UX and Digital Product Design Online Course

This comprehensive online course offers a balanced blend of fundamental UX approaches and immediate practical application. You will be using industry-relevant methods and remote collaboration tools. Learn and practice UX skills individually and with peers that you can immediately apply on the job.

This course offers a solid UX foundation and hands-on experience through a series of highly interactive weekly classes. You will learn research, ideation, rapid prototyping, and testing, both on paper and with digital tools, and how to apply these skills working solo and collaborating in remote teams. You will learn about the different roles a UX designer can play when designing and building digital products.

This part-time course is held online over a 12-week period of time. You can expect a weekly workload of approx. 8-10 hours. The course consists of a mix of weekly evening classes, practical work, and reading, and it can be attended while working a full-time job.

You are a young professional with one to five years of experience in design, or related fields such as marketing, product management, or entrepreneurship. You are either self-taught and wish to learn methodology and techniques, or are just starting out in UX and want to land your first job or internship as a UX designer.

To complete the course – and all course assignments – you are required to work in Miro and Figma. These tools are free and/or offer free trials. Anyway, to avoid limitations, you might want to plan for a license cost between 15 USD and 30 USD, depending on the subscription plan you choose. This is not included in the course fee. Note that you do not need to activate an account before the course start. Your teacher will guide you through your options at the start of the course.

Week 1: Course kick-off & Generative Research

Welcome to your cohort of students and the course director. The mindset of curiosity for others is this week‘s theme. Students will learn qualitative and quantitative research methods to uncover insights and user needs. We will immediately practice research methods in the group, and review key UX artifacts to refine, communicate and share insights with clients or team. E.g. personas, jobs-to-be-done, stakeholder maps, journey maps.

Week 2: Ideation, Prototyping & Testing

Students will learn and practice the rules of ideation, to generate many ideas based on insights. We will learn how to synthesize and prioritize ideas, and use rapid prototyping methods to make ideas tangible, so they become testable and shareable. e.g. design something for your partner, affinity mapping, insights statements, how might we, crazy 8s

Week 3: Delivery of digital products

Students will learn core concepts of Lean and Agile. How digital products are built in cross-functional teams. We will learn about the life-cycle of digital product development from inception to production, and what roles UX and Product Designers can play in the different production stages.

Week 4: Remote Facilitation and Collaboration

Facilitation is a critical skill for UX and Product Designers. Students will learn how to structure a workshop, learn to engage participants, create alignment and close with clear decisions or actions. We review tools to deliver remote and in-person workshops. As well we will talk about feedback, how to give constructive feedback, and reflect on personal preferences for receiving feedback.

Week 5: Main Project: Challenge revealed

A challenge owner will join the class to introduce the main project‘s theme.
Students will learn how to kick off a project, unpick a brief with their team, map assumptions, and align on expectations and raw requirements for the UX work.

Week 6: Main Project: Plan & run research

Students will start off the main project by reconnecting to their learnings from weeks 1 & 2, planning desk/industry research, reviewing suitable qualitative and quantitative research methods, and preparing UX artifacts to capture their insights. Students will learn about design critique: How to give and invite constructive feedback on design work.

Week 7: Main Project: Ideate, Synthesise, Prioritise

Students will present their insights and UX artifacts, and receive feedback. Based on these insights students will ideate, visualize and prioritize ideas for possible solutions.

Week 8: Main Project: Lo Fi-Prototyping & Lean Testing

Students will create Lo-Fi Prototypes of their concepts. Plan and perform user tests. Prepare findings and create test reports.

Week 9: Main Project: Hi Fi-Prototyping with Figma

Students will turn sketches into prototypes using Figma. Laying the groundwork for usability testing with research objectives and discussion guides. Elevating the designs using modern tools of the trade. Introduction on how to use Figma for building and testing prototypes.

Week 10: Main Project: Concept iteration and review of the prototype

Students will review their research, and ensure straight lines between insights, user feedback, and their concepts. This week is offering opportunities for refinement of work for student portfolios and training presentation skills ahead of the final presentations.

Week 11: Final Presentations

Final presentations and review of the individual projects. Feedback and project refinement for student portfolios.

Week 12: UX career tracks, Portfolio & Interview Tips

This is an open session for students to shape. Possible topics can be, which types of UX design roles do resonate with you, picking a track or focus area, Interview tricks, Creating winning portfolios, or how to continue to grow your UX skills.