Online Course on The User-Centred Design (UCD) Process

Description

Did you know that about 50 % of your development time and cost of a software project are dedicated to user interface engineering? Depending on what kind of project you are working on, in absolute numbers, that might be a lot! Fact No. 2: Providing a good user interface is the top-most important acceptance criterion that makes interested people become customers. Still not sure? Fact No. 3: Creating a good user interface does not only mean to implement a UI that works and is fast. It also has to provide a satisfying user experience – which, to be honest, highly depends on the individual user than on your programming skills.

You see: Engineering a great user interface is nothing that can be done purely within your team and by your programmers. You inevitably have to involve real potential users in one way or another. And that is the crucial part: How can you do that? You do not want to disturb your programmers during their work. You do not want to let development cost and time effort explode.

But: You want to involve users into your UI design process as efficiently and effective as possible!

This course will show you how! This course introduces you to the concept of User-Centred Design (UCD). Maybe you already know what Cooperative, Participatory or Contextual Design is. If so: UCD takes inspiration on these principles and combines the approaches to one efficient and improved process.

You will learn how the UCD is structured, how the phases of UCD are performed and what specific methods are available to make your software project user-centred. Furthermore, you will learn how to integrate the UCD process into existing software development processes, such as the widely used agile development strategies as well as into classic spiral-model-based or v-model-based development.

Finally, we will take a closer look into techniques that you should know to implement UCD right away. We will take a look at: Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA), Personas, Open and Closed Card Sorting, Paper Mockups, Hi-Fi Prototypes, NASA Task Load Index (TLX), System Usability Scale (SUS) and Cognitive Walkthrough (CWT).

After finishing this course, you know everything that is necessary to start designing user interfaces the user-centred way!

I would love to see you in that course and I am always listening to feedback to update the course according to your wishes. So feel free to enrol, take a look and send me a message if there is something you need more details information about.

What you’ll learn

What is User-Centred Design?
Why is User-Centred Design important or beneficial for your project?
How to apply User-Centred Design within your development process?
How to cope with the challenge of integrating UCD into agile development processes?
Which methods do exist to perform User-Centred Design?
Which methods are an absolute must to know?
How to implement User-Centred Design right away?
What is the Hierarchical Task Analysis?
How to create Design Personas?
How to apply Card Sorting, Paper Mockups and Hi-Fi Prototypes in the design phase?
How do standard questionnaires work: NASA Task Load Index and System Usability Scale?

Requirements

You know the general terms used in software development.
You know the basics of software development.
You know basically, how a user interface is created.

Who this course is for:

Computer Science students
Media Computer Science students
UX and UI Designers
People who are interested in involving users and their needs into engineering processes
Developers who need to create a UI that sells