I’m happy to announce the availability of a user experience course that I’ve been working on with Pearson and O’Reilly Media! The goal is to make an introductory UX course that is approachable and touches on each area of UX with the goal of being able make your product/service/team 1% better each day.

➡️ Introduction to User Experience Design LiveLessons (Purchase course)
⏯️ Introduction to User Experience Design LiveLessons (O'Reilly subscription)
🆓 Start a free O'Reilly trial

Overview

This course is for anyone involved with the creation of websites or apps that are used by end-users. It focuses on the web page, app experience, showing various website examples that are either viewed in a browser or as screenshots, illustrating effective design and considering multiple ways to interact with a site based on different motivations.

Whether you have created digital experiences for users in the past or this is your first time, there are always insights to learn and take into your current or future roles.

What you wil learn

• Understand what makes a website/app usable
• Learn common patterns that users look for
• Measure the success of a site/app
• Perform A/B tests to increase the usability of a site/app
• Sell design or implementation changes to team members based on data

Course audience

• Web developers, UI designers, Web product managers

Course outline

Section 1: Learn UX Principles, Roles, and Responsibilities

Lesson 1: Understand Core Concepts of User Experience

• 1.1 Dive into terms (opens new window)
• 1.2 Understand the technology, business, and design of UX (opens new window)
• 1.3 Explore roles and responsibilities (opens new window)
• 1.4 Get into the UX mindset (opens new window)

Lesson 2: Review Principles of Interaction Design

• 2.1 Learn Jakob Nielsen's 10 principles for interaction design (opens new window)
• 2.2 Visibility of system status (opens new window)
• 2.3 Match between system and the real world (opens new window)
• 2.4 User control and freedom (opens new window)
• 2.5 Consistency and standards (opens new window)
• 2.6 Error prevention (opens new window)
• 2.7 Recognition rather than recall (opens new window)
• 2.8 Flexibility and efficiency of use (opens new window)
• 2.9 Aesthetic and minimalist design (opens new window)
• 2.10 Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors (opens new window)
• 2.11 Help and documentation (opens new window)

Lesson 3: Walk Through the UX Process

• 3.1 Build user-centered thinking (opens new window)
• 3.2 Learn the different UX disciplines (opens new window)
• 3.3 Lower the cognitive friction (opens new window)
• 3.4 Explore a case study: internal customer-service tool (opens new window)

Lesson 4: Discover UX Myths and Pitfalls

• 4.1 Understand UX != UI (opens new window)
• 4.2 Explore the myth: Only UX professionals can improve the user experience (opens new window)
• 4.3 Explore the pitfall: User feature requests translate to good UX (opens new window)
• 4.4 Discover lazy or messy user interfaces (opens new window)

Section 2: Bring the User Experience into Action

Lesson 5: Create UX Artifacts

• 5.1 Create user flow (opens new window)
• 5.2 Craft sketches (opens new window)
• 5.3 Build wireframes (opens new window)
• 5.4 Add design (opens new window)
• 5.5 Finish with implementation (opens new window)
• 5.6 Explore a case study: coffee shop website where users can subscribe to coffee of the day (opens new window)

Lesson 6: Change the User Experience

• 6.1 Learn the three pillars: Happy, Satisfied, and Productive (opens new window)
• 6.2 Discover you are not the user (opens new window)
• 6.3 Giving users a path forward (opens new window)

Lesson 7: Explore Case Studies

• 7.1 Explore a case study: URL shortener application VR Tour website and app (opens new window)
• 7.2 Explore a case study: landing page (opens new window)
• 7.3 Explore a case study: mobile navigation College of Education redesign (opens new window)

Lesson 8: Discover Visual Design Patterns

• 8.1 See UI shapes, recognition versus recall (opens new window)
• 8.2 Add whitespace, grouping, and alignment (opens new window)
• 8.3 Experience animation, changes, and user feedback (opens new window)
• 8.4 Add colors and contrast (opens new window)
• 8.5 Build progressive disclosure (opens new window)

Section 3: Testing User Experiences and Evolution of Design

Lesson 9: Conduct A/B and Multivariate Tests

• 9.1 Explore the process (opens new window)
• 9.2 Build a test (opens new window)
• 9.3 Analyze the results (opens new window)
• 9.4 Iterate (opens new window)
• 9.5 Learn why not everything can be tested (opens new window)
• 9.6 Explore limitations of iterative design (opens new window)

Lesson 10: Make the Business Case for Changes

• 10.1 Understand the business (opens new window)
• 10.2 User research at multiple points in the process (opens new window)
• 10.3 Sell design systems (opens new window)
• 10.4 Explore options for in-person research (opens new window)
• 10.5 Explore options for online research (opens new window)
• 10.6 Present tests and results (opens new window)

Lesson 11: Avoid Dark Patterns

• 11.1 Learn dark patterns (opens new window)
• 11.2 Craft user-focused defaults (opens new window)
• 11.3 Build in security and privacy (opens new window)
• 11.4 Understand business goals versus user goals (opens new window)

Lesson 12: Get a Fresh Perspective

• 12.1 Evaluate design from the outside in (opens new window)
• 12.2 Explore alternative input and output devices (opens new window)
• 12.3 Test on physical devices (opens new window)

Lesson 13: Apply the Principles

• 13.1 Start with UX principles (opens new window)
• 13.2 Discover UX in action (opens new window)
• 13.3 Test and refine UX (opens new window)

Overall thoughts

I couldn’t be more excited to share these principles that I use on a daily basis with the world and in a format that walks through each in detail with examples. Each video is captioned and offers various playback speeds.

The Pearson and O’Reilly team made this possible, the process was rigorous, their quality bar is very high and I cannot thank them enough for the support and guidance throughout the process.

Orielly free trial

Each of the sections above have a 1-minute preview and O’Reilly is currently offering a 10-day free trial (opens new window) to access everything in their entire learning library. If you’re on the fence about the course or the platform, this is a perfect time dive in and try it out.

Feedback

If there is something you would like to see covered more/less or if you have any feedback on the contents of the course or how anything is presented or covered, reach out to me on Twitter @nickdenardis (opens new window) as I’m always looking to improve and evolve the material over time.

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