A MOOC focused on UI/UX

November 22, 2018

Over the next few weeks I’ll be working through the MOOC titled, “UX Design Fundamentals.”  It is the second course in the UI/UX Design Specialization, following “Visual Elements of User Interface Design.”

The course is advertised as a hands-on course which examines “how content is organized and structured to create an experience for a user, and what role the designer plays in creating and shaping a user’s experience.” It highlights a condensed process that acts as a roadmap for developing robust UI/UX design.  This condensed process looks to be as follows:

  1. Ideation & Goals
  2. User Research
  3. Mission / Naming / Branding / Identity
  4. Mapping Content and Interaction
  5. User Testing
  6. Creating a Sitemap
  7. Look and Feel Research
  8. Usability (Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics)
  9. Wireframes (What goes where)
  10. Setting Visual Direction
  11. Making a Clickable Prototype

The ultimate goal is to produce a digital prototype for a multi-screen app of one’s own invention.

UI/UX:  What’s the difference?
The specialization concerns both User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX). The first course in the series, focused on the UI aspect of UI/UX, the interface design.  This second course focuses on the UX part, the experience.  And, an initial challenge of this separation, at least to me, is that it can be unclear as to the distinction between UI and UX.   

According to the initial course video lectures, UI refers to how the digital experience looks; UX as to what that experience feels like. Specifically, UI is concentrated on form (shape), aesthetics, color, typography and organization – peraps the more traditional graphic design principles.  With this in mind, UI “ends up being a more about the surface” of a product or service.

UX represents the more intangible aspects of interface design such as how things feel or what emotions are evoked.  From this lens, UX relates more to a user’s engagement or the level of activity of interaction. 

Thus, UI is perhaps more tangible whereas UX leans to be more propositional.

The course indicates that the rationale for this separation is to explore the UI and UX disciplines in more detail albeit they do intrinsically inform each other and both are indeed key aspects of design. 

For those interested in learning more, the course URL is listed below.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/ux-design-fundamentals/home/week/1