What makes an interface intuitive? How can I tell whether one design works better than another? This course will teach you fundamental principles of design and how to effectively evaluate your work with users. You'll learn fundamental principles of visual design so that you can effectively organize and present information with your interfaces. You'll learn principles of perception and cognition that inform effective interaction design. And you'll learn how to perform and analyze controlled experiments online. In many cases, we'll use Web design as the anchoring domain. A lot of the examples will come from the Web, and we'll talk just a bit about Web technologies in particular. When we do so, it will be to support the main goal of this course, which is helping you build human-centered design skills, so that you have the principles and methods to create excellent interfaces with any technology.
This course is part of the Interaction Design Specialization
Design Principles: an Introduction
Offered By
About this Course
4.6
1,063 ratings
Skills you will gain
A/B TestingUser Experience (UX)User Experience Design (UXD)User Interface
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Week
124 minutes to complete
Welcome and Course Overview
Welcome to the course! Here are some helpful resources to guide you through this course.
2 videos (Total 4 min), 2 readings
2 readings
Connecting with Your MOOC Community10m
Attend a Meetup10m
5 hours to complete
Direct Manipulation and Representations
Our lecture videos in this module begin with the major innovation of the graphical interface: enabling people to perform input directly on top of output. This directness makes interfaces easier to learn because it enables people to recognize familiar elements. And continuous feedback makes interfaces easier to use, encourages exploration, and prevents errors. To illustrate the benefits of direct manipulation in real interfaces, the videos provide several examples of both particular designs and interface styles. I find that's a lot more useful than just stating abstract principles. Now is a good time to remind everyone that I am not endorsing (or rejecting) any particular product, organization, or person. What I am doing: real people in the real world make real design decisions -- you can learn from this -- and in this course I'll discuss these concrete examples so you can gain real knowledge. The rest of the videos will cover topics related to the importance of representations, such as understanding a user's mental model and helping people to distribute cognition. I will show some examples of how representational differences can impact performance. As you watch these videos, think about how you have arranged or lamented representations in your everyday life. Maybe you put your keys by the door, sunglasses on your hat, or a post-it on your laptop? You'll get a chance to delve into these examples in the assignment.
5 videos (Total 75 min), 2 readings, 1 quiz
5 videos
Mental Models15m
Representation Matters17m
Distributing Cognition Part 116m
Distributing Cognition Part 213m
2 readings
Sketch Notes: Representation Matters & Distributing Cognition10m
Slides10m
Week
23 hours to complete
Visual Design and Information Design
So far, many examples in our videos have been physical. I like physical examples because they’re often easier to understand, and they durably express fundamental principles. Equipped with those fundamentals, we'll now focus more on concrete issues in interaction design to help you flesh out your interactive prototypes. This module’s videos introduce visual and information design. These are the nuts and bolts of user interfaces: scale, contrast, pattern, shape, color, typography, and layout. What I hope you'll take away from these lectures is a newfound appreciation for how subtle changes in this visual variables can powerfully impact people's experience of documents and interfaces. Dive into the first visual design lecture here. Visual design organizes the world of information. As this module’s lectures show, that visual organization provides important cues, yet the structure itself is often invisible.
4 videos (Total 49 min), 3 readings, 1 quiz
3 readings
Example: Laying out text10m
Example: Grids10m
Slides10m
Week
34 hours to complete
Designing Experiments
After you’ve made a design, how do you know whether it is good? Or if your team has a couple ideas it is considering, how do you know which one is better? Rather than arguing, throwing chairs, or playing rochambeau, we suggest getting your designs in front of real users to see how well they actually work. To enable you to do this, our final module of lectures will introduce you to designing, running, and analyzing experiments. Testing your ideas with people and using what you learn to make them better can often mean the difference between a flop and a hit. Usability testing also gives you a chance to flex your rapid prototyping muscles. Build several interfaces quickly, try them out with people, and use what you learn to revise them. Through repeated iteration and testing, you can end up with a wonderfully polished interface. For me, the most exhilarating aspect of running experiments is the element of surprise. Nearly every time my students, colleagues, and I run a study, we learn something that we never even thought to think of. Sometimes, it's a roadblock or bug. Other times, it's an unexpected new use of a system -- many great startups have emerged out of finding unexpected new uses for technology. Either way, it'll give you new fodder for design. As in the prototyping lectures, the evaluation lectures emphasize comparison -- testing multiple ideas. In many ways, design is choice, and comparing multiple interfaces helps you make good choices. Learn more about designing studies here.
8 videos (Total 101 min), 2 readings, 2 quizzes
8 videos
Assigning Participants to Conditions16m
In-Person Experiments12m
Running Web Experiments 19m
Running Web Experiments 26m
Running Web Experiments 35m
Comparing Rates20m
Applying Chi-squared to A/B Testing14m
2 readings
Sketch Notes: Assigning Conditions10m
Slides10m
1 practice exercise
Cumulative Quiz24m
4.6
144 Reviews33%
started a new career after completing these courses
28%
got a tangible career benefit from this course
15%
got a pay increase or promotion
Top Reviews
The basic principles of design and their philosophies were covered well in this course, and it was taught in a quick, efficient manner. I liked undergoing this course and would recommend it.
This course was very informative and well structured. I feel like the concepts stacked and that by the end I had a better understanding surrounding the "why" behind a lot of these concepts.
Instructor
Scott Klemmer
ProfessorCognitive Science & Computer Science
About University of California San Diego
UC San Diego is an academic powerhouse and economic engine, recognized as one of the top 10 public universities by U.S. News and World Report. Innovation is central to who we are and what we do. Here, students learn that knowledge isn't just acquired in the classroom—life is their laboratory.
About the Interaction Design Specialization
You will learn how to design technologies that bring people joy, rather than frustration. You'll learn how to generate design ideas, techniques for quickly prototyping them, and how to use prototypes to get feedback from other stakeholders like your teammates, clients, and users. You'll also learn principles of visual design, perception, and cognition that inform effective interaction design.
Frequently Asked Questions
When will I have access to the lectures and assignments?
Once you enroll for a Certificate, you’ll have access to all videos, quizzes, and programming assignments (if applicable). Peer review assignments can only be submitted and reviewed once your session has begun. If you choose to explore the course without purchasing, you may not be able to access certain assignments.
What will I get if I subscribe to this Specialization?
When you enroll in the course, you get access to all of the courses in the Specialization, and you earn a certificate when you complete the work. Your electronic Certificate will be added to your Accomplishments page - from there, you can print your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile. If you only want to read and view the course content, you can audit the course for free.
What is the refund policy?
Is financial aid available?
More questions? Visit the Learner Help Center.
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