Design Principles: An Introduction

What makes an interface intuitive? How can I tell whether one design works better than another? This course will teach you fundamental principles of design and how to effectively evaluate your work with users. You'll learn fundamental principles of visual design so that you can effectively organize and present information with your interfaces. You'll learn principles of perception and cognition that inform effective interaction design. And you'll learn how to perform and analyze controlled experiments online. In many cases, we'll use Web design as the anchoring domain. A lot of the examples will come from the Web, and we'll talk just a bit about Web technologies in particular. When we do so, it will be to support the main goal of this course, which is helping you build human-centered design skills, so that you have the principles and methods to create excellent interfaces with any technology

• Understand fundamental visual design principles to organize content effectively
• Present information clearly within user interfaces
• Understand perception and cognition principles relevant to interaction design
• Apply knowledge to improve interaction design quality
• Perform and analyze controlled online experiments

• Basic computer and internet skills
• Ability to read English instructions and complete short practice activities