Become a UX Designer from Scratch
How This Course Will Help Your Career
What You’ll Learn
- An introduction to the main areas of user experience work, and why it matters
- The various UX roles in an organization
- How to create UX deliverables—with downloadable templates on creating personas, customer journey maps, prototypes, and many more
- How to go through the five stages of the design thinking process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test
- How to start building a UX portfolio to land yourself a UX role
- The confidence to work with clients as a UX consultant
If you want to join one of the most rapidly growing fields in design, then look no further—this is the course for you. Through covering the ins and outs of the role, and throwing the doors wide open to the exciting world of UX design, “Become a UX Designer from Scratch” will take things right back to the beginning; it will offer a ‘hard reset’ in order to show you how to embark on a new career in UX design.
All products, whether digital or otherwise, must deliver a high-quality user experience (UX) or risk losing users to competitors—after all, a product is useless without its users! Products with good UX sell better; in fact, design-centric businesses have consistently outperformed the industry average by more than double, according to the Design Management Institute. Demand for UX designers is therefore higher than ever before; they are already prevalent in tech companies, and there is a growing need for them within other industries. UX impacts UI design, web design, and graphic design, and understanding the field of UX will improve your efforts within all of those areas.
Through this course, you will learn all the skills you need to assist companies in delivering the right UX for their products. All techniques included in the teaching are tried-and-tested industry standards, which will equip you with the very best knowledge to start you off on your new professional path. You will learn how to create various UX deliverables from the beginning of a UX project right to the end, ranging from customer journey maps to paper prototypes and even heuristic evaluations. You will also take your first steps towards creating a UX portfolio—something that will truly make an impact on your UX job applications.
You will also find a number of optional exercises and home assignments that build on one another and follow a design process—from the first idea, right through to the point where you can start testing your prototype. We highly recommend that you take up the challenge and complete all the exercises involved, because not only will you get hands-on experience with UX design but, by the end, you will also have a design case study that you can include in your portfolio.
In “Become a UX Designer from Scratch”, you will gain access to interviews with UX hiring managers and experts from companies such as SAP and Google. Through these interviews, you will understand what hiring managers and senior designers look for when hiring a new member of the team—all so that you can gain an advantage over fellow candidates. We have also filmed a series of interviews with members who have successfully landed a UX job. These will provide you with inspiration for your own career prospects, as well as invaluable advice about how to transition into a career in UX and what daily life as a UX professional really looks like.
Wait no longer to begin your professional UX career!
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Is This Course Right for You?
This is a beginner-level course suitable for anyone who wants to embark on a career in UX design:
- UX designers, interaction designers, and UI designers looking to build effective portfolios and land their next UX job
- Students keen on becoming UX designers or UX consultants
- Entrepreneurs and business owners interested in conducting UX work on their own products or services
- Anyone aspiring to change into a career in the field of UX
Learn and Work with a Global Team of Designers
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 design.
Lessons in This Course
- Each week, one lesson becomes available.
- There’s no time limit to finish a course. Lessons have no deadlines.
- Estimated learning time: 17 hours 26 mins spread over 5 weeks.
Lesson 0: Welcome and Introduction
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0.1: Welcome and Introduction – Become a UX Designer from Scratch (9 mins)
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0.2: An introduction to courses from the Interaction Design Foundation (37 mins)
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0.3: Let our community help you (1 min)
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0.4: How to Earn Your Course Certificate (16 mins)
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0.5: Meet your peers online in our discussion forums (6 mins)
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0.6: Meet and learn from design professionals at an upcoming meet-up (1 min)
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0.7: Gain Timeless Knowledge Through Courses From the Interaction Design Foundation (21 mins)
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0.8: Mandatory vs. Optional Lesson Items (7 mins)
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0.9: A Mix Between Video-Based and Text-Based Lesson Content (8 mins)
Lesson 1: Starting your UX career – What is UX and What do UX Designers do?
