Course Overview

UI UX Designing Course

The UI/UX Design Specialization brings a design-centric approach to user interface and user experience design, and offers practical, skill-based instruction centered around a visual communications perspective, rather than on one focused on marketing or programming alone. In this sequence of four courses, you will summarize and demonstrate all stages of the UI/UX development process, from user research to defining a project’s strategy, scope, and information architecture, to developing sitemaps and wireframes. You’ll learn current best practices and conventions in UX design and apply them to create effective and compelling screen-based experiences for websites or apps.

Visual Elements of User Interface Design

This design-centric course examines the broad question of what an interface is and what role a designer plays in creating a user interface. Learning how to design and articulate meaning using color, type, and imagery is essential to making interfaces function clearly and seamlessly. Through a series of lectures and visual exercises, you will focus on the many individual elements and components that make up the skillset of an interface designer. By the end of this course, you will be able to describe the key formal elements of clear, consistent, and intuitive UI design, and apply your learned skills to the design of a static screen-based interface.

UX Design Fundamentals

This hands-on course examines how content is organized and structured to create an experience for a user, and what role the designer plays in creating and shaping user experience. You will be led through a condensed process that acts as a roadmap for developing robust UI/UX design: from ideation and sitemapping, to the creation of paper and digital prototypes. Building on the design skills learned in Visual Elements of User Interface Design, you will apply this methodology to produce a digital prototype for a multi-screen app of your own invention.

By the end of this course, you will be able to describe and apply current best practices and conventions in UX design, and employ the fundamental principles of how UX design functions to shape an audience's experience of a given body of content.

Web Design: Strategy and Information Architecture

This course is focused on the early user experience (UX) challenges of research, planning, setting goals, understanding the user, structuring content, and developing interactive sequences. While the concepts covered will translate to many kinds of interactive media (apps, digital kiosks, games), our primary focus will be on designing contemporary, responsive websites. In this course you will complete the first half of a large scale project—developing a comprehensive plan for a complex website—by defining the strategy and scope of the site, as well as developing its information architecture and overall structure. Along the way we will also discuss:

:: Different job descriptions in the web design industry and where UX and UI skills fall within this spectrum
:: The difference between native apps and websites
:: The difference of agile vs. waterfall approaches
:: User personas and site personas
:: User testing

The work and knowledge in this course continues in the last course in the UI/UX Design Specialization, Web Design: Wireframes to Prototypes, where you will tackle—finally—wireframes, visual mockups, and clickable prototypes.

Web Design: Wireframes to Prototypes

This course is focused on the application of the early UX research to actual user interfaces: the creation of wireframes, high-fidelity mockups, and clickable prototypes. Along the way we will also discuss:

:: Responsive web design and mobile web challenges
:: Mobile-first approach
:: Web typography
:: The relationship between design and programming and whether it is important to know how to code
:: The different web technologies that make the web work, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, server-side coding, and databases.

This course is the continuation of the course Web Design: Strategy and Information Architecture, in which students completed the first half of a large scale project—developing a comprehensive plan for a complex website. If you are intending to complete the assignments in this course to earn a certificate you must complete the Strategy and Information Architecture course first so you have the materials and data needed to begin creating wireframes and mockups in this course.