Real World UX | Learn User Experience & Start Your Career

We'll discuss different approaches to Process (Waterfall and Agile). We'll also introduce other factors that can affect how UX is practiced.

We'll introduce a flexible process and discuss how User Experience and Interaction Design fit into it. We'll also summarize the core of the UX process.

We'll introduce some early, middle, and later phase UX activities. (Including: User Research, User Scenarios, Personas, Feature Prioritization, Experience Maps, Wireframes, etc.)

We'll discuss how to course-correct, and make sure you're working smart, heading for a successful product and happy users.

We'll discuss three things that can influence how UX is practiced: People, Environment, and Deliverables.

We'll introduce the concept of presenting, and discuss why it's an important skill for a User Experience practitioner to possess and refine.

We'll introduce Discovery Research and discuss its importance to User Experience. (*Please excuse the different look/feel of these slides, we're in the process of updating the visual design of the course.)

We'll introduce the early phase Discovery activities in more detail. (Including: Stakeholder Interviews, Competitive Analysis, Heuristic Evaluation, Secondary Research, and Primary User Research)

We'll discuss the significance of Stakeholder Interviews to UX, and how they can give initial direction and help create alignment later.

We'll discuss the significance of Secondary Research to UX.

We'll discuss the significance of Analytics to UX, and how you can get powerful quant data that can inform your strategy and designs.

(Apologies, updating this lecture to remove the glitches at the end - 08/06/2015) We'll discuss the significance of Competitive Analysis to UX, and how you can use it to glean best practices for your space and find inspiration.

We'll discuss the significance of Heuristics to UX, and how they can tell us how we stack up to the competition and where we sit in the competitive landscape.

We'll discuss the significance of Exploratory User Research to UX, and introduce some different approaches to conducting it.

We'll discuss User Testing in more depth and introduce a five step process for conducting it.

We'll dig into the first steps to prepare to conduct user testing - createing your user testing goals and test plan.

In this lecture we'll cover how to find, qualify, and select participants for your user testing.

We'll discuss User Testing Asset, AKA "the stuf you show people" when you're conducting user research.

We'll discuss the importance of the Disucssion Guide,and how to create an effective one. (This will help insure consistency and success when you're conducting your user research.)

This lecture should give you a good primer on how to perform this important activity. (Moderating is a great skill, which every UX practitioner should get an opportunity to practice.)

User Research findings are the most important input for your UX Strategy as well as your Interaction Design work. Here's we'll cover different ways they can be used and shared with colleagues.

Here's an example usability findings presenation. (This is a helpful tool for getting buy-in on making changes based on user research you've conducted.)

Here's an example user research memo. (A memo is a good tool when less alignment is needed and the recommended changes are very tactical.)

We'll discuss what we do next, as we shift from research into Strategic UX and goals-setting.

We'll do a quick overview of the structure of our Strategic UX presentation.

We'll look at an examople Strategic UX presentation, which helps us see what we're aiming for with these. (We'll see how the research in the beginning ladders up to our big vision for the experience, and then after that we explore different ways we might achieve that.)

We'll look at Personas, their relationship to User Research, and how we can go about creating them.

We'll look at User Scenarios (also called "User Flows") and talk about how we use them and when they are necessary.

Having alignment and direction is key to success. Defining the Vision is a key part of Strategic UX, and helps provide that direction.

Initial rough ideas and sketches are a great way to illustrate what a strategic vision might look like when brought to life.

Here's a very quick example of what sketches and ideas unpacking a strategic vision might look like.

Sketching (and wireframing) are important design tools which every UX practitioner should develop. Here we'll look at some sketches and dscuss the style used to create them.

We'll learn why presenting is not just important, but fundamental, to being a persuasive UX practitioner and creating designs that survive,

We'll discuss some presentation-writing best practices, which apply User Experience and Interaction Design presentations, as well as storytelling in general.

We'll cover some things you can do to ensure your sucess when you give a presentation. (These principles relate to UX, but also generalize to all types of presentations.)

We'll discuss our shift from Strategic UX into Interaction Design, where we'll focus on making something real our users will eventually be able to use!

We'll cover the importance of identifying project requirements in different contexts, and then move ahead to discuss Sitemaps, Template Lists, and Feature & Functionality Matrices and how the relate to Interaction Design and UX.

We'll look at two important definitions for "Wireframe", and the concept of wireframing, which is the corner stone of the Interaction Design half of User Experience.

Wireframes are how we as User Experience practitioners and Interaction Designers communicate. They are the primary means by which we form our ideas and raise questions related to UX on our projects.

Wireframes are also a very important design deliverable, which embody our Interaction Design work. (In client engagements wireframes are often packaged and presented, and mark important project milestones related to the UX phase.)

As User Experience practitioners and Interaction Designers, we often have several different audiences for our work and our wireframes. We'll discuss these in more detail and looks at some key perspectives you might encounter from Designers, Clients, and Developers who may be reviewing your wireframes.

We'll reiterate the main purpose of wireframes, and then get into a step-by-step approach for creating wireframes. (Wireframing is a broad spectrum skill, which you improve upon with practice. Following this approach to wireframing will help you get accustomed to this way of designing, if it's new or unfamiliar.)

Here are some great resources every UX person should be aware of. These will help you save time designing and provide you with inspiration when you get stuck.

Here are some great design best practices for creating the most effective wireframes. (Remember your design skills will improve as you practice, and what seems new to you now will soon become intuitive and second-nature. Review this lecture periodically (I do!) and it will help your overall design sense and your wireframing skills!)

We'll do a quick overview of the structure and goals of an Interactive Design presentation, focused on persuasively presenting wireframes and using them to define a user experience.

We'll look at an example Interaction Design presentation, and see how we connect our interaction design work and wirerames to our earlier strategic UX work. (Watch how the beginning ladders up to define the goals for our wireframes, priming our audience and building alignment so that they will be more receptive to our wireframe deisgns, which define the user experience.

We'll demystify User Experience and Interaction Design job titles, and what those roles typically mean. Next, we'll relate them to each other, as we go through what a typical career trajectory in UX might look like.

In our final lecture, we'll look at ways you can break into UX and start a career as a User Expierence practioner or Interaction Designer, if that's one of your goals.

Trying something new and offering the chance for a free portfolio review with me :)  Just let me know if you'd be interested in being considered here: http://realworldux.com/contact-us/ And, feel free to add a link to your portfolio in your request. Thank you again for learning with me! Looking forward to keeping in touch - Brendan