ITUX Jumpstart— Planning the Collective Training and Contents
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Hello there! I’m Beste. Welcome to the article on the basic training content we prepared together with Burak for ITUX. After desktop research, we have reached the following structure about what a UX designer needs to know. It is useful to say that it is a study which aims to reach basic theoretical and practical knowledge from basics to validation, from strategy to presentation, before going through other stages within the student club frame.
We aimed to create a Medium publication with our information and make it accessible to everyone. While doing this, we aimed to create a source of Turkish UX information and inform our friends which are freshman / friends from other universities.
By contacting professionals with field experience, we also have the idea of blending the theoretical information we have told each other with their field experience. We will start training very soon and make it accessible to our sources from Youtube / Medium.
First stage #theoretical — We are not professional but we have internet! We asked our classmates from 1,2,3 and 4th grade to create the sections, which cover the topics in the continuation of the article, theoretically. In this way, we planned to create a content pool by sharing the information created by the person who wants to explain the subject in depth, by sharing it with everyone inside / outside the club. If you are a student or at learning stage, you can reach ITUX documents from here and fill out this form so that we can contact you.
Second stage #practice — We welcome all our alumnis and designers with field experience! At this stage, we aim to make learning more permanent by adding tips & tricks, and experiences of the designers in professional life. After each course, there will be a stage where we will give a case from the professional person to work on and apply what we have learned. If you want to help us / share your experiences, we can reach you from this form!
You can also check out the article below to learn how we founded this club as 35 Industrial Design students.
Summary
module1 #Basic Information — Participant learns the necessary skills and knowledge in all UX and product development processes.
module2 #Research — Participants who get the basic informations receive Research training which is the most important step in product development and UX. It covers important topics such as user research, planning and research techniques.
module3 #Strategy — Our strategy module after user research is actually the research and development phase that we have to do within ourselves. Participants receive training in system design and business development.
module4 #Design — Our design module is the stage of making our developed ideas visible and designing these ideas’ communications with human, so it’s the stage that the experience is designed.
module5 #Prototype and Validation — It is the module that we understand whether the prepared or concrete idea will really work.
module6 #Master — The participant who completes all modules is trained in presenting and explaining his / her product or service in this module. The purpose of this module is to make a good finish.
Module 1#Basic Information
The purpose of Module 1, which is the first module of our ITUX Bootcamp Training, is to create a starting point for our participants by including the basic topics of Experience Design. Within the scope of the topics that this module contains, we will both create the infrastructure of Basic Design values and learn how to use these values in Experience Design. This module tries to provide the necessary skills and knowledge in all UX and product development processes.
- UX Design and Basic Terms: In our first subject, we aimed to introduce Experience Design, to make an introduction to terminology and to learn where and how we can use this terminology. With the introduction of these terms, such as persona, grid structure, wireframe, UI elements, moodboard, which will be explained in detail later, and explaining what the basic steps of the Experience Design are, we will enter the UX by taking the first step of our training.
- Human Mind and Usability: The way of Experience Design goes through understanding human and human desires and applying them correctly. At this point, our topic is the center of human-centered design; It consists of a whole that covers issues such as human factors, human perception of the environment, human-computer communication, user behavior.
- Design Thinking: Design thinking is an approach adopted by the world’s most innovative and successful organizations. The ideal product is at the ideal point at the intersection of desirability, feasibility and vitality. Design Thinking process is actually non-linear and constantly repeating itself, helps us to understand the user and problems and produce creative ideas.
- Creating Persona: We can say that persona is transferring our user group to a single person. Personas play a critical role in design decisions and in this respect, creating an appropriate persona for your design is an important step. In our training, the place of creating persona in Experience Design and its applications will be explained.
- Customer Journey Map: Customer Journey Map is a tool that answers your questions such as how and how many times your user communicates with your product or service. This map is part of our training as it is a useful application known to create the Experience Design.
