My experience with Google UX design certificate
I Finished today the UX design course 1 of 7 for Google UX Design Professional Certificate, and the experience was amazing. Everything about this User Experience (UX) Design course split into 4 weeks was perfect and very well structured, for me this course provides a good start in UX design, learning from key frameworks in the field to how to craft a UX portfolio.
I Know the Internet tells us we need to learn new tools, languages and frameworks to stay relevant, 🤯 but trust me if I tell you this first of a series of seven courses will equip you with the skills needed to apply to entry-level and also high-level jobs in user experience design, even for Non-English native speakers like me (I’m trying to do my best to avoid typos and grammar errors, so please don’t kill me if you found more than one 😊), this course offer captions (Not Translate) and visual elements and resources to help to understand the whole process and topics.
The following are but not limited to the key topics from my experience that are most prominent.
Week 1 — Introducing UX design (Basics)
For this first week, the course covers basic topics like:
✅ Define the field of UX explaining the foundations, and why it’s important for consumers and businesses in general.
✅ Explore the Product development cycle, design for a good UX, and review common job responsibilities of entry-level UX designers and teams that they work with.
✅ Specialists, generalists, T-shaped designers, working in a cross-functional team and also explore job opportunities and career paths.
✅ Identify good and poor user experience with practical exercises and examples.
✅ The influence of company size and industry and roles at different types of companies and teams.
In general, the first week help to understand the industry, types of jobs, and also basic responsibilities and was great to clarify the differences between generalists, specialists, and T-shaped roles in UX design (Honestly was the first time I ear about these titles).
Week 2 — The Journey Starts (Introduction)
In the second week, we start to cover the technical aspects of the field and I added some interesting topics below:
✅ Cover the basic concepts and key frameworks in UX design, such as user-centered design, 5 elements of UX design, design thinking process, lean UX, and the double diamond.
✅ Understand Universal Design, Inclusive Design, and equity-focused design and how to design products and making sure the product is both accessible and fair to all genders, races, and abilities. Also, we cover the importance of accessibility or designing products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities.
✅ Learn more about The Next Billion Users and how this future generation of internet users, browse, interact, and uses the internet differently from their predecessors!
✅ Exploring most popular programs and tools for UX designers to create Wireframes & prototypes (Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, Framer X), Presentations Tools (Google Slides, Microsoft Powerpoint, Keynote), Image Manipulation (Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator affinity photo), and also Animations (Lottie and Adobe After Effects for more advanced users).
✅ Design cross-platform experiences, and keep in mind a platform is the medium that users experience your product on like Desktop or Laptop computers, Mobile phones, tablets, wearable devices, TVs, and smart displays.
This week give me some tips for my daily basics like UX/UI Director and also discover something new for me; The four CS of designing for multiple platforms (consistency, continuity, context, and complementary), I definitely will be cover this topic in detail in future articles.
Week 3 — Design Sprints (Methodology)
Week 3 is focused on Design Sprints and how this proven methodology solving problems through designing, prototyping, and testing ideas with users, the Design Sprint methodology will help you to:
1. Understand. Map out the problem and pick an important area to focus.
2. Ideate. Sketch out competing solutions on paper.
3. Decide. Make decisions and turn your ideas into a testable hypothesis.
4. Prototype. Hack together a realistic prototype.
5. Test. Get feedback from real live users.
6. Design Sprint Retrospectives. The goal of a retrospective is to make sure everyone who took part in the sprint has the chance to give feedback and think about opportunities for improvement.
If you’re looking for a deeper dive into design sprints I leave here the open-source Design Sprint Kit and Resources Links.
Week 4 — Building a professional presence (Portfolio)
Finally (For this first course) the week 4 covers how to demonstrate your unique value and personal brand through the story you tell; how to describe your work concisely and articulately, and how to create a consistent online presence using social platforms and building your own portfolio website, covering some relevant topics like:
✅ Introduction to UX design portfolios, how to create, examples for entry- and mid-level UX designers at Google for you to explore.
✅ Discover and compare website builders, main differences, choose the right platform that best meets your unique needs, low-cost or free, custom templates, flexibility.
✅ Map your website content and also plan the information that will be included throughout your site, Name and personal logo, Unique skills, Navigation menu, Work samples, About me page, contact information, color scheme, typography, branding, etc.
My Conclusion for Course Number 1 of 7, for the Google UX Design Certificate
Like I said earlier in the introduction, my overall experience so far is not limited to the above-mentioned topics and notes, they are many more, and I just can describe my experience so far as AWESOME, to be the first of seven upcoming courses.
Big thanks to the instructors Michael Dedrick, Shabnam Kashani, and the entire Google team for coming up with such an amazing course in partnership with Coursera.
Certificaion Coursera link for anyone interested in starting using the platform.
Thanks for reading 👍.
