/ux-pt-course

User Experience design course materials.

User Experience (UX) for non-designers

6 weeks - 4 hours per week (24 hours total)

Course Description:

Over the course of six weeks, students learn the theory and practice behind User Experience (UX) design through a series of lectures, sharing of professional examples, interactive team activities, and individual assignments. With a focus on solving problems creatively and systematically by putting your users and their needs first, students will utilize User Experience (UX) and User-Interface (UI) techniques and methodologies to develop a product or service of their choosing.

Expected Outcomes:

  • Understand and articulate the differences, similarities, and overlap between User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design.

  • Utilize the design thinking process and UX/UI toolsets to solve problems.

  • Work with cross-functional teams to create solutions.

  • Communicate ideas, and give/receive direct feedback to facilitate ideation.

  • Prototype and test using a variety of UX research methodologies.

Class Structure:

Saturday Class: 10am - 3pm with optional lab time from 3pm - 5pm

Instructor hours will be available during the week at designated times.

10am - 12pm - Instruction

12pm - 1pm - Lunch Break

1pm - 3pm - Instruction / mob/individual activity

3pm - 5pm - Lab Time - Instructor available for 1:1 assistance

Instructor Bio:

Sarrah Vesselov is a UX professional, speaker, and author with over 10 years of experience in design, development, and management. As the UX Manager for GitLab, she led her department in setting the vision and direction of user experience, established an open source design system, and scaled the department from six to fourteen in a little over a year. She has experience teaching and mentoring on the subjects of design and development at the college level. Sarrah has spoken at conferences around the world on the topics of user experience and front-end development. Her co-authored book on design systems will be published by Apress in 2019.

Curriculum Overview:

Week One: UX/UI Overview

Instruction:

  • How do UX/UI differ and in what ways are they similar?

  • Differences between feature development and feature improvement.

  • Tooling overview (Sketch/Figma/Abstract/Adobe)

  • Design Thinking overview

  • Impact Canvas

Week Two: Understanding your users

Instruction:

  • The importance of empathy

  • Ideation and Prototyping

  • UX research methods: Card sorts, Surveys, Usability testing, User Interviews, User Journeys, and Persona development.

Week three: UX Basics - Methods/when/why/how

Instruction:

  • User Flows

  • Wireframes & Mockups

  • Testing selection

Week four: Visual Design

Instruction:

  • Foundational knowledge

    ** Grid/spacing

    ** Typography

    ** Layout

    ** Color Theory

  • Hi-fidelity design

Week five: UI Development - overview as it pertains to UX

Instruction:

  • Git / intro to git/GitLab or Github

  • HTML

  • CSS

  • SASS

  • JS

Week six: Research Project: Bringing it all together

Instruction:

  • Review and wrap-up

  • Class presentations