Human Factors and the User Experience

UX900C

Course Description

Designing usable products and an effective user experience requires an understanding of the human behaviors underlying the user's interaction with the product or service. Human Factors in Information Design introduces you to the applied theories relevant to the design of information products, systems, user interface designs and the larger user experience. This course is particularly relevant to those working with critical applications, diverse user populations, and new technologies. Foundations in Human Factors helps you design applications compatible with the user's goals and the strengths and weaknesses of the user's perceptual and cognitive processing systems. This course helps you to anticipate user requirements before product development, to explain the user's performance during usability and prototype testing, and to foster a smooth transition for users facing new technologies or information.

Key Outcomes

• Gain a comprehensive understanding of human behavior and its application to enhancing experience design.
• Weight a given behavior in the context of the user population(s), product requirements, and use environment.
• Employ these practices in the design process to proactively enhance the user experience as well as to evaluate problematic areas in existing product designs.
• Communicate the importance of this approach to the product design team and product owner
• Consider and apply an understanding of human perception (sight, sound, touch, and gesture) to a user’s interaction with a product or service.
• Apply principles of perceptual organization and design patterns to assist the user in rapidly organizing and navigating the designed space.
• Appreciate and apply the foundational principles of cognitive psychology to create products that are intuitive, easy to learn, safe and productive.
• Design to support demanding cognitive activities in the user experience such as reading, learning, decision making and the like.
• Consider and design to support the emotional aspects of the user experience such as social connection, anxiety, motivation, pleasure, and gamification.
• Apply these same principles to emerging technologies such as the IOT, conversational interfaces, cognitive computing, virtual reality and the like.

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Prototyping the User Experience

UX915C

Course Description

Prototyping is a key part of the design process. A prototype can be used to sell ideas, create a shared vision, test and refine an interface, and provide the development team with exact specifications. In this course, you will gain hands-on experience in creating prototypes using paper, software, and web-based applications (Balsamiq and Figma) by working on a realistic sample project step by step. In addition, prototyping will be introduced in the context of the Design Thinking process. You’ll learn what types of prototypes work best at different stages in the design process and will identify the appropriate level of fidelity required in your prototype. In addition, you will work on a design challenge to apply what you have learned from the class in practice for the course project. 

Key Outcomes

• Learn about different types of prototyping at different stages of the Design Thinking process
• Learn and practice prototyping using paper, Balsamiq, and Figma 
• Learn and practice design critique techniques
• Create a portfolio sample with a course prototyping project

Design Challenge

Students can choose one of the three provided design challenges and create design solutions for targeted users by applying the design thinking process and prototyping techniques covered in the course. The students can work on the assignment for 2-3 weeks and the final deliverables include (1)wireframes for the solution, (2) higher visual and interaction fidelity prototypes, (3) a slides deck describing the project with a recorded presentation, and (4) 1-page portfolio write-up. 

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Information Architecture

UX919C

Course Description

This two-day workshop introduces Information Architecture concepts and deliverables and how they fit into the development life cycle. It focuses on web and mobile device applications organization to best facilitate access to content that supports user needs. Although this class is not devoted to deliverables, hands-on exercises will walk through creating artifacts for conceptual design and functional design, such as site maps, user flows, and wireframes.

Key Outcomes

• What is Information Architecture?
• The historical context of Information Architecture
• How Information Architecture has evolved as applied to user experience design
• Adapting IA processes to different development methodologies
• Common user-research techniques that feed the IA analysis
• The importance of User Experience Strategy in determining project success
• Top-down and bottom-up approaches to organizing content
• IA Deliverables
• Site inventory
• Site mapping
• User flows
• Wireframing

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Ethnography for Work and Design

UX920C

Course Description

Generally speaking, ethnographic research involves naturalistic inquiry aimed at capturing social phenomena as they occur in a particular setting. Ethnographers can employ multiple data collection strategies to do this but typically focus on participant/observation methodologies as a primary approach. While primarily found in social science disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, ethnographic approaches increasing are being applied in system fields/product design for the purposes of achieving better technological designs, improving the user experience, and facilitating collaborative work. This course will introduce the student to the origins of the ethnographic method, discuss the theoretical bases of its use, identify strategies for successful ethnographic inquiry, develop initial skills for data analysis and reporting, and provide examples of how ethnographic studies of work and technological use have been used in a variety of business and organizational contexts.

