Review: Learning Path — Become a User Experience Designer
“A modern user experience designer understands modern design concepts. They also have the research and analysis skills to design effective, compelling digital experiences across different mobile platforms, the web, and the Internet of things. This path will help you build the foundation for a solid career in UX design.”
That’s the copy taken directly from the Lynda.com overview of this compilation of online design courses geared to immerse the viewer in the full-stack, holistic world of UX design. I couldn’t have written it better myself.
But how can you benefit from this collection if you’re currently a UX designer? Well, truly successful UX design is an integration of many different disciplines and understanding how they dovetail with one another is key. It can help you get to market faster with end-user experience that can compete in these challenging times of market disruption. A more elegant design that represents a more concise user flow will satisfy the needs of your users, and make your product owners happy at the same time.
By assembling this collection from individual classes, Lynda.com enables the viewer to focus on the gaps as needed, then go back and get the entire picture. Understanding each aspect of the discipline helps each operational unit craft better artifacts — the inputs and outputs that enable each subsequent (or hopefully simultaneous) operation to work at peak efficiency. This frees up time for additional thinking…design thinking, that can solve new problems in innovative ways.
Become a User Experience Designer has 11 segments:
- Planning a carrer in user experience
- UX Design 1: Overview
- UX Foundations: Prototyping
- UX Foundations: Multidevice Design
- UX Design 4: Ideation
- UX Design 5: Creating Scenarios and Storyboards
- UX Design 5: Paper Prototyping
- Sketch for UX Design
- Photoshop for UX Design
- Illustrator for UX Design
- UX Design 7: Implementation Planning
Of particular note to those transitioning to mobile first design thinking (never a bad thing even if you don’t have a strict mobile use case) is the fourth segment “UX Foundations: Multidevice Design”. Brian Thurston Bralczyk explains the differences between web, native and hybrid mobile apps, and helps you understand how gestures will influence your interaction strategy. Brian points out that the phrase “Responsive Web Design” was coined by Ethan Marcotte and makes mention of his groundbreaking book by the same title.
Everyone should use the tools they’re most comfortable with, because after all it’s the artifact outcome we’re most concerned with, and this path takes that into consideration by segmenting the designer toolkit with Sketch/Photoshop and Illustrator for UX Design. Each of these is taught by a different instructor, adding credibility given the diverse skillset need for each application.
With 12 hours of expertly crafted videos, and the ability to earn a certification for each segment completed, this learning path offers a solid learning experience for aspiring UX practitioners.
Highly recommended.
