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Designing for Productivity in the User eXperience (Udemy.com)

Optimizing user efficiency in software and website user interface design

3.8
59 reviews

Created by: Deborah J. Mayhew

Last updated August 2013

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What you will learn

  • Upon completing this course, you will be able to apply 24 user interface design guidelines for optimizing user efficiency, and apply three evaluation techniques for assessing and refining the efficiency of potential user interface designs
  • In this course you will learn:
  • How to know when user efficiency should be your key usability goal
  • How to insure optimal efficiency through user interface design before launch
  • How shaving a few seconds off user task times through user interface design changes can save millions of dollars
  • The difference between possible efficiency and actual efficiency
  • The difference between three types of user efficiency (perceptual, cognitive and motor) and design guidelines for achieving each
  • How to predict actual task times on a given user interface design before its built
  • How to assess the efficiency of your own individual design ideas as you are making them

How it compares

Against the other 144 rated Udemy courses in UX Design on CourseDuck:

  • Rating3.8 out of 5higher than 4% of them
  • Reviews59#118 of 145 by number of reviews
  • Length3.1 hoursshorter than 55% of them
  • Last updatedAugust 2013earlier than 100% of them

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Course Description


This course is course number D15.2 from a comprehensive online curriculum on User eXperience (UX) currently under development by top experts in the field through The Online User eXperience Institute (OUXI). COURSE CONTENT
This is an in-depth course on a particular aspect of designing for the User eXperience.
Overall user experience with software applications and websites is impacted by five key qualities of their user interface:
Utility (is the content/functionality useful to intended users?)
Usability (is it easy to learn and accomplish tasks?)
Graphic Design (is the visual design aesthetically pleasing?)
Persuasiveness (are desired actions supported and motivated?)
Functional Integrity (does it work smoothly without bugs or crashes?)
The usability of a user interface can be further subdivided into two separate qualities:
Ease-of-learning (is it easy to learn how to accomplish tasks?)
Ease-of-use (can tasks be accomplished quickly and easily once learned?)
The terms ease-of-learning and ease-of-use are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. In fact, they often come into direct conflict with one another in user interface design. That is, a user interface that feels easy-to-learn to novices may soon come to feel tedious and inefficient as they gain expertise, especially if they are high frequency users. Similarly, a user interface with a steep learning curve may eventually come to feel powerful, flexible and highly efficient once a user is trained and using it frequently.
Ease-of-learning is usually more important to novice, casual or intermittent users. Ease-of-use is usually more important to trained, high frequency, expert users. However, even casual, intermittent users, such as users of public websites, will notice and be frustrated with - designs that limit their efficiency in obvious ways.
Two overall topics are covered in this course:
Efficiency design guidelines
Efficiency evaluation techniques
The course is a very concrete, "how-to" course. Both the design guidelines offered and the evaluation techniques taught have been researched, validated and refined by the User eXperience discipline over the past 30 years.
The subset of 24 design guidelines for efficiency offered in this course were selected from the full body of knowledge on software and website usability to be:
Universal (i.e., applicable to most if not all applications and websites)
Easy to explain
Commonly violated
High impact (on user productivity)
Easy to implement
They thus represent the "low-hanging fruit" in designing for software and website user efficiency. The rationale for each guideline is explained, and clear examples are offered to enhance understanding.
Just as with code, usability design guidelines will only take you so far. In addition, you need evaluation techniques to assess designs for efficiency to insure an application or website will meet its business goals at launch. Earlier design changes are always easier and cheaper than late design changes.
The three evaluation techniques taught in this course are:
Efficiency heuristic evaluations
Keystroke level modeling
Efficiency studies
These different techniques can be used at different points in the design and development process to exploit opportunities to improve efficiency in the user interface design when it is most cost effective to do so. Learning the evaluation techniques also helps deepen the understanding of the design guidelines.
COURSE FORMAT
The course format is a PowerPoint presentation accompanied by a studio-recorded video of the instructor.
The course includes a little over three hours of video (broken into short lectures) with PowerPoint slides, and roughly 1.5 - 2 hours of optional hands-on exercises, for which sample solutions are provided.
Downloadable course materials include:
A set of general instructions for getting the most out of Udemy courses
The full PowerPoint presentation (in two formats - full slides, and two slides per page)
Live, Excel-based templates (used in exercises, and which you can also use as you apply your new skills on real development projects)
A handy guidelines checklist (for quick reference during design and evaluation tasks on the job)

In addition you can request a Certificate of Course Completion, and participate in a question and answer forum with the instructor and other course subscribers.
Please feel free to contact the instructor with any questions about this course at drdeb@ouxinstitute.com.

