted Implementation

    Directing coding agents with real judgment — curated repository context, deliberate decisions about what to delegate and what to retain, plan-review-execute loops, interrogation over blind acceptance, and usage that preserves the designer's own comprehension of the codebase.

  • Code Review and Verification

    Reading a static change artifact and deciding accept, reject, or rework with a defensible written rationale — scope verification, hidden assumptions, hallucinated APIs and dependencies, secrets and injection literacy, duplication, architecture drift, and technical-debt classification.

  • Design Fidelity Engineering

    Consuming a design system in code and proving the result matches the design — token and component fidelity, state fidelity, responsive and RTL fidelity, semantic fidelity, visual regression evidence, and engineer-side Design QA reporting.

  • Accessibility Implementation

    Auditing a real implementation and fixing it — native-first markup remediation, ARIA remediation only where native semantics genuinely fall short, keyboard and focus repair, form and error repair, AI-generated accessibility failure modes, and regression prevention in CI.

  • Testing and Debugging

    Proving dynamic behavior independently — test strategy across unit, integration, and end-to-end levels, critical evaluation of AI-written tests and their assumption traps, reliable defect reproduction, systematic debugging, and regression evidence.

  • Production Readiness

    Deciding whether software is genuinely ready to ship — readiness gates, technical-debt assessment and remediation cycles, performance judgment where it affects experience quality, and a defensible ship or no-ship decision backed by evidence rather than confidence.

§ 04

Design Engineer Professional Credential

Issued only when 4 mentor-reviewed Formal Projects are approved, all 8 Skill Domains reach Practiced or above, and the Capstone Viva is passed.

8 Domains required4 mentor approvals requiredCapstone Viva required
Course Certificate

Confirms you completed a single Course — its Lessons, Quizzes, and Exams.

Career Path Professional Credential

Issued only after a mentor verifies all eight Skill Domains through reviewed Formal Projects — including a defended Capstone.

§ 05

Course sequence

The ordered Courses this Career Path's Missions are built from.

16 required · 0 electives
  1. Introduction to UX Design and Human-Centered ThinkingExperience and Interface FoundationsBeginnerFREE
  2. Foundations of Visual and UI DesignExperience and Interface FoundationsBeginnerPRO
  3. Interaction Design BasicsExperience and Interface FoundationsBeginnerPRO
  4. Accessibility Foundations and Inclusive DesignWeb Implementation FoundationsBeginnerPRO
  5. Web Foundations for Design EngineersWeb Implementation FoundationsBeginnerPRO
  6. Interaction Design in Depth: Forms, States, and MotionSpecification and CollaborationIntermediatePRO
  7. Lean UX: Collaborating with Product and EngineeringSpecification and CollaborationIntermediatePRO
  8. From Design Intent to Executable SpecificationSpecification and CollaborationBeginnerPRO
  9. Prompt and Context Design for AI ProductsAI-Assisted ImplementationBeginnerPRO
  10. Working with Coding AgentsAI-Assisted ImplementationIntermediatePRO
  11. Reviewing and Verifying AI-Generated CodeReview and VerificationIntermediatePRO
  12. Design Systems FoundationsFidelity and Accessibility EngineeringIntermediatePRO
  13. Design Fidelity: Implementing and Verifying Design Systems in CodeFidelity and Accessibility EngineeringIntermediatePRO
  14. Advanced Accessibility and WCAG 2.2 ConformanceFidelity and Accessibility EngineeringAdvancedPRO
  15. Accessibility Implementation and RemediationFidelity and Accessibility EngineeringAdvancedPRO
  16. Testing, Debugging, and Production ReadinessProduction Readiness and CapstoneAdvancedPRO