Interaction Design Foundation — Review
The Interaction Design Foundation(IDF) is an independent non-profit initiative established in 2002 in Denmark. Its purpose is to democratize knowledge of User Experience, product design and human-computer interaction at a low-cost and high quality.
I recently finished two courses from their platform:
Psychology of Interaction Design: The Ultimate Guide
Affordances: Designing Intuitive User Interfaces.
Courses
There are around 30 courses available, they are organized as a beginner, intermediate and advanced.
It’s noticeable the content is aligned with their purpose of providing high-quality education, there is a lot of detailed information which is always referenced by a research or author. Several chapters are explained with the help of examples.
If there are any flaws in the exercises the community points them out and the IDF team solves them. I also noticed that the platform had some updates on the forums that made it easier to navigate, post and find information.
Community
The forums are very active and usually, there is an answer for any post, it could be better but it seems that the community is developing. The forums are divided into sections such as Design Resources (links and tools), mobile UX, portfolio review, etc. So far users in the forums are kind and respectful to each other, I haven’t observed any kind of toxic behavior, which is great for the development of the community.
Literature Section
There is a gigantic list of content! The article section is updated daily, with good articles that they found on the web.
There is also four e-books made by IDF:
- The Glossary of Human Computer Interaction
- The Social Design of Technical Systems: Building technologies for communities.
- The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction (This is 4,000 pages long!)
- Gamification at Work: Designing Engaging Business Software
All these books are free to read online.
Pricing
The annual subscription costs $96, that´s $8 dollars per month, pretty cheap for the amount of content that you have access.
What results I got so far
I have worked mostly with print design and now I want to work with digital product design. One of the reasons I find interaction design so interesting is that analyzes design and human behavior, subjects that I am highly interested. Another reason is that digital products can be updated as we better understand the necessities from users and results can be measured easier than print design, giving a great feel that your work had an actual impact on the product.
I haven’t made this career change yet, but the knowledge that I got from IDF made some important difference in the first interview, the interviewer gave me great feedback about how detailed and considerate I was with UI design and User Experience. I didn’t get the job (due to culture fit in the company), but the interviewer recommended me to another startup looking for a UX Designer. I consider this recommendation a good initial validation for my knowledge and effort.
Tips for studying (either online or not)
Since I am doing all my User Experience studies online I think I should leave some tips:
1) Watch “Learning How to Learn” Course on Coursera — There are several tips that will help you on learning and maintaining what you learn. This course will also help make learning more fun and effective. The course is easy to follow and will bring you great results.
2) Create a habit of studying — Start studying with sessions that you feel comfortable with, don’t do 4 hours sessions if you are not used to it, I think that it is better to study 1 hour a day until you are used to doing it, and then you can add a little more time to it. In the long run, you will develop a habit and miss learning new stuff.
For the most part, I did the IDF courses with the remaining 30 minutes that I had from my lunch. Usually, I did a lesson per day. Even if you are doing small sessions you can go very far.
3) Read this book — “Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization” by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey — I did their course on EDX a long time ago (2 or 3 years ago) and it was great, sadly I don’t think they´ll offer anymore. But honestly, this is a great book and method for understanding why you have some behaviors and why it’s hard to change them. And of course, they teach you how to find the real motives for your resistance to change. The book focuses on employee change in corporations, but you can use in your personal life too.
Conclusion
The greatest advantage of the Interaction Design Foundation besides having great courses and content is to have so much information about Interaction Design in one place, if you search online you will find a lot of articles and blogs (and you should, there is a lot of great stuff out there), but usually they are talking about a specific subject. On IDF you can get the basics, intermediary and advanced all in one place.
Links
Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization” by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
https://goo.gl/ybfS8J
Learning How to Learn — Coursera
https://goo.gl/wjSe0r
