UXD - User Experience Design
Certificate Course

Program Overview

User Experience isn’t just about making interfaces “easy and engaging to use” – it’s about business. As expectations for mobile, web and interactive experiences rise, successful companies are no longer viewing UX as a nice-to-have, side-priority initiative. They have embraced UX as a fundamental strategy to achieve their business goals. To create truly successful and engaging experiences, you need to understand their audience needs and motivations, the ecosystem in which the audience is interacting, and align those to the goals of your business.

This growing strategic UX mindset has evolved alongside recent discussion in the UX industry around Agile/LeanUX thinking and practice. This is in part a recognition that the pace of business, and the UX methods that inform it, are evolving quickly. To keep up with the competition, flexible and pragmatic approaches to advancing UX are often required.

Case in point: the market for UX skills has never been greater, with a noted talent shortage in 2012. So if you are looking to add or enhance UX skills to support your current role, trying to bring UXD into your organization, or considering the field of UX as a career-move, the Rutgers UXD Mini-Masters course is for you.

Led by a multi-disciplinary team of instructors from industry, business, and academia, you will learn everything from research techniques and design best practices to the underlying psychology and sociology that guides user design. You ‘learn by doing' in a simulated project team environment that progresses throughout the course week, enabling you to practice the techniques with direct coaching from instructors. As previous course attendees attest, you will learn how to apply UXD into your business using methods that are immediately transferable to your daily job.

Students who successfully complete this course will receive a Mini-Masters Certificate in UXD from RATE. Coursework can be applied to the Masters in Business and Science (MBS) UXD concentration offered at Rutgers. CEU credits are also available.

Who Should Attend?

This program is designed for a wide variety of professionals, including business analysts, market researchers, project managers, software engineers, programmers, designers, executives/managers from IT, Marketing and Business. Anyone involved in the design and development of software, products, and services can benefit from this course. It assumes no prior background in psychology, sociology, human factors, or the disciplines that form the basis for the course content.

Skills You Will Acquire

This course provides lecture and project based instruction. Over a fun and intense six-day course, you will form project teams to tackle a unique and interesting business objective. Immersed in an actual business project environment, complete with client stakeholders and deliverables, your and your team will directly apply course principles to your project. Each course project uses real-world examples: students will work with both actual physical products as well as building a supporting online property. Ultimately, whether you are developing a product, a web interface, a mobile app, or a new workflow, this course will “weaponize” you with the skills you need to ensure the experience you create supports the bottom-line business goals.

Upon completion of this program, you will be able to:

• Research, analyze, and present UX findings and recommendations
• Understand the value of UXD and how to include it as an integral part of the software life cycle at your company
• Apply UXD principles in your current role (e.g. Business Analysts will learn how to collect and apply contextual and workflow design requirements to requirements gathering)
• Quantify usability of an interface by formulating and measuring usability requirements
• Understand and apply user interface engineering principles that guide the design of an interface
• Select appropriate prototyping methods and/or software and construct rapid prototypes
• Participate in formative usability evaluation and apply the results to redesign
• Speak the language of UXD to business and IT teams, which helps ensure software excellence while demonstrating personal credibility
• Advocate and evangelize UXD in your team and organization

Program Outline

The program is composed of lectures and a project organized into six course modules. It draws on examples from real projects, told firsthand by instructors who have brought UXD to all stages of Product and Software Development. 

Module 1: UXD Basics

  • Intro to UXD
  • The UXD Lifecycle
  • 5 Simple Rules of UX
  • Applying the 5 Simple Rules

Module 2: Contextual Inquiry

  • Contextual Design
  • Solving a Design Problem

Module 3: Psychology of Design

  • Bridging the Art and the Science of Design
  • Interaction Design
  • Sketching the User Interface

Module 4: Interface Prototyping Techniques

  • Paper Prototyping
  • Prototyping with Software Toolkits
  • High-Level Prototyping Tools

Module 5: Usability Evaluation

  • Usability Study Preparation
  • Usability Testing Techniques

 

Module 6: Designing for Accessibility

  • Usability Study Preparation
  • Usability Testing Techniques

 

Concentrated Short Course Certificate Programs

Our mini-Masters certificate program offers: An overview of the key concepts, tools, and techniques that are required to succeed in today’s challenging technology environment. The programs feature focused learning experiences and case studies centered on vital subject areas in technology and software. Each program is focused on in depth investigations into both the technology and business strategies necessary for today’s professionals.

Please contact us for more information.

Text Book

Course materials and handouts will be provided.

Additional Information

Free iPad Included!

The third-generation iPad from Apple is thin, light and faster.  It is 33% thinner and 15% lighter than the original iPad yet includes a new Dual Core A5X processor that makes the new iPad blazing fast.  The new retina display has a million more pixels than a standard HDTV, and the new 5 megapixel iSight camera shoots video in HD.  The New iPad (16GB) with Wi-Fi is included with this course!