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User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide

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Beginner

How This Course Will Help Your Career

What You’ll Learn

  • An introduction to the breadth of UX design

  • The importance of UX design

  • How to confidently talk UX and effortlessly explain what UX design is

  • The roles and responsibilities of a UX designer

  • How to navigate your UX career path

  • How to use practical methods to improve your own work (e.g., task analysis, usability testing, user interviewing and more)

  • How to transfer your existing skills and technical know-how into a career in UX design

  • How to recognize good and bad experience design

  • Practical tips to succeed as a UX designer in the real world

  • What skills UX hirers look for in applicants

  • How to sell UX design to management and clients

If you’ve heard the term user experience design and been overwhelmed by all the jargon, then you’re not alone. In fact, most practicing UX designers struggle to explain what they do!

“[User experience] is used by people to say, ‘I’m a user experience designer, I design websites,’ or ‘I design apps.’ […] and they think the experience is that simple device, the website, or the app, or who knows what. No! It’s everything — it’s the way you experience the world, it’s the way you experience your life, it’s the way you experience the service. Or, yeah, an app or a computer system. But it’s a system that’s everything.”

— Don Norman, pioneer and inventor of the term “user experience,” in an interview with NNGroup

As indicated by Don Norman, User Experience is an umbrella term that covers several areas. When you work with user experience, it’s crucial to understand what those areas are so that you know how best to apply the tools available to you.

In this course, you will gain an introduction to the breadth of UX design and understand why it matters. You’ll also learn the roles and responsibilities of a UX designer, how to confidently talk about UX and practical methods that you can apply to your work immediately.

You will learn to identify the overlaps and differences between different fields and adapt your existing skills to UX design. Once you understand the lay of the land, you’ll be able to chart your journey into a career in UX design. You’ll hear from practicing UX designers from within the IxDF community — people who come from diverse backgrounds, have taught themselves design, learned on the job, and are enjoying successful careers.

If you are new to the Interaction Design Foundation, this course is a great place to start because it brings together materials from many of our other courses. This provides you with both an excellent introduction to user experience and a preview of the courses we have to offer to help you develop your future career. After each lesson, we will introduce you to the courses you can take if a specific topic has caught your attention. That way, you’ll find it easy to continue your learning journey.

In the first lesson, you’ll learn what user experience design is and what a UX designer does. You’ll also learn about the importance of portfolios and what hiring managers look for in them.

In the second lesson, you’ll learn how to think like a UX designer. This lesson also introduces you to the very first exercise for you to dip your toes into the cool waters of user experience. 

In the third and the fourth lessons, you’ll learn about the most common UX design tools and methods. You’ll also practice each of the methods through tailor-made exercises that walk you through the different stages of the design process.

In the final lesson, you’ll step outside the classroom and into the real world. You’ll understand the role of a UX designer within an organization and what it takes to overcome common challenges at the workplace. You’ll also learn how to leverage your existing skills to successfully transition to and thrive in a new career in UX.   

You’ll be taught by some of the world’s leading experts. The experts we’ve handpicked for you are:

  • Alan Dix, Director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University, author of Statistics for HCI: Making Sense of Quantitative Data

  • Ann Blandford, Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at University College London

  • Frank Spillers, Service Designer, Founder and CEO of Experience Dynamics

  • Laura Klein, Product Management Expert, Principal at Users Know, Author of Build Better Products and UX for Lean Startups

  • Michal Malewicz, Designer and Creative Director / CEO of Hype4 Mobile

  • Mike Rohde, Experience and Interface Designer, Author of The Sketchnote Handbook: The Illustrated Guide to Visual Note Taking

  • Szymon Adamiak, Software Engineer and Co-founder of Hype4 Mobile

  • William Hudson, User Experience Strategist and Founder of Syntagm

Throughout the course, we’ll supply you with lots of templates and step-by-step guides so you can start applying what you learn in your everyday practice.

You’ll find a series of exercises that will help you get hands-on experience with the methods you learn. Whether you’re a newcomer to design considering a career switch, an experienced practitioner looking to brush up on the basics, or work closely with designers and are curious to know what your colleagues are up to, you will benefit from the learning materials and practical exercises in this course.

