User Experience: Research & Prototyping

What makes for a great user experience? How can you consistently design experiences that work well, are easy to use and people want to use? This course will teach you the core process of experience design and how to effectively evaluate your work with the people for whom you are designing. You'll learn fundamental methods of design research that will enable you to effectively understand people, the sequences of their actions, and the context in which they work. Through the assignments, you’ll learn practical techniques for making sense of what you see and transform your observations into meaningful actionable insights and unique opportunity areas for design. You’ll also explore how to generate ideas in response to the opportunities identified and learn methods for making your ideas tangible. By answering specific questions and refining your concepts, you’ll move closer to making your ideas real. We’ll use cases from a variety of industries including health, education, transportation, finance, and beyond to illustrate how these methods work across different domains. Good luck and we hope you enjoy the course!

• Understand fundamental design research methods to analyze user behavior and context
• Apply practical techniques to interpret observations into actionable insights
• Create ideas and prototypes responding to identified opportunities

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