User Experience Design

Course details

Skills & Tools

Use industry standard tools such as Sketch and Invision to prototype and wireframe design solutions.

Production Standard

Put together a full suite of UX documentation for a digital product, from user personas and wireframes to interactive prototypes.

The Big Picture

Connect and convey how insights into customer behavior — from problems to solutions — can optimize any product or service.

Curriculum

Unit 1: Design Process

Intro to UX & Design Thinking

• Explain course expectations in terms of pre-work, homework, projects, office hours, Schoology, etc.
• Define the elements of User Experience Design.
• Develop basic skills in creative problem solving, innovation, and human-centered design through a fast-paced design thinking activity.
• Sketch out potential design solutions to the problem you have defined.

Prototypes, Feedback, & Critique

• Practice adapting to rapidly changing stakeholder requirements.
• Create a paper prototype of your proposed solution.
• Present designs and justify design decisions.

Unit 2: Rapid Prototype

User Research

• Describe the skills required to conduct and recruit for an effective user interview.
• Define contextual inquiry and articulate its benefits.
• Prepare unbiased interview questions.
• Conduct an effective user interview.
• Draft a research plan and write a discussion guide for final project interviews.

Competitive Research

• Compare products in the same space or in adjacent industries, including competitive reviews and task analyses.
• Conduct competitive research to help inform your final project concept.
• Explore how surveys and task analysis inform research.

Synthesizing Research & Creating Personas

• Use research to create an affinity map that identifies trends and insights within your research findings.
• Articulate the benefits and shortcomings of personas as a design tool.
• Use research to create personas that reflect the target audience.

Defining User Goals & User Flows

• Effectively synthesize research into a problem statement and design direction that reflects the primary need of your target audience.
• Apply sketching techniques to ideate through solutions.
• Explore examples of how to map the flow of a specific product or experience.
• Construct a first draft of the user flow for the primary user goal for your final project.

Paper Prototyping & Usability Testing Basics

• Articulate the value of testing early in the design process.
• Apply paper prototyping techniques to iterate on your design concept.
• Practice formulating task scenarios and running usability tests.

Unit 3: Hi-Fidelity Prototype

User Stories & Feature Prioritization

• Break down your user goals into more granular user stories.
• Use a common framework to prioritize features that align with your vision.
• Discuss struggles with feature prioritization and vision alignment and how to address them.

Information Architecture & Navigation

• Define the field of Information Architecture and explain when its techniques are used in a project.
• Explore methods for organizing complex and perse types of content.
• Apply card-sorting techniques to structure and validate your proposed information architecture.
• Use card sorting results to construct a sitemap that will then become navigation.

Responsive / Native Design & Design Patterns

• Describe the respective technical capabilities of responsive sites and native mobile apps.
• Evaluate options and choose what format is most advantageous to your final project.
• Gain exposure to design patterns.

Wireframing

• Define best practices for wireframing and annotating.
• Use industry standard tools (Sketch) to create high-fidelity wireframes
• Download UI kits and discuss their role.
• Explain the difference between human interface guidelines, design principles, pattern libraries & style guides.

Visual Design Basics

• Explore principles of design and how they relate to digital interfaces.
• Learn to apply fundamentals of visual hierarchy, grid systems, and typography to give your final project UI more structure and clarity.
• Make visual hierarchy and typographic choices that enhance the appeal and clarity of your content.

High Fidelity Prototyping

• Identify and describe the different categories of tools for prototyping.
• Create clickable prototypes using InVision that will support usability testing goals.
• Discuss gestures and motion how they are commonly applied.

Advanced Usability Testing

• Prepare a discussion guide to test your final project.
• Run 3 usability tests using best practices.
• Synthesize your testing results and identify major takeaways from testing.
• Outline 3-5 improvements that you will make to your work.

Unit 4: Refine

Onboarding & Behavior Change

• Describe what makes a great onboarding/first time use experience.
• Practice designing an onboarding experience that communicates the value of your product to potential users.
• Learn about Nir Eyal’s Hooked model of habit formation and how it may be applied to the final project.
• Practice applying different types of variable rewards to final project concepts to create experiences that will keep users wanting more.

Final Project Workshop

• Receive instructional team feedback on your final project.
• Turn your project into a stakeholder presentation

Unit 5: Present

UX Mini-Project

• Practice going through real industry UX design problems from beginning to end.
• Work in teams or independently to develop design solutions for the industry design problem.
• Present your design solution.

Presentation Day 1

• Define and describe the principles that drive a strong user experience with search & results
• Identify the components of search & results, recognize their function, and how to use them effectively
• Review & evaluate examples of search & results
• Evaluate how the use of specific search & results components, in given contexts, enhances or detracts from the user experience
• Design a search experience that provides a strong user experience

Presentation Day 2

• Effectively communicate your design solution in final project.
• Critique and provide feedback for classmates.

Portfolios & Next

• Explore examples of good UX portfolios and discuss the story aspect of portfolio building.
• Write the 5 most valuable takeaways from your project.
• Practice telling your personal story to different types of stakeholders.
• Identify next steps and receive project rubrics and grades.