Learn how to design better user interfaces. Discover how to create effective and useful interfaces for a variety of products and devices.
Suggested by: Coursera (What is Coursera?)
No prior knowledge required
No unnecessary risks
In this internship, you will learn industry-standard theory and methods for developing successful user interfaces (UIs). Upon completion of the internship, you will master the user research, prototyping, and evaluation techniques required to create intuitive interfaces that facilitate great user experiences. Additionally, you will demonstrate this knowledge in an in-depth capstone project that you can present to potential employers in the fast-growing field of user interface design.
At the end of the internship, you will be confident in your ability to apply these topics and techniques to design an interface for a wide range of users from around the world.
What you will learn in this course, you will understand the critical importance of user interface design. You will also learn industry-standard methods on how to approach user interface design as well as key theories and frameworks that underlie the designs of most of the interfaces you use today.
Through a series of case studies of commercial systems—many of which you probably use regularly—we’ll demonstrate the benefits of good design. We’ll also show how the costs of bad design can sometimes be severe (in terms of user experience, money, and even human lives).
Next, you will build a high-level understanding of the user interface design process. You will be exposed to common design scenarios – for example, improving existing designs or starting a new design from scratch – and the general design processes used in each scenario.
Finally, we will begin to introduce the broad body of knowledge about design by providing an overview of key theories and concepts in user interface design. This foundational information will help you avoid “reinventing the wheel” when designing your own interfaces in this area.
What you will learn In this course you will learn and play with user research techniques and early stage UI design research. First, you will learn and play with a number of user research techniques, including face-to-face research and survey methods and log analysis.
Next, you will learn to analyze and present user research in a way that supports UI design, including personas, use cases, tasks, and scripts.
Finally, you will learn and play with ideation techniques that start from user research and generate potential design ideas in a broad way.
What you will learn In this course you will learn how to design and prototype user interfaces to meet user needs and tasks identified in user research.
Through a series of lectures and exercises, you will learn and play with paper prototyping and other low-level techniques; learn and apply principles from graphic design, including design patterns; learn to write a design rationale; and learn how to design for specific populations and situations, including principles and practices of accessible design.
What you will learn In this course, you will learn and play with a number of techniques for evaluating interfaces. We will first start with techniques that can be applied alone or in a design group, including action analysis, gait analysis, and heuristic evaluation.
Next, we will go over user testing, including learning from a series of accessibility tests performed in a real accessibility lab, and techniques for conducting independent testing even without a lab.
Finally, we will conclude the discussion on evaluation – and user interface design as a whole – by focusing on the question of how to set and measure accessibility goals, and when a design is accessible enough to release.