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User and Task Analysis

UX921C

Course Description

This course introduces product designers and user researchers to the theory and practice of user and task analysis. It removes the analysis responsibility from the hands of an elite few and empowers all members of the development group with the analytical tools needed to identify, prioritize and accommodate user goals and requirements. This methodology builds on contextual and task analysis in a rapid application model, with a goal of moving usable products to market in a timely fashion. Topics include thinking like an analyst, establishing business goals, framing the problem, defining the end-user profile(s), formulating user goals, identifying universal behaviors relevant to the case, using field-based data-gathering methodologies, interviewing the user, interpreting user requirements, analyzing the task and documenting your findings. 

Key Outcomes

• Build the case for conducting user requirements gathering
• Define user personas and determine persona goals (value focus for each)
• Redefine the problem space when appropriate – are you focusing on the right problem
• Determine the alignment of user and business goals
• Align business, user, regulatory, and technical requirements
• Identify, document and manage tension and conflict across requirements
• Determine when to automate work and when the user values engagement in the work
• Define the task (work, process) and information structure that support goals
• Understand the rapid task analysis concept and supporting data collection methods
• Move from data, to insight, and finally product design
• Move beyond incremental enhancements to product innovation

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Usability Testing

UX922C

Course Description

The usability study is the keystone research method in user experience research. Whether we are evaluating a digital product, a physical device, or even a real-world experience, observing people’s behaviors while they interact with something is the gold standard of research. This course will take you through the usability study timeline and convey best practices for each step along the way to ensure your research attains goals and has actionable outcomes. We’ll discuss preparing for the study, conducting it, how to analyze the data, and how to best convey the results to others. With interactive group exercises and an assignment to conduct a small-scale study, this course will give you the needed practical tools to conduct your own successful usability research.

Key Outcomes

• Define and measure usability
• Distinguish between the different types of usability studies
• Establish user research goals for your usability study
• Create a screening questionnaire to recruit study participants who match your target user profile
• Develop a scenario and tasks for your study
• Create a data collection plan and best practices for data collection
• Prepare the materials required to prepare, conduct, and analyze a usability study
• Effectively moderate a usability study session
• Analyze and report on your usability study findings

Research Challenge

The final assignment is a small-scale usability study with complete documentation. Students will create a participant screener and study interview guide, recruit three friends as participants, conduct the sessions via Zoom, create a report, and submit a moderation self-critique.

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Designing for Accessibility

UX923C

Course Description

Accessibility is an important facet of user experience. Designing accessible interfaces is easier if you understand the range of disabilities, key principles of accessibility, how assistive technologies work, and how users actually use them. You will learn how to move beyond standards compliance to integrate accessibility in a way that creates equivalent, universally usable, and engaging web experiences for everyone. We'll examine the key standards including the most recent updates of WCAG, version 2.2.  We will spend time discussing how to integrate accessibility into the UX design process.  Also, we will learn how to design and test for accessibility on mobile devices. We then explore user needs, validation methods, and ways to engage users with disabilities in your user experience research process. By the end of the course, you will have a firm foundation on how to design and evaluate the accessibility of systems.

Key Outcomes

• Appreciate that accessibility is an important foundation of user experience.
• Appreciate that accessibility does not serve a small number of users, but is part of a good design process and good business strategy that has benefits for all users regardless of disability.
• Learn how to move beyond standards compliance to integrate accessibility into UX in a way that creates equivalent, universally usable, and engaging web experiences for everyone.
• Understand the range of disabilities, key principles of accessibility, how assistive technologies work, and how users actually use them.  
• Attain an understanding of the key standards, principles of accessibility such as WCAG 2.2.
• Learn how to apply WCAG 2.2 and other accessibility best practices to mobile technology.
• Develop a firm foundation how to design and evaluate systems for people with visual disabilities (Blind, low vision, color blind) including people that use screen readers.
• Develop a firm foundation how to design and evaluate systems for people with auditory disabilities (Deaf and hard of hearing). 
• Develop a firm foundation how to design and evaluate systems for people with motor disabilities.
• Develop a firm foundation how to design and evaluate systems for people with cognitive disabilities (e.g., memory, problem solving, and attention challenges).

