User experience design

Taught at: OzCHI 2011
Workshop date: November 29, 2011

This full day workshop will provide you with a thorough overview and understanding of user experience design. It will cover a range of fundamental UX skills that can be applied to all types of project – websites, web applications, traditional applications and mobile. It will be theoretical and practical and allow you to immediately apply ideas to your projects.

This workshop will cover:

  • What user experience design is and why it is important to do it in a deliberate way (i.e. people will have an experience no matter what – you want them to have a particular type of experience)
  • Understanding people: conducting user research and usability testing
  • Communicating about people (personas and other methods)
  • Deciding what to design (scenarios, business needs, mental modelling)
  • Sketching and iterative design
  • Creating prototypes to communicate design
  • Making sure what gets built is right

The workshop will be at the level of an ‘advanced intro’, covering the basics and also allowing exploration of key challenges and issues. The format is a combination of short lectures, group discussion and hands-on activities. Extensive notes and resources will be provided for further personal exploration.

Learning objectives

After the workshop, the participants will have:

  • An understanding of how to learn about people and communicate about them to others
  • Core design principles that can be used for any project and any technology
  • Understanding of how to apply principles to a real project
  • Hands‐on experience with key techniques
  • Shared skills with other practitioners