How to study Human Computer Interaction and Design online

My story with Coursera started in 2015 I believe. 😀
Back then a colleague of mine has recommended it to me as a great tool to learn HCID — Human Computer Interaction & Design.
I took me almost 3 years to complete all of 8 courses there. I was working hard and had lots of business trips so finishing my studies wasn’t an easy task.

Good thing that you are able to postpone some of the sessions, which is great when you have lots on your plate already.

It was an amazing journey for me.

I’m really thankful to teachers of these Specialization:
Mr. Scott Klemmer, Ms. Elizabeth Gerber & Mr. Jacob Wobbrock.

Each of them has her/his own character — so you wouldn’t get bored at all :)

Now it’s time to complete the specialization and share the capstone project with world.🙏👇🏿

Need-finding is crucial for identifying problems that user’s facing with existing or new interface.

I wanted to concentrate on the problem of modern society — sedentary daily routine and common desire to exercise more. I interviewed and observed 3 people.

Irene is exercising at home. Since it’s hard for her to do it in the morning she has to do it late evening before going to bed.

Irene is an internal communication analyst.
She doesn’t have any extremely bad habits but she is working on building new good ones. Her way of building or overcoming a habit is empathy. She tries to feel like a person who already has this good habit or doesn’t have a bad one. She suffers from the fact that new ideas give her much enthusiasm but it doesn’t last long enough to build up a strong habit. She highlights that changes should be gradual. Her ideal process is awareness of the habit, its value, planning of its acquisition and gradual changes. Incentives motivate her better. She likes the systems that send you notifications and show you how close you are to your goal. Before she didn’t make any plans — only dreams but recently she started making more detailed plans (but still doesn’t write down anything).

Alex is taking mental break. He wants to get rid of the habit of internet surfing and do something more beneficial during the break. The mass of internet content scares him.

Alex is a marketing designer. Alex confessed that he has more bad habits than good ones. He is aiming at picking up several good habits such as healthy way of life, good eating, managing time and going to bed at consistent times. His main motivation is being healthy and reach career goals. He tries to make resolutions to himself, read motivational books but outer circumstances seem to interfere all the time and ruin all his managed time. Evening hours are spent mostly with some beverage in front of TV or at some event to distract from work tasks. Going to bed late leads to being late to work, stress, more unmanaged and unplanned tasks and long hours at work, that leads to going to bed late. There seems no way out of this circle. His main wish is to wake up earlier, do morning exercises, be effective during the day at work and have all the evening to yourself. It would be great to have window displays that would wake you up with sunlight and birds singing.

Ludmila is running at park. She would like to change her daily routine but she can’t because of lack of motivation and floating work schedule. She has to exercise late and not on regular basis.

Ludmila is a teacher. She wants to change her current physical condition but has some obstacles on her way. Because of floating working routine she can’t plan her time really well. She wants to wake up earlier and go to bad earlier, also she wants to get back to her exercises that she likes to do at home or at park. Other than that she feels a lack of motivation. She doesn’t have any other bad habits she would like to get rid off. Her ideal process of doing the workout consists the modern equipment, music and personal trainer. Her strongest motivation is self-improvement and healthy life style.

So as you can see people I observed and lots of others have issue with exercising and not quitting. People try to be more consistent in this and they need help.

Next step is high-level benchmarking just to prove that app can be valuable by helping people to be more consistent, reminding to spend some time exercising.

So based on the researches made for previous assignment, I had come to an opinion that fitness has major impact on people’s lives through the improvement of their energy level, wellness and beauty.

Here are some storyboards I’ve made:

And prototypes as well:

Next step is Heuristic Evaluation, I love this activity but tbh I think you’d be bored by this, so let’s just skip it shall we?

Then finally I’ve got to UI design stage and I can get to user testing.

I’ve gathered some valuable feedback from friends of mine and now it’s time for A/B testing.

But first I needed to sketch out these ideas:

A/B testing with Usertesting.com

I’m aiming to provide a powerful and efficient way for people to schedule their tasks by creating a combination of workout planner and gym’s list.

The difference between these two versions are the navigation.

A version with bottom nav😍🙏:

Click here to view the project `Goals Tracking A`

B version with hamburger 🍔 menu:

Click here to view the project `Goals B`

Also few CTA (Call to Action) buttons’ names are changed.

The main goal that I want to get from user testing — which of the versions is more familiar and convenient for people. Version A & B both got few from previous iterations changes:
— Disable Goal Tracking from the first layer of navigation;
— Move ‘+Add your email’ card from ‘Home’ to ‘More’;
— Remove ‘Our Team’ info from the gym card;
— Some other small tweaks.
Thanks for reviewers for quickly providing the feedback.

Here are some shots from users’ sessions:

I love usertesting.com and already had some experience with it back then, but I had to change participants because some of them weren’t familiar with how to use Invision.

Anyway, A/B test gave several important insights, i.e. :

• users didn’t understand the purpose of icons on “My Goals” page;
• bottom navigation looked more efficient for them;
• “More” menu item should be renamed to “My Profile”.

So I made those changes, added descriptive text to some of the controls.

Please see the final prototype:

Click here to view the project `Updated A Version`

And the final promo video:

Hardest thing was to compose all the pieces together in After Effects. See I’ve created main animation thing in Principle . And now I had to combine voice/some additional videos / video-prototype.

But with some efforts and few cups of coffee ☕️☕️☕️ it was finally done:

Thank you for attention, please also check my portfolio links:

Michael Pyrkh

Michael Pyrkh on Behance

Best wishes!