Design Challenge

The course assignment puts into practice what you learned over the two-days and will provide you with several portfolio-worthy artifacts.  You will pick any publically available web site.  Previous students have selected a company, product, or organization that they are associated with or use often.  You will create two personas representing customers or users with disabilities.  Then using these personas as your guide, you will evaluate three web pages from the site on both desktop and mobile against WCAG 2.2  You will create a report deliverable containing the personas, the identified accessibility issues, and recommendations for improvement.

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Visualizing Information

UX928C

Course Description

Examine how visualization enhances our ability to think. The course begins by comparing the visual and verbal worlds, their strengths and limits, and how these media interact with various thinking tasks. Moving from this analysis, this course helps you to design a visual-verbal system in which the strengths of one medium support the weakness of the other. This approach more fully integrates the visual and verbal message in a way that dramatically increases the reader's understanding of the information. You examine a range of visualization formats including illustrations, icons, mind maps, decision diagrams, schematics, information maps, and dynamic visualizations. Learn to use these formats to support the complex cognitive tasks of problem solving, analysis, and decision support and learning.

Key Outcomes

• Create visuals that exploit, enable, and extend our cognitive and perceptual abilities
• Develop an appreciation for visuals that are functional and not merely decorative
• Learn when to use visual and verbal media and how to combine them
• Use private diagrams such as mind maps and concept maps to support creative thinking and concept formation
• Review a variety of diagram types for decision making, problem solving, and exploration
• Explore different types of pictures and choose the right level of detail
• Understand and apply Gestalt principles and preattentive properties to create more effective visualizations
• Apply the LATCH principle and choose the right structure for the data and task
• Review a variety of tables, charts and graphs and learn which types are best for which applications
• Understand the strengths and limitations of interactive visualizations, animation and video
• Understand the historical context for information visualization

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User Research Methods

UX929C

Course Description

User Research Methods complement lab and online studies and are an essential part of a user researcher’s toolkit. This course covers several types of user research methods, including both qualitative and quantitative techniques. We will start with an overview of UX research and a discussion about how user research methods fit in. Then, through lectures, case studies, class exercises, and group discussions, we will explore commercial ethnography (including home and office visits), interviewing, diary studies, survey design, focus groups, and the development of personas. In the classroom, we’ll practice ethnographic interviewing and the cognitive pretesting of a questionnaire. We’ll also spend one morning outside of the classroom on a project involving participant observation (web students will be able to participate in their community). With some additional work, this project could be used in a portfolio as an example of user experience research. Students will leave with a long list of recommended books, articles, websites, and videos.  

Key Outcomes

• Conduct an ethnographic interview in class after learning about interviewing techniques (both semi-structured and ethnographic interviewing).
• Learn how to create an observation guide for a home or ethnographic study.
• Engage in participant observation (outside of the classroom) as part of a field study during the second day of class, after learning about the methods of commercial ethnography and contextual design.
• Understand the ethics of doing field research and the principles of professional responsibility of the American Anthropological Association and the American Sociological Association.
• Gain confidence to try new techniques and understand that in most cases there is no one “right” way to collect user experience information or to understand consumer behavior.
• Learn the basics of survey design and all the serious errors that must be avoided.
• Learn how to perform cognitive pretesting of questionnaires and to analyze an error-filled questionnaire in the classroom.
• Learn how to conduct a diary study and choose among the three types of reporting, the multiple techniques for collecting data, and typical types of analysis.
• Learn the basics of personas and focus groups.
• Understand where to find online sources of UX information and how to continue learning most effectively.

Research Challenge

There are two options for the research challenge, which should be completed in the month following the class. The first is to continue the study of coffee shop culture and behavior started during class, visiting and observing at several Starbucks to try to characterize customer behavior and social interaction, and learn how the layout and design of the physical space influence customer behavior. Students will turn in their observation guide, notes, and a report that examines how Starbucks’ user experience can be improved.  Alternatively, a student can work with the instructor to set up a project that involves the methods discussed in the course, with the goal of improving a product or service

This course is taught by Demetrios Karis. View his bio here.

