Google UX design certificate foundations
I’ve enrolled in Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate on Coursera and completed the first course. This short post is a retrospective on my experience.
So, I’m new to UX design. I’m a Technical Writer currently enrolled in Google’s professional certificate to learn more about design methodologies and expand my skillset. I completed the first course of seven, Foundations of User Experience (UX) Design, which was wonderful, so I’m posting this retrospective as part of my user experience.
General thoughts
I studied every day after work and finished the first course in six nights. I wrote notes in Miro, rewatched the videos when I felt that I didn’t thoroughly understand the information provided, and researched concepts during downtime.
Researching helped further absorb the voluminous information the course provided, which pleasantly surprised me. It didn’t feel like other courses that highlight key concepts and ignore nuances; rather it taught in detail:
- User-centered design and design thinking
- Product development life cycles
- Roles and responsibilities
- Research methodologies
- Design sprints
- Accessibility
- Biases
It helps that the class is taught by Google UX team members, who convey their knowledge in plain words, which shows how well they know their field. There’s not a word wasted in the teaching videos.
What went well?
I really enjoyed learning about equitable design because it focuses on researching empathetically and creating useful tools accessible by all groups, especially the underrepresented. The goal is to add more fairness to the world via more opportunities.
As I was listening to the instructors explain equitable design, I imagined a crowd of people and a mom placing her kid on her hip, making the kid nearly eye level with everyone. As the image repeated in my mind, I wondered how anyone can hear of equitable design and not want to work in UX.
Also, the weeklong devotion to design sprint phases, tips, and methods was helpful because it peeked into the life of a UX designer and provided a template for sprint briefs.
Notably, the instructors mentioned the briefs are collaborative, yet attendees often don’t voice their opinions. I’ve seen this happen, and it’s very uncomfortable because it can cause the sprint lead to keep repeating the questions of what went well and what did not. That’s when the cameras start turning off, and you hope the lead knows about Google’s advice from the course: ask for anonymous feedback.
What to improve?
The user-centered design process, design sprint phases, and product development lifecycle principles overlap, which was challenging at first and required close reading. Consider the similarities:
User-centered design
- Understand
- Specify
- Design
- Evaluate
Design sprint phases
- Understand
- Ideate
- Decide
- Prototype
- Test
Product development lifecycle
- Brainstorm
- Define
- Design
- Test
- Launch
Moreover, the wonderful section on bias really made me think about my own biases. I never intend to have them, but the discussion about primacy bias, which is remembering the first participant most strongly, made me reflect because I’m prone to it. Now that I’m more aware of it, I’ll keep it in mind at work and the rest of this certificate.
See you in the retro for course 2, Start the UX Design Process …
