Design for Thought and Emotion
How This Course Will Transform Your Career
In This Course, You'll
Get excited as you create products and experiences that go beyond functionality to connect deeply with people. You'll discover how people think, act, and feel—and learn to design products and services they don't just use, but love. More love, more impact, greater salary potential. The principles of thought and emotion in design are not industry-specific—they're about people. Whether you work in healthcare, gaming, education, or finance, skills in human-centered design empower you to create products, services, and experiences people trust and are eager to share. Your new human-centered skills are timeless and confidently future-proof your career as AI advances.
Make yourself invaluable by mastering the psychology of thought and emotion to design experiences that make a real impact and convert. Studies show that companies that increased their human-centered design spending saw a lower cost of acquisition (74%), increased retention (79%), and increased market share (95%). You'll bring down high bounce and drop-off rates once you understand how people think and feel. You'll design intuitive experiences and products people care about and want to come back to. You'll know what drives people's decisions and turn frustrating interactions into joyful ones. Stand out as someone who creates measurable business success with solutions people love and advocate for.
Gain confidence and credibility as you build a portfolio that impresses employers, clients, and hiring managers. Apply your new skills immediately with downloadable templates like the Hierarchy of User Experience Needs, which empower you to transform existing technology or services into solutions that deliver a peak emotional experience. It's easier than you think! Even if you're new to design, you can effortlessly master Design for Thought and Emotion. If you complete the optional hands-on exercises, you'll walk away with polished, portfolio-ready case studies that showcase your new skills. You'll analyze enjoyable and frustrating interfaces, conduct casual user research, and create niche personas. You'll become familiar with thought-to-action pathways and design intuitive, effortless systems people love.
It's Easy to Fast-Track Your Career with the World's Best Experts
Master complex skills effortlessly with proven best practices and toolkits directly from the world's top design experts. Meet your expert for this course:
Alan Dix: Author of the bestselling book “Human-Computer Interaction” and Director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University.
Gain an Industry-Recognized UX Course Certificate
Use your industry-recognized Course Certificate on your resume, CV, LinkedIn profile or your website.
Our courses and Course Certificates are trusted by these industry leaders:
Why Learn Design for Thought and Emotion?
Design for Thought and Emotion falls under the umbrella term of User Experience (UX) design. UX design is your fast-track to a meaningful, secure, and rewarding career.
Worried You'll Lose Your Job to AI? UX Design Skills Make You AI-Proof
UX design builds on your core human strengths such as emotional intelligence, deep human understanding, critical thinking, intuition, and imagination.
AI can't replicate your uniquely human ability to design for real emotions and needs such as joy, comfort, curiosity, safety, and a sense of belonging. These deeply human insights are your superpowers. With UX design skills, you'll turn them into products and experiences people truly love. You become irreplaceable, confident and in demand.
And yes, we'll also show you how to use AI to accelerate your results.
Feeling Stuck in the 9–5? Design Your Freedom
Tired of feeling undervalued, anxious, or trapped in your career? UX design skills open doors to freedom, flexibility, remote work, and a career you're excited about—without starting from scratch.
Stop wondering if you could be more. Start realizing your full potential today.
UX Design is Booming: Accelerate Your Career to Higher Salaries and Impact Across All Jobs and Industries
Salaries for people with design skills are soaring, often surpassing $200K in cities like San Francisco, and job growth is strong (13% globally). Why? Because companies thrive when their users are happy. Companies that invest in great design outperform the S&P 500 Index by a whopping 228%.
Design a Life You Love
Great design is all about helping people meet their needs and achieve their goals through intuitive, meaningful, and delightful experiences. Skills in design will empower you to create experiences and products that make people's lives easier and more fulfilling. And when people love what you create, your business thrives, and your salary potential grows. You get the ultimate double win:
You'll feel deeply fulfilled by designing experiences and products people love.
You'll be financially rewarded for your real-world impact.
Course Overview: What You'll Master
- Each week, one lesson becomes available.
- There's no time limit to finish a course. Lessons have no deadlines.
- Estimated learning time: 10 hours 15 mins spread over 4 weeks.
Lesson 0: Welcome and Introduction
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0.1: Get Help, Career Advice, and Job Opportunities (1 min)
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0.2: How to Get Your Course Certificate (16 mins)
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0.3: Grow Your Global Network and Build Your Brand (11 mins)
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0.4: Global Skills, Local Jobs: Build Your Network in Your Area (1 min)
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0.5: Gain Timeless Skills Through Courses from IxDF (21 mins)
Lesson 1: Welcome to Lesson 1 of Design for Thought and Emotion
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1.1: Welcome to Design for Thought and Emotion (39 mins)
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1.2: Conscious Thought (16 mins)
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1.3: Thought to Action (30 mins)
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1.4: Human Error (24 mins)
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1.5: Knowledge in the World (50 mins)
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1.6: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (6 mins)
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1.7: Congratulations and Recap (2 mins)
Lesson 2: Emotion and Experience
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2.1: Welcome and Introduction (1 min)
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2.2: Emotion Matters (12 mins)
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2.3: Why User Experience? (28 mins)
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2.4: Emotion in Interfaces (30 mins)
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2.5: Emotion and Motivation (25 mins)
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2.6: Emotion in the Home (20 mins)
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2.7: Social Experiences (24 mins)
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2.8: How Emotions Work (34 mins)
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2.9: Design for Optimal Experience (55 mins)
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2.10: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (6 mins)
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2.11: Build Your Portfolio: Optimal Experience (8 mins)
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2.12: Congratulations and Recap (2 mins)
Lesson 3: Experience and Enchantment
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3.1: Welcome and Introduction (1 min)
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3.2: The Nature of Experience (16 mins)
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3.3: Transforming Emotional Experience (22 mins)
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3.4: Design for Peak Experience (20 mins)
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3.5: Extended Episodic Experience (18 mins)
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3.6: Theory of Extended Episodic Experience (1 hour 11 mins)
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3.7: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (6 mins)
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3.8: Build Your Portfolio: Peak Experience (9 mins)
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3.9: Congratulations and Recap (2 mins)
Lesson 4: Course Certificate, Final Networking, and Course Wrap-up
How Others Have Benefited
Andy Gingerich, United States
“Alan is very passionate about the topic and makes it more engaging. The videos are just short enough to keep my attention without wandering off.”
Kelly Faltas, Austria
“Bite-size learning, great summaries, great teacher.”
Cheryl Paquin, Canada
“Alan was very fun to watch and listen to. His examples were interesting and his enthusiasm was great.”
How It Works
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Take online courses 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. Get help from our community.
Start Advancing Your Career Now
Join us to take “Design for Thought and Emotion”. Take other courses at no additional cost. Make a concrete step forward in your career path today.
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