Diploma in UX Design from the UX Design Institute
My Diploma
I wanted to brush up on my UX design skills that I already have from my BSc in Digital Media Design from the University of Limerick and felt that this Diploma would be a great fit as it is designed to be at your own pace and self taught which suits me best as I work full time. This Diploma focused more on the UX design process rather than the quality of the UI.
The diploma is split up into 12 different modules; Introduction to UX, User Research, User Goals, Structure and Navigation, Interactions, Design Principles, Design Patterns, Mobile, Workflows and Prototyping and wire framing. There is also a final exam at the end.
The main goal of this course is to teach you how to to conduct user research through to final high fidelity prototypes with the main focus of airline websites and creating my own without all the pain points that are currently in the most popular like Ryan Air, Aer Lingus etc.
Update
I have successfully completed the course with an overall score of 80% and passed my final Exam ! My Diploma is viewable here :)
Overview of the Modules undertaken in this course
The project
The goal of this project was to create a new budget airline website or app from scratch and follow the UX design process while doing this. This means doing all of the research, testing, user flows and prototyping.
Please see an overview of some of the projects I completed below!
Note taking
For this project I was tasked with taking notes on 2 pre-recorded user testing sessions on airlines to find out their pain points, what they liked and any other interesting observations. I then complied these observations and colour coded and sorted through them to make them easy to understand and have any important points stand out.
Here is the document I ended up submitting for this assignment which I received 100% in!
Usability test
This project required me to conduct my own user experience test on 2 airline websites. I conducted this test over zoom as it was not feasible to conduct it in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I had to set up the zoom call, recruit someone to be in the user test and create a talk through sheet of questions, prompts and any other important things I wanted to gather from this test.
AFFINITY DIAGRAM
For this project I had to create an affinity diagram from the research gathered in my previous 2 projects. I had to share this information with another person and get them to help me create sticky notes of all points and gather and sort them into correct categories.
Customer Journey map
For this task I had to define the high level steps of a customer journey with help from project 5. I had to document the goal of the user at each step, any pain points and any other notable behaviours including what the website was not doing that it should. I then had to assess whether the full experience was positive or negative.
User Flow
This project required me to create a user flow graph from all of the information I had gathered so far. It allowed me to see which steps of the application would lead to the next
It made sure that when I developed my final prototype that I did not miss anything or forget any important steps
Low Fidelity/ Sketches
Project 8 was focused on creating my initial design and sketches for how I would like my application to look. I incorporated all of the research and feedback I had received from all of my previous projects and layout out roughly how I would like my design to look. These low fidelity sketches would then be transposed and built upon for my medium fidelity design
Medium Fidelity Prototype
Project 9 Required me to transpose my Low Fidelity Prototype into a medium Fidelity Prototype. I decided to use Adobe XD as it is the Software I am most comfortable with. I made sure to include all feedback from my past research and user feedback. I then added interactions between each screen to show how the functionality of each feature would act and perform
Wireframe
My final Project was to create a wireframe that would be given to the developers to develop my website. This was a combination of my medium fidelity prototype along with annotations to describe how each button, slider, picker and field would work and react to an interaction. This was really enjoyable to do as I got to explain my thought process behind everything and how I would imagine it would work when in use.
Final thoughts
I really enjoyed this Diploma. It was great to brush up on my UX design skills. However as this process was not focused on UI design that much, I feel like I would like to go back and redo my UI design when I have more time.