Learning UX Design with the Interaction Design Foundation — a review.

I thought I knew product design. It turns out that I don’t know enough.

I’ve been a ‘design groupie’ for years, but thought I would finally get a few formal ux design courses under my belt to go deeper. I admit that I didn’t really understand how the world of interface design could really be organized into discrete coursework. And I worried that it would try to teach me that every social, medical, humanitarian, political ill is a smartphone app just waiting to be designed. So when I found the online courses from the Interaction Design Foundation, it was a good fit for me to see what the reality of ux design really is. It’s online and I didn’t have to make a 2-year multi-thousand dollar commitment.

So far I have taken two of their online courses: ‘User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide’ and ‘Design Thinking: The Beginner’s Guide’. I’ve learned quite a lot just through my first two courses. I can tell that I’m just scratching the surface. There many courses and recommended curriculum to follow if you’re focused on a particular end point (e.g. executive, user research). Plus, there’s a library of ux topics to explore as desired.

My education and work background is in medical device product development. I am a mechanical and biomedical engineer by degree. I have always appreciated design and user interaction and had read quite a bit but these courses were much deeper and hands on than I expected. It’s what I needed to pull out of the academic understanding of ux design and into the real work and discipline of ux design. The courses are deep and comprehensive with hands-on activities, but they’re not an overwhelming time commitment.

Lifelong designers may roll their eyes at what I have come to appreciate. Forgive me for the sins of my previous assumptions. I did not lack an appreciation for product and service design — I have always loved that. What I didn’t know was how much process and discipline and validation is involved well beyond whatever natural talent a designer may have toward creativity and empathy. Here’s a few key things I have learned so far:

• A deeper appreciation for ux design as a discipline rather than an aesthetic to be applied on top of a discipline
• There is process — it’s not all inherent creative skill. But it can be non-linear and that’s a fundamentally valuable part of the process for a robust design solution. you check back to earlier assumptions. the humility to acknowledge that you don’t have something captured yet and need more work.
• There is deep research and associated tools that go into understanding users
• The patience and discipline needed for divergent thinking, and then the subsequent process to converge after that
• The inherent humility and dichotomy in the process of user needs discovery; most times in my arena a given discipline is called in to create order from chaos — to drive convergence. the humility comes from knowing that some of what you converge upon may not hold true after checking back with earlier parts of the process. This is key to a robust solution.
• Design is both highly interpersonal but there is a certain level of detachment required — you’re there to capture the essence of what the user needs, sincerely; so you need to build real trust through empathy, relationships , and listening; but beware of your own person biases to guide questions or make assumptions about the answers. listen for what’s not being said, watch for when what’s being said is not what’s happening during observations. users are the key and the red herring all at once!
• These skills are fundamentally valuable. Without these skills and this process embedded in the team, you’re groping in the dark for a solution.
• This is front-line, down-in-it, honest work. There no hiding. Which is why some teams looking to get by with mediocre work and a quick win my steer away from it.
• User needs research and creativity are hard work. Are their natural empathizers and creatives? Sure. But that’s just a starter — there is real work here, it’s very valuable, and the skills to get better at this are learnable.

Engineers and scientist — know that your toolbox is incomplete without knowing some level of ux interaction design. And the Interaction Design Foundation makes is ridiculously easy to get a formal education delivered by industry experts.