You can also learn with your fellow course-takers and use the discussion forums to get feedback and inspire other people who are learning alongside you. You and your fellow course-takers have a huge knowledge and experience base between you, so we think you should take advantage of it whenever possible.

You earn a verifiable and industry-trusted Course Certificate once you’ve completed the course. You can highlight it on your resume, LinkedIn profile or website.

Gain an Industry-Recognized UX Course Certificate

Use your industry-recognized Course Certificate on your resume, CV, LinkedIn profile or your website.

Course Certificate example

Our courses and Course Certificates are trusted by these industry leaders:

Our clients: IBM, HP, Adobe, GE, Accenture, Allianz, Phillips, Deezer, Capgemin, Mcafee, SAP, Telenor, Cigna, British Parliament, State of New York

This is a foundation-level course suitable for anyone who wants to understand UX design. This course is particularly valuable for:

  • Aspiring designers who are new to the field of UX design.

  • Graphic designers and professionals working in other design sub-disciplines looking to transition into a career in UX Design.

  • UX designers looking to boost their careers with evidence-based knowledge and hands-on learning.

  • Software engineers and developers looking to collaborate better with UX designers.

  • Students keen to understand the breadth of UX design, learn its importance and navigate their career paths.

  • Business owners and entrepreneurs looking to understand the different aspects of UX design to hire and manage resources effectively.

  • Product managers who want to build user-centered products that stand out from the competition.

  • Marketers looking to gain a holistic view of what constitutes a user’s experience with a product or brand.

  • Anyone curious about UX design and looking to apply the principles to all types of products. 

Courses in the Interaction Design Foundation are designed to contain comprehensive, evidence-based content while ensuring that the learning curve is never too steep. All participants will have the opportunity to share ideas, seek help with tests, and enjoy the social aspects afforded by our open and friendly forum.

Learn and Work with a Global Community of Designers

When you take part in this course, you’ll join a global community and work together to improve your skills and career opportunities. Connect with helpful peers and make friends with like-minded individuals as you push deeper into the exciting and booming industry of creativity and design. You will have the opportunity to share ideas, learn from your fellow course participants and enjoy the social aspects afforded by our open and friendly forum.

Course Overview: What You'll Master

  • Each week, one lesson becomes available.
  • There's no time limit to finish a course. Lessons have no deadlines.
  • Estimated learning time: 24 hours 16 mins spread over 8 weeks .

Lesson 0: Welcome and Introduction

Available once you start the course. Estimated time to complete: 1 hour 46 mins.

Lesson 1: What is User Experience Design?

Available once you start the course. Estimated time to complete: 4 hours 51 mins.

Lesson 2: How to Think Like a UX Designer

Available anytime after Apr 02, 2025. Estimated time to complete: 4 hours 30 mins.

Lesson 3: UX Methods and Tools — The Problem Space

Available anytime after Apr 09, 2025. Estimated time to complete: 4 hours 51 mins.

Lesson 4: UX Methods and Tools — The Solution Space

Available anytime after Apr 16, 2025. Estimated time to complete: 5 hours 33 mins.

Lesson 5: How to Design in the Real World

Available anytime after Apr 23, 2025. Estimated time to complete: 2 hours 46 mins.

Lesson 6: Course Certificate and Final Networking

Available anytime after Apr 30, 2025.

How Others Have Benefited

Margaret Benkard

Margaret Benkard, United States

“This course provides a thorough overview of all the different components of UX design. The lessons have a good appropriate amount of content to learn, but the balance of video to text, and the variety of people speaking, not just one person for the whole course, keeps it from being boring or monotonous in any way.”

Prudhvi Raj Midasala

Prudhvi Raj Midasala, India

“The strength of this course is its content and the way all the lessons are organized. The experience the instructors possess is also a huge advantage to the course and its members in understanding the design methods effectively.”

Barbara-Anne Tane

Barbara-Anne Tane, Australia

“The course has given me a great overview of the foundation of UX design, the processes, players and understanding of the expectations of / on designers.”

See other reviews

How It Works

  1. Take online courses by industry experts

    Lessons are self-paced so you'll never be late for class or miss a deadline.

  2. Get a Course Certificate

    Your answers are graded by experts, not machines. Get an industry-recognized Course Certificate to prove your skills.