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Leading a User Experience Team

UX930C

Course Description

Leading User Experience distills decades of best practices, principles, and real-world experience into a highly interactive two-day course applicable to design organizations ranging in size from a single designer in a startup to hundreds of designers in Fortune 500 organizations.

Key Outcomes

• Clearly define User Experience
• Understand the 100+ year history leading to the explosion of the modern UX profession
• Appreciate how waterfall, agile, and unintentional bias have shaped and constrained the environment designers work in today
• Compare and contrast the Lean Movement, Design Thinking, and the Double Diamond
• Connect this knowledge through the lens of Lean UX

Design Challenge

Students will use the Lean UX canvas to translate these concepts into real world projects.

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Designing the User Experience

UX935C

Course Description

This course will explore the propagation of user requirements into design solutions. Students will investigate the design space through multiple perspectives to identify opportunities for innovation. The class will examine design stages and techniques through real-world examples and hands-on prototype development. Student teams will generate scenarios and storyboards providing a foundation to synthesize features into logical areas comprising an information architecture and interaction design. User experience concepts will be visualized in the form of paper prototypes as teams explore the relationship between content types, navigational metaphors, and creating a branded experience. Teams will share, critique, and defend their progress.

Key Outcomes

• Five elements of the user experience: strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, surface 
• Design Thinking principles and examples
• Design planning integrated with generative and evaluative research 
• Translation of research insights into design principles 
• The role of metaphor and analogy in design 
• Developing a vision statement and high-level scope for the UX
• Conceptual modeling and descriptive/prospective frameworks 
• Creating context scenarios 
• UX design within agile development 
• Designing for physical + digital experiences 
• Developing skeletal designs with key views and screenflows
• Storyboards: illustrating key path scenarios 
• Paper prototyping 

Design Challenge

Students will create storyboards and screens (app + website) for a virtual lost-and-found: how a ‘finder’ might tag and post a discovered item; how a ‘loser’ might search, identify, authenticate, and retrieve said item. 

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Measuring the User Experience

UX944C

Course Description

The goal of this course is to teach participants how to effectively use a wide variety of usability metrics as part of their everyday work. Participants will learn all the common usability metrics, as well as those that are lesser-known, but equally effective. Participants will learn the strengths and limitations of each metric, when to use (and not use) each, and how to present usability data in a simple yet compelling way. Five distinct types of usability metrics will be covered: Performance, self-reported, issues-based, behavioral/physiological, and combined/comparative metrics. The course will be oriented towards practical use, with a strong emphasis on hands-on exercises and real-world examples.

Key Outcomes

• Develop a broad awareness and understanding of all the different ways to measure the usability and user experience of various products.
• Understand the strengths and limitations of different usability metrics, and under what circumstances different metrics should be considered.
• Examine usability findings in a critical manner, understanding the role metrics play in being able to draw appropriate conclusions.
• Learn how various usability metrics have been used in past research studies with varying levels of success. 
• Use basic statistical techniques, including descriptive statistics, comparing means, analysis of variance, regression/correlations, and Chi-square analysis.
• Analyze a wide variety of usability data, and being able to distill key patterns or trends in the data.
• Develop a sound plan to collect a wide variety of usability metrics, given various time and budget constraints.
• Present and report usability metrics in a clear and persuasive way.
• Value the importance that measurement plays in the user-centered design process, specifically in usability evaluation methods.
• Embrace both qualitative and quantitative research techniques.
• Appreciate a rigorous, scientific approach to usability evaluation methods.

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User Experience for Mobile Devices

UX953C

Course Description

By now, most people we know own a mobile device. But, are people really getting the most from their devices? What is a good user experience for mobile? Do people use their mobile devices differently than desktop computers and systems? This course will teach you how to evaluate and design mobile interfaces, including software apps and hardware devices. Students teams will not only learn to evaluate mobile devices but will generate use cases and scenarios to be used as the basis for understanding the user experience and then testing the devices. Not only will you learn about the latest research and UX techniques for mobile, but you will have the chance to test the devices in our labs.