Dr. Mayhew is also available for coaching/mentoring to people who have completed this course and are putting their new skills to work on real projects. Inquire at:

drdeb@ouxinstitute.com .Who this course is for:
  • This course is aimed at anyone responsible for making or evaluating user interface design decisions for software applications and websites. This includes developers who are also responsible for the user interface design of the functionality they are coding, as well as interaction designers, and user experience professionals who do not have a lot of background or experience in researching, designing and evaluating for ease of use, as opposed to ease of learning. It is also appropriate for students and interns training to be software developers, interaction designers or user experience professionals.
Read More Intermediate Intermediate Level product length iconTime: 3.1h

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Instructor Details

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Deborah J. Mayhew, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of The Online User eXperience Institute (OUXI) is an internationally recognized consultant, author, teacher and speaker on engineering and designing for the User eXperience.

Deborah was one of the earliest pioneers of the field of software and web user experience. She has been Owner and Principal Consultant at Deborah J. Mayhew & Associates, a consulting firm offering a wide variety of services related to designing and engineering for the User eXperience, since 1986, when she became one of the first independent consultants in her field.

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Reviews

3.8

59 ratings on Udemy

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By Rizza Louise

This course is worth every penny. If you want to learn ALOT in a short time, try this course. Plus Dr. Deborah J. Mayhew is such a fascinating teacher.

By Kamran

It wasn't interesting. Very borring.

By Andrew Riggs

The course deals with some interesting correlations between human cognition and software processing tasks, identifying a few noteworthy perspectives in designing the UX. Notably, the nature of various human tasks in interacting with machines and how performance issues for some types of tasks can affect others.

By Danielle Stansberry

This just wasn't what I was looking for and it was hard to watch. I didn't complete the course.

By Brendon Hull

I found the Designing for Productivity in the User experience course to be more technical and formula driven than I expected, but I found at the end that I have gained a number of valuable skills.

Being a designer/Art Director wanting to move into the field of UX and Usability testing, I didn't know what to expect from the course and was pleasantly surprised. I expect a number of "creatives" might attend the course thinking it's a bit more visually driven, but the "behind the scenes" theory is what UX is about, so overall it was a very good course.

Thank you.

By Jennifer Topolski

Great examples of real world situations. I found this course to be very helpful and full of information that can be used in any organization.

By Marian Kret

In today's world of ROI it's indeed very important to design for efficiency and not only for beauty. When you are able to combine both, you have the best possible skillset. This course will not teach you about designing for beauty but will definitely give you tools how to design for efficiency and save or make money with it.

By Joeffrey Madid

The topic had been lectured in very fast paced manner. Most of the topic jumps straight to the details and has not provided abstract illustration that should helps the visual understanding instead it is all text based on the slide. Apart from this, I hardly understand the download evaluation materials it needs more explanation the purpose and definition.

By Fransiska Handayani

1. This course is not global - friendly. The instructor should add CC feature so students who doesn't speak English as their first language still understand the materials.

2. This course provide several examples of UI/UX problems. This is great! However, the downside is the course is not well maintained by the instructor. Thus, some of the UX/UI materials or problems become a little bit outdated if compare to the current time.

By Webdev TzMedical

Deborah was very clear and provided good examples. I enjoyed the course, and learned some helpful key points and techniques. The section on efficiency design guidelines was great.

By Cuong Cao

Très satisfait de la qualité du cours et des explications très claire de la formatrice

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Overall Score : 76 / 100

Designing for Productivity in the User eXperience
Visit course on Udemy Write a review
  • Video Duration: icon 3.1h
  • Price: $19.99
  • Provider: icon Udemy
  • Updated: icon August 2013
  • Level: Intermediate Intermediate
  • Language: icon English
  • Certificate: icon Yes
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