  3. Advance your career

    Use your new skills in your existing job or to get a new job in UX design. Get help from our community.

Start Advancing Your Career Now

Join us to take “User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide”. Take other courses at no additional cost. Make a concrete step forward in your career path today.

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User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide
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User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide

1.6 - Key Factors of UX

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    User experience, or UX, is critical to a product's  success or failure. But what do we mean by *UX*? All too often, we confuse UX with usability, but they aren't the same thing. To understand the difference between UX and usability, let's look at a framework described by UX pioneer Peter Morville.

  2. 00:00:30 --> 00:01:01

    Morville describes the seven factors of UX as: useful, usable, findable, credible, desirable, accessible, and valuable. The first factor of user experience is *useful*. A product must have a purpose. If a product has no purpose, it's unlikely  to compete in a market full of purposeful and useful products. For example, an email app  should help people communicate with one another.

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    An email app that doesn't let you send  messages isn't useful. Usefulness is *subjective*. We may call a product 'useful' if it's fun or has  aesthetic appeal. So, a game such as Candy Crush may be deemed useful even if it doesn't enable you to accomplish a goal. *Usability* is about enabling your users to effectively and efficiently achieve their objectives. Products that are not usable are not likely to succeed.

  4. 00:01:32 --> 00:02:00

    Besides giving your product a competitive advantage, a high level of usability can also make a huge difference in  the safety and comfort of use. For example, when you purchase an airline ticket, Expedia's website allows you to compare different flights. You may also view the details of a selected flight to make an informed and comfortable decision and – more importantly – you're less likely to  accidentally book a flight in the wrong direction!

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    *Findability* refers to how well a product supports  navigation and finding objects. For example, a website that makes it easy to navigate to the  right content has high findability. A streaming service with millions of choices such as Netflix  is a great example of designing for findability. If Netflix users can't find something to watch  on a Friday night, it doesn't matter how great the hidden content is – they'll stop using it.

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    *Credibility* relates to the user's trust in the product. It's nearly impossible to deliver a good user experience if users think the product is untrustworthy or illegitimate. They'll take their business elsewhere. For example, between 2018 and 2021 a series of scandals hit Meta, formerly Facebook. From privacy abuse to purposefully hiding  research that proved Instagram was harmful to a large user base, particularly teenage girls,

  7. 00:03:03 --> 00:03:30

    each revelation damaged the company's reputation. Even as governments slapped fines and tightened  regulations around privacy, Meta's own leaked internal research revealed that the company  was rapidly losing users to other platforms. Emotions play a large role in desirability, which is conveyed through design, imagery, brand identity, and emotional design.

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    The more desirable a product, the more your customers will want to use and recommend it to their friends. Airbnb does a great job of creating a desirable  experience. The app turns a stranger's home into a desirable vacation destination that people are willing to explore and recommend. *Accessibility* is about providing an experience  that users of a full range of abilities can access. This includes ensuring people who have some form of disability,

  9. 00:04:03 --> 00:04:31

    audio, visual, motor or cognitive, can interact with your product without difficulty. An accessible interface uses colors that colorblind people can see, legible text, even for people with low vision, and so on. Sadly, accessibility often gets lost when we create  user experiences. Some companies may feel that accessibility is a waste of resources because it represents a small portion of their users.

  10. 00:04:31 --> 00:05:03

    However, when you design for accessibility you create products that are easier for *everyone* to use, not just those with disabilities. It's the ethical thing to do, and in some jurisdictions it's the law. Finally, the product must deliver *value* to the  business that creates it and the customer who uses it. Without value, it's likely that your  product's success will eventually be undermined. A product can provide value to  different users in different ways.

  11. 00:05:03 --> 00:05:17

    For some users, desirability is more important; for others, accessibility is more important. Essentially, value is the *sum* of all the  different user experience factors combined.

User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide

2.8 - Heuristic Evaluation: How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:33

    In this session, I'm going to be talking about something that's referred to either as *expert evaluation* or *heuristic evaluation*. It's an evaluation done by one or more experts  using a set of guidelines, and evaluating whether a solution meets those guidelines, how well it meets the guidelines, where it is deficient. So, expert or heuristic evaluations rely on the experience and the expertise of the evaluator.