Key Outcomes

• Know your users and design with them in mind
• Understand the important elements of mobile design
• Keep the design simple
• To make everything easy to find
• To make important functions easy to remember
• Provide immediate feedback for all functions
• Design for multiple platforms with responsive design concepts
• Tests designs with real users, early and often
• Iterate on designs after testing
• Be creative and make it fun
   

Design Challenge

Congratulations! You’ve been hired by your local city to design a recycling app for your district. Using what you have learned in this class, you’ll submit initial wireframes of an end-to-end app experience.

Things to consider:

• Who is the primary user of this app? Define the role and their goals.
• This is a cross-platform app. What, if any, changes need to be made to support both platforms? Design at least 1 of each flows and document the differences.
• What is the onboarding experience for a new user? What is the experience for a re-visiting one? Design at least 1 of each flows.
• What type of information do people need from the app? 

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Emotions and the User Experience

UX961C

Course Description

Emotional engagement is a key component in building customer relationships. Measuring engagement is a challenge, but one that must be met in order to show design success. In this two-day course, you’ll learn how to use and combine advanced research methods to find out how your designs make people feel. We’ll also learn how to use research results to help convince stakeholders that your designs will engage and delight.

Key Outcomes

• Appreciate and communicate the value of user engagement
• Place emotion within a UX interaction model and explain the journey from perception to cognition and action
• Learn how biological perception influences emotion both positively and negatively
• Use a simple method for assessing visual complexity within a user interface
• Learn a simple method for assessing task complexity within a user interface
• Explain the limitations self-report/moderated research
• Learn three methods for conducting desirability testing
• Conduct a Kano feature prioritization exercise and present the results
• Learn about eye tracking, and how to present the results to help support a design decision and build consensus on a project team
• Collect physiometric measurements and correlate them to emotional state to give a complete picture of the journey from perception to cognition and finally to emotion and action

Research Challenge

The final assignment is a short paper (max five pages) in which you describe a use case for applying one or more of the methods we covered to a real-world scenario. Which method(s) would you use and why? How would you use the results to support a recommendation or decision?

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Introduction to Service Design and Journey Mapping

UX963C

Course Description

Service design and journey mapping is focused on gaining insight into the end-to-end customer experience and using those insights to create an exceptional customer experience across all touchpoints. The course will be a combination of lecture, discussion, and hands-on group exercises. This course will share examples across various industries and allow students to create their own service design project using a variety of exploration and design methods. The course will introduce a variety of exploration methods including stakeholder maps, service ecologies, field research, personas, and journey mapping. Design methods will include idea generation, service blueprints, and prototyping. The course will wrap up with a discussion on how to measure the customer experience and overcome challenges to implementation. We hope that students walk away for an appreciation of the power of service design, and how to get started in creating a great customer experience for their organization. 

Key Outcomes

• What is service design and how can I leverage it within my organization?
• What are the strengths and limitations to various exploration and design methods?
• How can I create an impactful journey map?
• What are the different ways I can measure the customer experience (CX) and use the data to create a roadmap for future CX initiatives?

Design Challenge

You will have the opportunity to create one of the following artifacts related to service design: Stakeholder maps, personas, journey maps, service blueprints, prototype, or a metrics plan. In addition to developing the artifact, you will provide a short report (2-3 pages) that provides an explanation of the artifact. Include additional details, target audience, assumptions, next steps, etc. You will be able to choose an artifact that is related to your work, or simply a service you would like to explore and showcase as part of your design or research portfolio.

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Content Strategy - Putting content first in design

UX964C

Introduction

Any digital experience is about creating a conversation with users. Conversations consist of words, tone, even gestures. How can you create a conversation with users without looking at the content of that conversation first? Of course, there are many elements, such as research, analysis, and writing, that go into creating a streamlined, thoughtful conversation. In this course, I’ll walk you through the steps for putting content strategy first in everything you design.

Course Description

Putting content first means implementing a multi-phase design process. Rather than creating a design and filling in the content after the fact, I’ll introduce a way to use a content-based creative approach that will lead you to a human-centered design in the form of wireframes and visuals. We’ll look at the following and more in the content design process:

• Content inventories and audits
• Prevision work including conversation maps and content maps
• A prototype based on your findings
• Testing and iterating on your work
• Creating final designs

Who Should Attend?

Anyone interested in user experience or content strategy, content design, or UX writing, as well as the content curious.