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1.1: Welcome and Introduction (8 mins)
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1.2: What is UX Design? (45 mins)
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1.3: Why is UX Design so Important (16 mins)
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1.4: 7 Key Factors of UX (21 mins)
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1.5: Basics of Interaction Design (25 mins)
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1.6: An Introduction to Usability (20 mins)
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1.7: What is a UX Portfolio? (25 mins)
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1.8: 7 UX Deliverables: What will I be making as a UX designer? (38 mins)
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1.9: How to adopt the right attitude towards your UX work (19 mins)
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1.10: What Skills do UX Hirers Look for in an Applicant. Interview with UX lead at Google, Stephen Gay (41 mins)
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1.11: Discussion forum (6 mins)
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1.12: Learning More About UX Design (8 mins)
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1.13: Congratulations and Recap (6 mins)
Lesson 2: Top strategies to help you tackle UX design projects
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2.1: Welcome and Introduction (8 mins)
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2.2: Human Centered Design (25 mins)
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2.3: What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular? (31 mins)
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2.4: Activity-Centred Design: Interaction Design Approaches (37 mins)
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2.5: How to do a Google Design Sprint (30 mins)
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2.6: Understanding users through their activities (7 mins)
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2.7: Why You Should Analyze Your Competition to Design Better Solutions and How to Do It (24 mins)
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2.8: Learning More about UX Design Strategies (17 mins)
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2.9: Home Assignment for the Next Lesson (4 mins)
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2.10: Congratulations and Recap (6 mins)
Lesson 3: How to build your first UX design from start to finish, part 1: Empathize and Define
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3.1: Welcome and Introduction (7 mins)
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3.2: 5 Stages in the Interaction Design Process (32 mins)
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3.3: Learn to Prioritize in Your Interaction Design Process (22 mins)
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3.4: Stage 1 in the Design Thinking Process: Empathise with Your Users (28 mins)
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3.5: Pros and Cons of Conducting User Interviews (1 hour 17 mins)
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3.6: Personas (45 mins)
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3.7: Using Personas to Build User Empathy (7 mins)
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3.8: Customer Journey Maps - Walking a Mile in Your Customer’s Shoes (15 mins)
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3.9: Exercise: Building customer journey maps (7 mins)
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3.10: Discussion Forum (6 mins)
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3.11: Congratulations and Recap (27 mins)
Lesson 4: How to build your first UX design from start to finish, part 2: Ideate, Prototype, and Test
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4.1: Welcome and Introduction (6 mins)
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4.2: Learn How to Use the Best Ideation Methods: SCAMPER (22 mins)
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4.3: Learn How to Use the Best Ideation Methods: Analogies (15 mins)
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4.4: Exercise - SCAMPER (7 mins)
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4.5: Why You Need to Prototype and How to Start off Right (21 mins)
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4.6: Paper Prototyping (12 mins)
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4.7: Exercise – Building a low-fidelity paper prototype (8 mins)
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4.8: 4 Types of Evaluation (30 mins)
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4.9: Expert Evaluation (24 mins)
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4.10: Discussion forum (7 mins)
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4.11: Home Assignment – User Evaluation (15 mins)
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4.12: Learning More About Designing a Website or an App (15 mins)
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4.13: Congratulations and Recap (6 mins)
Lesson 5: Create your first UX portfolio and wrap up
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5.1: Welcome and Introduction (2 mins)
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5.2: 3 Reasons Why You Should Have a UX Design Portfolio (15 mins)
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5.3: Learn How to Create Your First UX Portfolio (2 mins)
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5.4: Wrap-Up and Where to Go From Here (10 mins)
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5.5: Make Use of Our Local Groups to Build Your Professional Network (5 mins)
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5.6: Congratulations and Recap (9 mins)
Lesson 6: Course Certificate and Final Networking
Learning Paths
This course is part of 2 learning paths:
How Others Have Benefited
Seth Lemon, United States
“The lessons are clear and easy to understand. The content in the lessons are thoroughly explained, and there's a good balance between video content vs. text content. This really is a intro or UX 101 course, which I really appreciated.”
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, 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.”
How It Works
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Take lessons by industry experts
Lessons are self-paced so you’ll never be late for class or miss a deadline.
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Get a Course Certificate
Your answers are graded by experts, not machines. Get an industry-recognized Course Certificate to prove your skills.
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Advance your career
Use your new skills in your existing job or to get a new job in UX design. Tap into our community to help you.
Start Advancing Your Career Now
Join us to take “Become a UX Designer from Scratch”. Take other courses at no additional cost. Make a concrete step forward in your career path today.
