If you're looking to brush up or learn more about user experience design, check out Coursera's free online courses! From learning the basics of UX design with the User Experience Design to gaining practical insights with the Master Design Language, they provide an engaging and comprehensive selection of classes. For more experienced designers, there are specialized courses such as Design Strategy and Innovation Through Design which can offer an invaluable look into the modern discipline of UX design. Additionally, the UX Design Open Content Shell course provides resources and materials to help you understand design and keep up with the latest trends.
For those just beginning their journey into UX design, Coursera offers a range of great introductory courses. Foundations of User Experience Design is a great place to start, followed by User Experience Design, Principles of UX/UI Design and UX Design Fundamentals. Intro to UX: Principles and Processes also provides some great foundational knowledge.
For those looking to advance their UX design knowledge and skills, some of the best courses can be found on Coursera. For example, Web Design Strategy explores the role of UX design in a business context. Branding and CX teaches students how to create a memorable brand experience, and Web Design: Wireframes to Prototypes shows how to create user interfaces using wireframes and prototypes. Finally, UX Interface Design for Embedded Systems guides participants through the challenges of designing intuitive user interfaces for embedded systems such as smart thermostats and wearable devices.
User Experience Design (or, UX Design) is a discipline highlighting a set of best practices created to make the design of a website, software program, mobile application, or other online resource highly visual and intuitive for people to navigate. It advocates simple graphics, concise wording, accessibility, and other research-based ways to increase usability for a wide range of internet users.
UX Design is important to learn in order to create an online world that is universally readable to people of various backgrounds and abilities, helping them use a website for its intended purpose with ease. UX Design can also help organizations simplify their intended customer journey for greater impact to their bottom line. Creating user journey maps can help you harness that empathy and transform it into valuable insights about your customers and your product. Find out why you should consider a career in UX design by reading this article about what UX designers do.
UX Designers are in demand. As of 2018, the role is expected to rise by 22% in the coming ten years. Professionals in this field can expect an average salary of $73,927 per year in the U.S., according to PayScale.
Though “UX Designer” may come to mind first when the field of “UX Design” is brought up, the truth is that it's a multidisciplinary field. InvisionApp revealed on their website that specialist UX titles are on the rise. These in-demand roles are within reach for those with an understanding in UX Design as well, and they include Interaction Designer, Visual Designer, UX Writer, User Researcher, Accessibility Specialist, Content Strategist, and UX Strategist. UX Designers may take on all of these tasks themselves, or work in teams with specialists.
Build the in-demand skills and experience needed to get a job as a UX designer through these certifications and bootcamps.
UX Design courses offered through Coursera equip learners with knowledge in design-centric approaches to user-interface and user-experience design; different perspectives on visual communication; stages of the UI/UX development process; best practices and conventions in UX design; understanding user needs; and more.
Lessons in these courses are taught by professors from top universities such as California Institute of the Arts, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, and others. These professors are experts in their field, and specialize in disciplines from Interactive Computing to Graphic Design and beyond. Learners can explore UX Design topics by way of video lectures, readings, quizzes, and other types of content delivery.
The skills or experience you may need to already have before learning user experience design (UXD) may include a high level of comfort in audience research and also in information architecture. You may want to have research experience because UX designers need to understand what their audiences want and how they view the world around them. You may want to have skills or experience in information architecture because you need to know how to organize information clearly and understandably which translates into an ideal user experience. Other softer skills and experiences you may want to already have to study UXD involve empathy with people since a UX designer needs to focus on what people want to experience to improve their lives, work, or products and services they use. If you have coding skills and project management experience, you'll already have some of the other important knowledge that may be necessary to learn UXD. Another skill that's important to UXD is writing, and that’s because if something is poorly written on an element of a UXD, the entire experience can be ruined for the user.
The kind of people who are best suited for roles in UX design are interested in applying these cutting-edge processes to create effective and compelling screen-based experiences for websites or apps. They are able to create great products through understanding user needs, evaluating design concepts, and creating rapidly generating prototypes.
Learning UX design may be right for you if you're an entrepreneur or you work in a field or business that is beginning to recognize the importance of UXD to the company’s growth. Studying the field may be right for you if you’re interested in gaining a solid foundation in UX research and design to create cutting-edge products. It may also be right for you if you’d like to build the skills to demonstrate all stages of the UI/UX development process, from user research to defining a project’s strategy, scope, and information architecture, sitemaps, and wireframes or if you want to use these skills in a wide variety of careers, from marketing to web design, to human-computer interaction.