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Qualitative Data Analysis

UX967C

Course Description

Qualitative research has the advantage of providing data that is rich in information and detail. This is balanced by the volume of material you can gather, and how to analyze and package it. Collecting data is only half of the battle; you also need to know how to effectively manage it. This course will introduce students to approaches and strategies for doing qualitative data analysis. Through the use of qualitative data sets (provided by the instructor as well as the opportunity to use your own), the course will explore approaches to qualitative data management, coding, and presentation. Students will learn how to use specific techniques like Content Analysis, Conversation Analysis, Discourse Analysis, and Narrative Analysis. We will examine basic concept of reliability, validity and generalizability in qualitative research, and how to address these concerns. Finally, we will discuss strategies for preparing qualitative data for presentation in written and oral materials. This course is intended for those who are new to qualitative data analysis, as well as those who have some general experience but not using specific approaches covered in this course. Persons taking the course will leave better knowing how to structure their qualitative data so that they can deliver greater value and impact from its collection and use.

Key Outcomes

• How to manage qualitative data sets
• Ways to incorporate qualitative data and quantitative data together
• Specific techniques used to analyze qualitative data
• Computer programs to help in qualitative data analysis
• Issues of reliability, validity, and generalizability in qualitative data
• How to communicate text-rich data to audiences

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Customer Experience

UX968C

Course Description

As User Experience professionals, we typically spend our days designing or researching the way that an end user interacts with one or more products. Increasingly, UX activities are extending to “customer experience”, in an effort to get a richer picture of how our end users engage with every part of a service or product. Customer Experience encompasses not only user experience, but also every touchpoint between the customer and our products, services, and brand. These touchpoints can include emails, product packaging, onboarding, technical support, payment processes, return processes, physical stores, and can even extend as far as marketing campaigns, color palettes, and Super Bowl ads.

In the past we worked in silos, away from other groups in the organization, such as Strategy, Marketing, Sales, and Technical Support. Now, it’s more common for our activities to overlap and for us to partner with one another. That partnership allows us to create a deeper understanding of our users and to align on how we engage them.

In this course, we’ll start by defining delight using the Kano Model and Hancock’s Hierarchy, so we have a shared understanding of what factors can impact a customer’s perception of our product or service. Then we’ll talk about data collection instruments, including analytics, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and event-based surveys, as well as methods for analyzing that data. For example, we’ll see how confidence intervals can be used to determine whether we should be concerned when our average customer satisfaction score goes from an 8.2 to an 8.0. Beyond the numbers, you’ll learn how to segment and analyze qualitative data to quantify items that contribute to user dis/satisfaction, whether that data comes from ethnographic studies or write-in comments from surveys.

Next, we’ll explore methods to create personas to help us understand which of our users is interacting in which ways across which touchpoints. We’ll articulate the highs and lows of a customer experience by creating a customer Journey Map. And finally, we’ll use a lightweight Design Thinking / Design Sprint activity to come up with an approach to better meet their needs.

Key Outcomes

• Articulate the difference between customer delight, satisficing, and basic expectations
• Learn what types of instruments are used to collect customer satisfaction data
• Articulate the strengths and weaknesses of customer satisfaction surveys, such as NPS
• Practice analyzing both quantitative and qualitative satisfaction data
• Learn different methods for creating personas that will resonate with stakeholders
• Articulate how a single set of personas for a company or organization can be beneficial
• Articulate the pros and cons between different persona development methods
• Learn how to create journey maps, both static and interactive
• Gain hands-on practice with a lightweight design thinking / design studio activity to come up with new solutions for customer pain points

Design Challenge:

The course assignment gives you three options for creating a portfolio-worthy artifact by building on the exercises conducted in class. You'll choose one of three activities to take further: (1) create a journey map to deliver to the client organization, (2) create a prototype that resulted from the design thinking activity in class, test it, and write up the results or (3) document the proto-personas created in class and create a plan to validate them for the client organization.

