Week 1: Introduction to UX design

Design terms:

Assets: Everything from the text and images to the design

specifications, like font style, color, size, and spacing

Empathy: The ability to understand someone else’s feelings or

thoughts in a situation

Information architecture: The framework of a website or how it’s

organized, categorized, and structured

Prototype: An early model of a product that demonstrates the

functionality

Wireframe: An outline or a sketch of a product or a screen

Types of UX designers:

Generalist: A designer with a broad number of responsibilities

Specialist: A designer who dives deep into one particular type of user
experience, like interaction design, visual design, or motion design

Graphic designers: Create visuals that tell a story or message

Interaction designers: Focus on designing the experience of a
product and how it functions

Motion designers: Think about what it feels like for a user to move
through a product

A product development cycle:

Characteristics of good user experience:

  Usable: easy to use

 Equitable: consider diverse user groups

 Useful: solve a problem

 Enjoyable: positive user experience

Week 2: Common terms, tools, frameworks in UX

design

Types of design frameworks:

1. User-centered design process

2. Five elements of design:

Strategy: user needs & business objectives

scope: type of product

Structure: how users interact with the product

Skeleton: how the design works under the hood

Surface: how the product looks to the user

3. Design thinking process:

4. Lean UX:

think-make-check (it’s a loop)

5. Double diamond:
Best practice for design across platforms:

Here platforms could be desktop computers, laptops, mobile

phones, tablets, wearables (like smartwatches), TVs, smart displays,
etc.

Four Cs:

Consistency: stay consistent with the brand identify

Continuity: maintain the progress across platforms

Context: where & when the user interacts with the product

Complementary: it’ll be better if the design on each platform can

contribute something new to the user experience

Week 3: Design sprints

Design sprint: a time-bound process with five phases typically

spread over a week. The process is:

 Understand the design challenge

 Ideate solutions

 Decide which solutions to build

 Prototype a few solutions

  Test those prototypes

After a design print, the team should do a collaborative critique:

What went well?

 Which tools saved you the most time and effort?

 When did you feel the most satisfaction?

 What helped you make your best contribution to the team

during this sprint?

What could be improved:

 What went wrong that caught you off guard?

 Which problems came up the most often?

 When do you think we experienced the biggest challenge as a

team?

 Did the team overestimate or underestimate the work required

to complete the design?

 Did an external factor derail your productivity?

 And most importantly, does the final design actually solve the
user problem?

Lessons learned:
  What did you discover during the sprint that you’re still
wondering about?

 How could the current process hold the team back from
creating better solutions?

Week 4: Building a professional presence

What a portfolio website should include:

1. Name and personal logo (optional)

2. Navigation menu

3. Work samples

4. About me

5. Contact information

6. Color schemes (select a small set of colors that work well

together)

Other tips:

1. Create a personal logo

2. Make the most of fonts and colors

3. Keep your voice consistent across platforms

4. Use graphics, animations, and photography

Week 1: Integrating research into the design process

Research in different stages of a product cycle

Three types of research in a product cycle:

1. foundational research: find out the users’ problems and what

to build

methods: Interviews, Surveys, Focus groups, Competitive audit,

Field studies, Diary studies

2. design research: find out how to build it

methods: usability study, Cafe or guerrilla studies, Card sorting,

Intercepts
3. post-launch research: measure success

methods: A/B testing, Usability studies, Surveys, Logs analysis

Types of research

Primary research (you conduct the research):

pros: direct suggestions from users; customized questions

cons: expensive, both time and money

Secondary research (previous research conducted by someone

else):

pros: large sample size; inexpensive

cons: no in-depth information

Qualitative research(observations and conversations):

applications: understand user needs, answer “why” questions

Quantitative research(counting or measuring):

applications: answer questions like “how much/many”

Week 2: Empathizing with users and defining pain

points

Interviews

1. How to find participants: social network, existing user base,

hallway testing, recruiting agencies

2. How to select participants: use a screener survey to find

representative samples

3. Tips for interviews: build rapport with interviewees; ask open-

ended questions; take notes of compelling quotes

Empathy maps: a map consisting of 4 sections: “says,” “thinks,”

“does,” and “feels” to help empathize with users.
An example of empathy maps for a dog walker product user named
Makayla

Personas: fictional users whose goals and characteristics represent

the needs of a larger group of users.

The course recommends a persona template to include a user

picture, demographic information, goals, frustrations, a user
summary, and a representative quote.
A persona created by Google’s template.

Week 3: Creating user stories and user journey maps

User stories: a fictional one-sentence story told from the persona’s

point of view to inspire and inform design decisions

The course recommends a user story template to include “who,”

“what,” and “why.”

A user story created by Google’s template

User journey maps: a table includes all the steps required for a
user to complete a task, the associated emotions, and improvement
opportunities.
A user journey map created by Google’s template

Accessibility: Designing for accessibility is about considering all

users’ journeys, keeping their permanent, temporary, or situational
disabilities in mind

An example of different types of accessibility

Week 4: Defining user problems

User problem statement: help users find and define pain points.

Hypothesis statement: an educated guess about what you think

the solution to a design problem might be.

Value propositions: a summary of why a consumer should use a

product or service.

Step 1. Describe your product’s features and benefits.

Step 2. Explain the value of the product.

Step 3. Connect these features and benefits with the needs of your
users.

Step 4. Review your official value proposition list.

The value proposition of a dogwalker product
Week 5: Ideating design solutions

Design ideation: the process of generating a broad set of ideas on

a given topic without judging or evaluating them, steps:

1. Empathize with your user (empathy maps, personas, user

stories, and user journey maps)

2. Define the problem.

3. Establish a creative environment.

4. Set a time limit.

5. Assemble a diverse team.

6. Think outside the box.

Competitive audit: an overview of your competitors’ strengths

and weaknesses

Four aspects: first impressions, interaction, visual design, content

competitive audit: first impression

competitive audit: interaction

competitive audit: visual design

competitive audit: content

“How might we” (HMW): a design thinking activity used to
translate problems into opportunities for design.

Tips for HMW, use a concert ticket tracking system as an example.

1. Amp up the good: How might we make keeping track of tickets

a fun competition among friends?

2. Explore the opposite: How might we create a way to lose

tickets?

3. Change the status quo: How might we make a non-paper

concert ticket?

4. Break the point-of-view into pieces: How might we keep the

customer’s ticket from getting lost? How might we make a lost
ticket easier for the security team to handle?

5. Remove the bad: How might we make way for concertgoers to

enter a venue without needing a ticket?

6. Go after the adjective: How might we make the entry to a

concert venue less stressful for ticket holders?

7. Question an assumption: How might we remove the security

check process at a concert?

8. Create an analogy: How might we make going through

security like playing a video game?

9. Identify unexpected resources that can assist: How might

facial recognition software help manage concert entry?
Crazy Eight: brainstorm 8 ideas in 8 minutes.

Crazy Eight for dogwalker solutions

Best practices:

 Do a creative warm-up exercise: Get you in the mindset to

sketch.

 Make sure your problem is well defined: one problem

statement at a time.

 Don’t judge your ideas: sketch any and every idea you have
until your paper is full, no matter how crazy it might seem.

 Don’t judge other people’s ideas: Keep an open mind

when others are presenting their sketches.

 Include a diverse group: it’s best that your group

represents a variety of work roles, experiences, abilities,
genders, and backgrounds.
 Ideate in a comfortable environment: it’s always great to
get out of your normal workspace for creative exercises.

 Don’t be afraid of sketching: you don’t need to be an artist,

as long as you clearly communicate your ideas.