If you’re a designer or developer wanting to learn more about user experience (UX) design, it’s hard to know where to start.
Do you take college courses, seminars, or multi-day workshops? What about the thousands of online resources for learning user experience?
With all the various options, where do you start?
If you’re an online learner, have limited time (who doesn’t?), and have never learned the fundamentals of user experience design, the free online UX courses by Joel Marsh are a good place to start.
He’s created two crash courses, each with 31 daily lessons.
Each lesson focuses on one UX concept, easily digestible content, that will further your understanding of UX design.
The lessons are short, some take less than two minutes to read. Each lesson will have you reflecting on your work and considering ways you can improve the experience for your users.
Last January, I discovered Joel’s first course, UX Crash Course: 31 Fundamentals, which gives you an overview of the fundamentals of UX.
His latest crash course, UX Crash Course: User Psychology offers a look at designing for behavior.
I took both courses and found them to be a good introduction to UX fundamentals. I had a few concerns:
- I wish there were more case studies or examples in the lessons.
- Making it difficult (answer two pages of questions) for someone to cancel a service/product is not something I recommend.
- Adding source links to his statements would have be useful
It’s been shown that app ratings and book reviews are most-trusted when they do not have all 5-stars
However, given the focus of both courses, I think Joel achieved his goals of providing an overview of UX principles.
Here’s what’s covered in both of his courses:
UX Crash Course: 31 Fundamentals
Introduction & Key Ideas
- Lesson 1: What is UX?
- Lesson 2: User Goals & Business Goals
- Lesson 3: The 5 Main Ingredients of UX
How to Understand Users
- Lesson 4: What is User Research?
- Lesson 5: How to Ask People Questions
- Lesson 6: Creating User Profiles
- Lesson 7: Designing for Devices
- Lesson 8: Design Patterns
Information Architecture
- Lesson 9: What is Information Architecture?
- Lesson 10: User Stories & Types of Information Architecture
- Lesson 11: What is a Wireframe?
Visual Design Principles
- Lesson 12: Visual Weight, Contrast & Depth
- Lesson 13: Colour
- Lesson 14: Repetition & Pattern-Breaking
- Lesson 15: Line Tension & Edge Tension
- Lesson 16: Alignment & Proximity
Functional Layout Design
- Lesson 17: Z-Pattern, F-Pattern, and Visual Hierarchy
- Lesson 18: Browsing vs. Searching vs. Discovery
- Lesson 19: Page Framework
- Lesson 20: The Fold, Images, & Headlines
- Lesson 21: The Axis of Interaction
- Lesson 22: Forms
- Lesson 23: Calls-to-Action, Instructions & Labels
- Lesson 24: Primary & Secondary Buttons
User Psychology
- Lesson 25: Conditioning
- Lesson 26: Persuasion
- Lesson 27: How Experience Changes Experience
Designing with Data
- Lesson 28: What is Data?
- Lesson 29: Summary Statistics
- Lesson 30: Graph Shapes
- Lesson 31: A/B Tests
UX Crash Course: User Psychology
- Lesson 1: What is User Psychology?
- Lesson 2: Your Perspective
- Lesson 3: The 3 Whats of User Perspective
- Lesson 4: Psychology vs. Culture
Behaviour Basics
- Lesson 5: What is an Experience?
- Lesson 6: Conscious vs. Subconscious Experience
- Lesson 7: Emotions
- Lesson 8: What are Motivations?
- Lesson 9: Motivations 1: Sex & Love
- Lesson 10: Motivations 2: Affiliation, Status & Justice
- Lesson 11: Motivations 3: Understanding (Curiosity)
Designing Behaviour
- Lesson 12: Designing with Intention
- Lesson 13: Rewards & Punishments
- Lesson 14: Conditioning & Addiction
- Lesson 15: Gamification
- Lesson 16: Social & Viral Structure
- Lesson 17: Creating Trust
The Limits of Our Minds
- Lesson 18: What is Intuition?
- Lesson 19: What is a Cognitive Bias?
- Lesson 20: The Illusion of Choice
- Lesson 21: Attention
- Lesson 22: Memory
- Lesson 23: Hyperbolic Discounting: The backbone of usability
The Psychology of Usability
- Lesson 24: What is Usability, Really?
- Lesson 25: Simple vs. Easy vs. Fast vs. Minimal
- Lesson 26: Consistency & Expectations
- Lesson 27: Anti-UX
Measuring Psychology
- Lesson 28: Can You Measure a Soul?
- Lesson 29: The Probability of Interaction
- Lesson 30: Structure vs. Choice
- Lesson 31: Sometimes A/B Testing is The Only Way to Know
Additional Resources
Once you get a taste of what user experience design is about, check out these resources for learning more about UX and careers in UX:
- User Experience Career Advice: How to Learn UX and Get a Job
- My Advice for Becoming a UX Designer
- How to Get Started in User Experience
Do you have online resources you recommend to developers and designers stepping into user experience for the first time? Share them in the comments.