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Conversational Design 

UX970C

Course Description

Conversation is the exchange of information by language. Conversation Design is the process of designing a natural, two-way interaction between a user and a system (voice or text) based on the principles of human to human conversation. For a conversation to take place, two speakers have a shared mental model and communicate their goals, questions, intentions and emotion. These principles form the basis of good conversation design. Examples of conversational interfaces include voice interfaces like IVRs and voice assistants, and text interfaces such as interactive SMS and chatbots. This course will introduce you to conversational user interface design as a human-centered design discipline.  Through readings, discussion, and exercises, as well as the analysis and evaluation of a conversational interface, you will get a feel for what conversational design is, its limits, and the tradeoffs it entails when designing such a system. You will learn how to research, design, and prototype a simple conversational interaction system.

Key Outcomes

• Learn how to write natural and intuitive conversations.
• Avoid common mistakes when writing machine-drive conversations.
• Learn the human capabilities & limitations you need to accommodate when designing for conversation compared to screen design.
• Learn how to write sample dialogs and flow diagrams to illustrate the user experience.
• Learn the basics of how speech recognition and natural language systems work.
• Learn how to prototype both voice interaction and chatbot systems.
• Learn how to evaluate a conversational system with a usability study.

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Facilitating Remote Design Workshops

UX969C

Course Description

Collaborating effectively with a distributed team is a core skill for UX designers to adapt to the emerging trend of remote teams. It is not uncommon for companies to now have design teams scattered over multiple offices, and even more common for designers to work with business and engineering partners in a different location. A key characteristic of designers who go on to become leaders is the ability to deeply collaborate with stakeholders via design studios or collaborative design workshops. This course will cover the tools, methods, and processes that you can use to become a successful remote design workshop facilitator.

Key Outcomes

• Recognize the different types of remote teams, and how to approach design facilitation  
• Practice building an agenda for a remote design workshop
• Practice using facilitator tools in common online whiteboard software (Miro / Mural), as well as common video conferencing software (zoom)
• How to engage physical senses (or our right brains) to mimic “sketching and whiteboarding”
• Learn how to “read the room” and keep folks engaged while remote

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Internationalization and the User Experience

UX932C

Course Description

This course introduces you to the theory and practice of localizing product designs, including documentation, web hardware and software designs, and training programs. Moving beyond issues of translation, this course discusses localization from a comprehensive intercultural psychology perspective that includes language, verbal vs. visual presentation styles, communication patterns, issues of time and disclosure, and local customs. We also demonstrate techniques for engineering a culturally neutral global core for each aspect of your product design.

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A Human Factors and Usability Framework for Medical Device Design

Course Description

This four-day program presents a comprehensive human factors and usability engineering framework for medical device manufacturers. This program helps device designers address the new and more demanding FDA guidelines related to risk management processes. In addition to considering FDA guidelines addressing patient safety, this course also focuses on the contribution of an effective user experience to the ultimate success of a given product offering in the marketplace.

Topics will be presented through discussion, case studies, and interactive workshops. When delivered in your development organization, elements of your use environment can be integrated in course discussions.

The FDA and an increasingly competitive marketplace have defined an ever-expanding role for human factors and usability engineering. Our instructors will offer a proactive approach to integrating these critical perspectives in device design and will contrast our strategy to the more common ad-hoc, late-in-development input or testing.

Key Outcomes

Human Factors Topics

• Examining the user's physical, perceptual, or cognitive abilities and how they align with the required interaction
• Defining and addressing implications of user profiles and understanding critical differences in capabilities between user populations
• Capturing task and process routines with a goal of enhancing ease-of-learning, improving performance and reducing errors
• Considering the use environment and how it affects performance, errors, and fatigue
• Mapping the device use to the user's expectations or prior knowledge about device operation
• Anticipating unexpected behaviors affecting performance or safety
• Adopting performance support measures to reduce errors, optimize performance, and minimize user workload

Usability Engineering Topics

• Designing and implementing ethnographic studies
• Conducting user research including interviews, observation, focus groups and surveys
• Moving from research to effective user requirements
• Balancing user, technical, and regulatory requirements
• Implementing requirements through participatory prototyping (high and low fidelity);
• Evaluating interaction design through formative and summative testing procedures
• Preparing a human factors and usability engineering report.

Cost

Contact for pricing and minimum class size. Discounts are available for larger groups. We encourage broad participation in this program including product managers, project managers, representatives from the engineering team, industrial designers, and members of your UX/usability team.

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