Advance my career nowFrequently Asked Questions
When I finish a course, do I have to pay extra to get my certificate?
Can I take more than one course at a time?
With a Student membership, you can take a maximum of two courses at the same time. You can still take as many courses as you would like – free of extra charges – just as long as you finish or drop them so that you don’t have more than two ongoing courses.
I missed the enrollment, and now the course is closed. What can I do?
Don't worry if you missed the course. We will re-run it shortly. One of the reasons we continually open and close courses is in order to control the classroom size.
Networking is a large part of our value proposition, so we want just the right number of people inside the courses. That is also why we display the "XX % percent booked" on our course icons.
Do I have to be online at an exact time to study?
No. You can set your own study schedule. There are no "live sessions" since we have members from all timezones around the world. We are a truly global community.
Thus, once you are enrolled, you can take all the time to complete a given course. Every "classroom" in each course will never close, so you’ll have permanent access to your classmates and your course material (as well as your own answers).
Will I receive a Course Certificate?
Yes. You will get a digital industry-recognized course certificate every time you complete a course. Certificates never expire and can be saved as a .jpg file, so it's easy to be shared. Also, there is no limit to how many certificates you can earn during your membership.
You can see an example of a Course Certificate at the bottom of the Course Catalogue.
I have answered questions in a lesson; when will they be marked/graded?
I have updated my name, but my course certificate is not updated — how can I change it?
I have started my course later than the specified date, are my answers still going to be marked?
Sure! We will be marking all your answers for as long as you are an active member.
How are courses graded?
For how long will I have access to the course materials?
You will have access to the course materials for the entire duration of your membership. So, if you pay for a one-year membership, you will have access for one year. Renewing your membership for a second year means you will have access to one more year, and so on.
New lessons are starting before I have completed the previous lesson(s). Am I going to be locked out of these unfinished lessons?
No, you will not be locked out of any lesson or course. You will have access to all course materials throughout your membership, so there is no pressure to keep at the same pace as the specified lesson release dates.
All we recommend is that you try to stick to the same schedule as other participants. The reason is they may have moved on to other lessons, thereby meaning you could miss out on the social aspects of the course(s).
Do I have a specific date to award my certificates?
No, you can generate your certificate as soon as you score at least 70% of the total course points.
When will I receive my Course Certificate?
Course certificates will be given to participants when they have scored more than 70% or more of the total course points. For example, if a course contains ten lessons each with ten questions, you will receive a course certificate when the instructor has awarded you at least 70 points (70% of the total course points).
There is no specified time that certificates will be awarded — instead, they are given to participants as and when they have answered all questions, even if this is long after the official end date.
How do I add my Certificate to my LinkedIn profile?
- Log in to your LinkedIn account, then go to your profile.
- On the right, in the Add profile section dropdown, choose Background and then select the + next to Licenses & Certifications.
3. In the following fields add:
- Name – Course name
- Issuing organization – The Interaction Design Foundation
- Check the field “This credential does not expire”
- Issue date - Input the date written on your certificate (e.g., May 2021)
- Credential ID – Your membership ID number (it's written on your certificate)
- Credential URL: Input the certificate URL provided on your course page
4. Click the Save button.
Congratulate yourself! Earning the certificate is a great accomplishment and now you can share it with the world!
How do I add the Interaction Design Foundation Membership Certificate to my LinkedIn Profile?
- Log in to your LinkedIn account, then go to your profile.
- Bellow your profile description,in the Add profile section dropdown, choose Background and then select the + next to Licenses & Certifications.
3. In the following fields add:
- Name – Membership Certificate
- Issuing organization – The Interaction Design Foundation
- Check the field “This credential does not expire”
- Issue date - Input the date when you joined our community (e.g., May 2019)
- Credential ID – Your membership ID number (it's written on your certificate)
- Credential URL: Input the certificate URL provided on your profile page
4. Click the Save button.
How much will I have to pay for the courses?
After you pay for your membership, you can take as many courses as you want with no additional costs. There are no further charges on top of the membership fee.
Do you provide mostly beginners' or more advanced courses?
How long does it take to complete a course?
You will need approximately 5-8 hours to complete one lesson. Each course has between 3 and 16 lessons.
Once enrolled in a course, you will gain access to a new lesson each week, which you are free to complete without any deadlines and no end date, either.