  2. 00:00:33 --> 00:01:00

    So, you can't really do these things without  understanding some of the basic concepts of interaction design and usability. I mentioned at the outset that you would be using guidelines, but those guidelines are *not* self-explanatory, so you have to understand what a good solution to a particular problem, what you're trying to achieve, would look like because as you're doing evaluations and as the industry changes on a  regular basis,

  3. 00:01:00 --> 00:01:36

    then you have to appreciate whether or not the solutions you're seeing actually conform to the guidelines in front of you. Heuristics are these rules of thumb based on *good  practice and known problems in design*. And they can be used from the very early design through to finished solutions. And you can even do expert or heuristic evaluations on just sketches if that would be helpful. It probably is more sensible a little bit later in the process, but certainly there's no impediment to looking at maybe the general layout of screens

  4. 00:01:36 --> 00:02:00

    and saying, well, this screen is quite possibly overly complicated for the problem in hand and the customers or users that you're trying to target. It is relatively inexpensive in that hiring in a consultant for one or two days is actually very much cheaper than conducting usability evaluations.

  5. 00:02:00 --> 00:02:37

    But immediately following, you'll notice that I mentioned that it's *not as effective as testing with real users*. And that is certainly the case. However, if you had a lot of novel designs and you wanted to get some idea about whether they were going to be effective, then inviting people in who actually do  usability testing who are experts in the field will get you a lot of feedback without nearly so  much cost as a lot of usability testing, which can get quite expensive just because of having  to recruit, reward, hire facilities, and so on.

  6. 00:02:37 --> 00:03:03

    Jakob Nielsen published his book on User  Interface Engineering back in the early 1990s, and these are his 10 basic UI (user interface)  heuristics. And they haven't really changed, although when we actually go out to do something like benchmarking, we have a very much more detailed set of heuristics.

  7. 00:03:03 --> 00:03:30

    But these are a useful starting point, and they're talking about fairly generic concepts like *visibility of system status* and making sure that people understand where they are in the process. And that, of course, is  a good thing no matter what you're doing. And detailed design does actually flow out of that – for example, letting people know that they've got things in their shopping basket. That is an example of the visibility of system status.

  8. 00:03:30 --> 00:04:00

    *Match between the system and the real world* – and that's something I've already alluded to when I was referring to terminology. The mapping sometimes is also physical. If you're talking about the natural tendency for increasing the quantity of something, it tends to be *up*. So, if you've got a slider, then up or to the right is 'more' and down or to the left is 'less'. And that's just what we call *natural mapping*. *User control and freedom* – being flexible, allowing people to go back and fix things.

  9. 00:04:00 --> 00:04:33

    Bear in mind that when user  interface design was relatively new on sort of the large scale back in the 1990s when Windows 3.1, which was kind of the very first successful version of Windows, and of course the World Wide Web came around about the same time, it was uncommon, it was very unusual to have Undo functions. If you made a mistake and you needed to fix it, then you had to fix it yourself. There was no Control-Z or any kind of undo facility.

  10. 00:04:33 --> 00:05:04

    It was something that you had to do, and we take that for granted now, but it was not the case in the early days. *Consistency and standards* – users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations or actions mean the same thing. And this continues to be a problem in some areas. Certainly on intranets within large organizations, you would find that one department had its own set of visual guidelines with its own visual language which was totally different to the next department.

  11. 00:05:04 --> 00:05:30

    And if you were unlucky enough to have to move between those departments on the intranet, then you were in a bit of trouble. It doesn't happen so much these days with the web – e-commerce, for example; people do try very hard to make sure that users are going to have a fairly painless experience, and so we do tend to see things laid out with very *similar terminology and visual language* between totally different e-commerce sites. And to be honest, there,

  12. 00:05:30 --> 00:06:01

    Amazon, because they are so large and popular, has been something of a yardstick. And most people, when they're asking for advice on how to do something in e-commerce, I would refer them to the Amazon site and usually for very good reason. *Error prevention* is much more successful than dealing with errors. Certainly if you're having to discard data or reject data because users did not understand how you wanted it formatted, you should *not insist that people punctuate things exactly the way you need them*.

