How I received my Coursera Interaction Design Specialisation at University of California, San Diego.
Background
Coursera is a world-known provider of online education, where a wide range of courses, universities and formats is waiting for the curious minds seeking new knowledge.
With the time passed by it’s now impossible to recall how the idea of getting another specialisation struck my mind, but this blogpost is a result of that decision. Now, writing it and assembling my last assignment together, I can’t get rid of this particularly comforting and pleasant feeling. A feeling that natural sense of fulfilment entails.
What was this online education like? Was this journey worth time and money? Would I do something similar again? Well, let me cover some of these points and details below.
A journey once started might take longer than planned…
I began the Interaction Design Specialisation by University of California, San Diego about 2 years ago. It might seem a bit too long, but in reality it never lasts that much and most likely won’t if you decide to start one yourself.
All the seven courses needed for the Final Capstone were completed in a relatively short period of several months. Unfortunately the Final Course was somewhat unfinished by the University crew and it was postponed 2 or 3 times, which resulted in a noticeable drop of motivation from my side. Being a rather impatient person, whose expectations were unmet a couple of times I got frustrated with the whole online education thing and eventually pulled the ‘screw this’ lever.
However, 1,5 years later it occurred to me, that there was some unfinished business I might still want to take care of. So I checked my student right which was surprisingly still valid and dedicated another 10 weeks of my life to finish what was started then. Luckily Coursera lets you revoke unfinished specialisations, because..well, minds get changed and what used to feel like a frustrating experience might become something else once the circumstances change.
So, at the beginning of this year I embraced the idea of not having a lot of free time for the upcoming 10 weeks and jumped into finishing my degree once and for all.
Specialisation Content
So when you start, you start with the fundamentals, 7 courses to be exact, necessary to be completed to get the Final capstone project unlocked.
Curriculum includes the following:
Human-Centered Design: an Introduction
Design Principles: an Introduction
User Experience: Research & Prototyping
Designing, Running, and Analyzing Experiments
Upon completing all of these with a decent grade, you get to start a capstone project which is an intensive design process in which you can apply the knowledge received earlier.
Final Capstone project workflow
Below I’ll describe some of the stages of the Capstone Project as frankly this is the most demanding part of the whole specialisation. And the most interesting and practical one.
Design brief and POV
First things first, you need to decide what area tickles your fancy and what would be the focus for the upcoming ten weeks. Faced with several choices, you get to decide whether your project redesigns the way we experience or interact with time. Or it would trigger a social or behavioural change. Or it would be tailored towards the needs people have with dashboards.
Those could be mixed or interlinked to some extent, but the Course required you to have a well-defined point of view on the problem you would be solving. I went for ‘time’ and ‘glance’, as the most fascinating combination in my eyes.
Needfinding and ideation
Once you know where to dig, you start looking up for inspiration, collecting ideas, moodboards, interview potential users and ask them questions that are routine on the surface yet might lead to finding potential pain points.
One of the relatively new methods during this step for me was not only looking for visual references and assembling a visual board. (Which is a rather mundane and common thing if you are working in the industry). But also coming up with phrases and words that would frame your concept as a mean of verbal inspiration. Helps to stay on the track when it’s something concrete and non-abstract.
Storyboarding and early prototyping
By this point things start getting real. The holy pencil and paper moment. And let me tell you, whoever claims that designers shouldn’t know how to draw are lazy liers. Everyone can draw. A square with four strokes is a drawing. Ask cave people. Mastering that level of communicating your idea should be enough to transform abstract ideas into a somewhat understandable medium or format.
Once you have a couple of stories set, that explain clearly what are the possible use cases, it’s by all means a good time to come up with the low-fidelity prototypes, supporting those ideas. Usually a black Sharpie and a form-factor matching piece of paper should be enough to start. You don’t need to think of colours or layouts yet. Make it simple, so that it’s functional enough to translate the idea. No need to send it to Awwwards fancy looks nomination, so don’t sweat the gradients just yet either.
Design Heuristics & Wireframes
One of the ways of evaluating the usability of the prototypes is running a heuristic evaluation. Simply put it’s a way of finding possible pitfalls and problematic bits in your designs. It was the most confusing assignment out of all, yet it was also somewhat useful. Usability testings are not for all and if you are getting bored from the long tables with criteria that has to be met, this one is going to be hard for you. But nevertheless essential.
These kinds of evaluations are building the strong UX base for the further designs. It’s like a component that binds together all the other bricks of your buildings. Miss that one and your tower will eventually fall into pieces.
AB Testings
Assignment that I was the least excited about turned out to be the most valuable part of the course. I can’t emphasise enough the importance of seeing people interacting with your designs. How they actually perceive and comment on the design assumptions you as a designer make.
It’s an eye-opening practice that everyone should run to validate their designs. Even if you think that you know how things should be. Even if you actually do… Please still run user tests and enjoy seeing your assumptions vanish and turn into dust. And then iterate and make actually good digital products.
Final results
Final results for the Capstone are delivered as a functional prototype and a promo video, explaining the story behind the final product. All the students are requested to submit and share those as a part of final assignment, which I won’t include here in details :) Because it could be more fancy and blah, blah… you know. The perfectionist is off the leash...
Shortly put, my final product through the 10 weeks of design process was a habit tracker app, having a visual timeline of the progress as its core functionality.
Ultimately, this online education journey has been about the journey itself, not the destination. And when I consciously signed myself up for this course I knew that I would inevitably have to combine afull-time job, Capstone Project and myriads of other things every adult person has in their lives. However, if it teaches you something it is a valuable experience. And I couldn’t be more pleased about both signing up for this journey, as well as competing it.
Who would the course be useful for
Looking back at the amount of things I learned from this course over time, I’d surely say it was worth it. Some things you naturally know if you work in the field of digital services or UX design, but repetition never hurts anyone either.
If you a junior level designer or someone who wants to step up your game, this might be a certainly enjoyable and beneficial experience for you. It won’t be quick, but hey, if you are looking for one of those ‘how to become a UX Designer in a week’ kind of courses, do your search somewhere else :)
Interaction Design Specialisation is prepared by a well-acclaimed USA University with a proper curriculum in place. And its completion will take some time. So it’s like a part-time education of a sort. Get your mindset in place, make sure your timetable allows it and enjoy your Coursera Specialisation.
10 tips to keep in mind if you feel like Coursera education could be your cup of tea:
- find some patience and discipline
- one more time: there will be d-e-a-d-l-i-n-e-s that you shouldn’t miss
- when you are completing the Final Capstone Project and some of the Course homeworks you’ll need at least 4–5 hours each week to complete assignments at a decent level
- your classmates will peer-review your work, and inevitably someone at the other side of the world might have a bad day and evaluate you poorly. Embrace it and move on. You are awesome.
- imagine that every assignment should be something you’d feel confident putting in your portfolio. or show to you colleagues…I failed that one but, but I’m a perfectionist in its worst essence, maybe you won’t :)
And when it’s over there is no better feeling, that the sense of fulfilment and realisation that weekends are all yours from now on. Until the next time. 🥂
