Introduction to User Experience (UX) Design

What’s this course about?

When people say they are experience designers – what are they talking about? Can we even take them seriously? Caleb Brown says we can and we should. We need more good experience designers, and you can become one.

Experiences invariably occur whenever humans touch the world. Most experiences pop up unintentionally, but some are purposefully made. Creating these high-quality objects – which can be digital like a website or physical like a coffee shop – is a hard and exacting craft. Fortunately, experience design is not magic, its fundamentals can be learned, and practice makes you better.

If you are an emerging experience designer, you can jumpstart your proficiency by taking this multi-session 12-hour course.  In the course, you will participate in a carefully chosen series of fun, hands-on activities. The sequence is informed by 4 “unavoidable” questions of experience design: what are the needs and goals of all stakeholders? What feature can we invent that will address those needs and goals? How should that feature work? And finally, how might we execute the feature so everyone is satisfied?

In order to answer those questions, you’ll be introduced to structured processes and documents that can help you stay aligned and on track. We’ll begin with sketches and paper prototypes and discuss the difference between resolution and fidelity. Journeymapping and focus sentences will help you frame problems properly and articulate potential obstacles. You’ll create user stories derived from customer experience “pinwheels”. Your consumers will reveal themselves on “tidal” maps, and you’ll visually describe the forces you will need to influence their behavior. Throughout, you and your lean team will be learning about constructive critique and collaborating on real projects. The course will culminate in a final “playbook” of artifacts you take with you and will be proud to refer to at work…Regardless of what you design!

Who should take this course?

Visual designers, new user experience professionals, project managers, product people and producers. No particular prior training is necessary, just an open mind, a sense of humor and an eagerness to get things wrong.

Level: beginner → intermediate

Who will be teaching the course?

Caleb Brown

Boston, MA

Caleb Brown has been building human interfaces since 1997 and gets enthused about making stuff work better and feel good. A Harvard-trained biologist and an honors graduate of Brown University in art and religious studies, Caleb also received a printmaking degree from the Kyoto University of Art in Japan. These days Caleb cartoons for software, products and for himself. His clients include SolarCity, Progressive Insurance, New Balance, Del Monte Foods, Newman’s Own and Fidelity Investments. He is based in the Boston area.