  13. 00:06:01 --> 00:06:30

    You can do whatever you like with the punctuation once you've got the basic data from them. If you want the phone numbers without punctuation, then take the punctuation out of the phone number after you've got it. If you don't like the spaces in the credit card numbers, then take the spaces out of the credit card numbers. So, that isn't something that Jakob talks about here, but it is a different form of error prevention, and I wholeheartedly recommended presenting users  with errors and telling them they've done bad

  14. 00:06:30 --> 00:07:00

    and should do it over is *not good user experience*. *Recognition rather than recall* – and this is the basic premise of *all* user interfaces these days. That's the way that we've moved. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, most systems were command line based and you had to remember the syntax and spelling of the next command you wanted to enter. And when Windows and the Mac came along, both having stolen their designs from Xerox PARC,

  15. 00:07:00 --> 00:07:31

    then we got what we used to refer to as *WYSIWYG* – What You See Is What You Get. We don't talk about that much these days, but it was all about *recognition*, which people are very much better at, than recall; so, you can *recognize things much more easily* than you can recall them from scratch. *Flexibility and efficiency of use* – and usually there is a trade-off between what you might call *design for learning*  and *design for efficiency*. That is all tied up with flexibility and efficiency of use.

  16. 00:07:31 --> 00:08:06

    By making things *flexible and efficient*, you're often making them *harder to use*. So, that's where the tension in the design comes in. *Aesthetic and minimalist design* – people like  websites that look attractive and that they trust from a visual design perspective. And it is important that we *do not put too much in front of users at once*. And so, that's what we mean  by minimalist design. *Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors* – something that's actually these days largely overlooked,

  17. 00:08:06 --> 00:08:33

    but it's still extremely important on more complex systems; things like Microsoft Office, most of the Adobe apps do have behind them a huge body of *help and documentation* – usually pretty awfully organized and presented, I have to say. It used to be better ten years ago, and we've just for some reason stopped worrying too much about that. So, it used to be that if you were looking at a dialog and you wanted help

  18. 00:08:33 --> 00:08:54

    with that dialog, you could click on a button  and you would get help on that dialog. The best you can hope for these days is that you click on Help and you get taken to a website, and you now have to work out how you're going to find out about this specific issue that you are having with this specific dialog. So, things have gone a little bit backwards in recent years on that front.

User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide

4.3 - Learn How to Use Sketching as an Ideation Method

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:32

    Let's talk a little bit about the *benefits of  sketchnoting*. There's this ability to *retain information that you learn*; so, that's a real benefit. And then, of course, it allows you to *use your whole self for note-taking*. Instead of just writing text or typing, you're using your whole body, you're using your visualization and your thinking and analytical skills, and your listening skills, most importantly, to capture information

  2. 00:00:32 --> 00:01:02

    about what you're learning and what you're understanding. So, one of the things that I want to touch on a little bit is the reason why we talk a little bit about paper before pixels. I'm a big believer in this concept. And the reason I say that is because I think paper and pen is really *cheap* – like you can burn through lots of paper and pen, and then you can recycle the paper. And it's a really quick way to get ideas down without spending a lot of time investing in Photoshop or XD or Sketch or whatever tool you happen to be using.

  3. 00:01:02 --> 00:01:30

    I think the other thing that I feel like is software tools limit you to what they can do and not *what you can imagine*. So, when you start using software tools, you can sort of fall into a pattern of things you've done before, things you've seen before, and then you're sort of locked into what the  software allows you to do. Where I think paper and pen allows you to be a little more *free-form* and explore ideas. Two other things I like about paper before pixels is I think *rough sketches*,

  4. 00:01:30 --> 00:02:00

    when you share them with a group, *invite people into the discussion*. When you provide a finished,  beautiful mock-up that maybe is even interactive, sometimes people can feel like, 'I didn't  have any part of this. This is already done.' And that leads to the other part – people don't  feel like they can give you feedback about your idea when it's so finished that it looks like it could be real. There's sort of a hesitation like, 'I'm going to ruin Mike's work! He did all this work. I can't tell him feedback because he'll have to tear it apart and do it over again!'

  5. 00:02:00 --> 00:02:18

    When you use sketches, this isn't even on the table. We're all just exploring ideas. So, I think this is really important to think about, when you think about *ideation especially*, is to consider doing paper before you do the pixels, or, in the case of if you have an iPad Pro and a pencil, maybe using pixels in a unique way.

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