Introduction to UX: User Research

Course Description

User Experience is the convergence of a "user," a person who owns a product, employs a service or is part of a system, and "experience," what it feels like when you interact with a product, service or system. Shortened in industry practice to UX Design, this course will focus on the first stage in the process of UX Design: the foundations and methods of user research and discovery. Good UX research builds on the use of qualitative and quantitative tools as research methods; surveys, formal experiments, interviews and usability tests may all be used as part of a UX researcher’s toolkit. UX research is founded on the ability to develop a deep understanding of a users' wants and needs, and the capacity to examine the broader context in which the product, service or system exists. This course will introduce you to the current industry tools and techniques used for UX research, and how to incorporate them into real-world product development. We’ll translate raw data into insights, and insights into the basis for new designs.

Course Length - Online 9 weeks

Learner Outcomes

• Use interview and empathy-building techniques to better understand a users' needs and motivations.
• Conduct quantitative research to uncover new insights about user behaviors.
• Use research to create data-driven personas to guide business and design decisions.
• Organize user research using frameworks such as affinity maps that reveal patterns and insights.
• Understand how research, design, and usability testing can work together in real-world environments.
• Create empathy-driven journey maps that will assist in building design prototypes.
• Work with Information Architecture (IA) and navigation schema; build a site structure that will support usability and is easily intuitive.  

Additional Information

Benefits:

• Understand how good research is essential to UX Design and how asking the right questions can improve a product’s value.
• Gain exposure to and practice using the latest UX research tools.
• Present research findings and deliverables to direct the course of design.
• Sketch out navigation and basic information architecture.