- Idea Generation Techniques: Regardless of how we work, being able to renew and stay up to date is one of the most important responsibilities of our age. For this, it is necessary to learn and apply idea generation techniques such as brainstorming, role playing, reverse thinking based on certain systematic thought structures. In this respect, idea generation techniques have become part of our UX training.
- Idea Visualization Techniques: Idea visualization techniques, such as mindmapping, flowcharts, and affinity diagrams, which make new ideas both faster and more effective, are the last part of the first module of our Experience Design training.
Module 2#Research
Our second module covers one of the most important stages of Experience Design and also all design processes. We have added the module for both UX and product designer candidates who play a role in the design and development of most products or services that include important topics such as user research, research planning, research techniques.
- What is User Research ?: User research is the phase which is carried out during the production, development, design stages of an idea and even after the idea meets the user. This topic, which helps us answer questions such as who the user is, what the user needs or what the user wants, is also an important part of our training.
- How to Plan a Research: Planning user research is as important and necessary as planning a design process. In this context, we will include the rules of conducting a well-planned research in order to minimize and anticipate product risks.
- Research Techniques: Research techniques such as ethnographic studies, guerrilla tests, focus groups are under 4 main titles: behavior, attitude, qualitative and quantitative will be explained in our training within the scope of Experience Design.
- Relationship Map: It is a tool in which all titles such as concept, person, and task arising from the researches can be linked. It is a tool used to observe the research outcomes in a more general framework. It is guiding in matters such as wireframing, UI or strategy in the future.
Module 3#Strategy
We can also call our strategy module is the research and development phase that we should do within ourselves after user researches. Our module that includes the steps we have taken to follow the trends, follow the competitors, see the big picture of our product / system and draw a road map to ourselves based on all this information we have obtained after our idea has emerged and our user researches.
- Trends: UI / UX trends of the last period, where we can follow them, and our role as designers at this point will be explained in the first part of our strategy module.
- Benchmark: Benchmark is one of the important steps to be followed in order to keep up-to-date with competitor products and the market you will open, and to stay up-to-date, an application that you can compare both between them and yourself.
- Card Grouping: Although it is a method used to see how the contents and functions are related, we determine the navigation and menu structure of our Experience Design. What we have learned at this stage leads us to the next stage in our training, the information architecture.
- Information Architecture: Information architecture refers to the whole process of organizing and categorizing each information that is the content of the Experience Design into meaningful and discoverable groups. It takes place in our training as one of the most important stages of our strategy module.
- Task Analysis: Task analysis, which has varieties such as cognitive analysis, operational analysis and hierarchical analysis, is a group of applications for many purposes such as determining tasks according to goals, selecting and separating tasks. Also, knowing which task will use how much effort, reduces the fog in front of you when a designer knows what to do.
- Site Map: Sitemap are files that allow us to notify search engines about the pages on our site and the information we make about these pages. The importance of their existence and timeliness ensures that every update we make is discoverable and accessible to these search engines.
- Tree Test: This test is used to measure the availability of each content title that creates the design through a simplified tree in order to make measurements independent of visual designs and additional directions. In information architecture, users’ ways of accessing information and their accuracy can be observed. All navigation / category elements of an e-commerce site are collected and users are asked to group them.
Module 4#Design
Our design module is the stage of making our developed ideas visible and designing these ideas’ communications with human, so it’s the stage that the experience is designed. The topics in this module form the visible part of the Experience Design. We can say that it is the first stage of approaching this point where visualization and functionality meet.
- Basic Design Principles: Basic principles consisting of layout, color palette and typography sections can be said as the first step of visualization. It is of great importance that all of them are evaluated and selected according to the character of the experience you will create. These principles, which greatly affect the message and brand identity, are also included in our training.
- Wireframe: Wireframe is a preliminary application, a design analysis and an information architecture sketch which provides the opportunity to get the idea of the features of a project, the features planned to be presented with the end user of the product/service, and to define and plan the information hierarchy.
- Moodboard: Moodboard is a tool to describe your character, color palette or mod in Experience Design. It can also be called an inspiration board, which is intensely visualized and can be prepared manually or digitally supported by short writings. In this training, creating moodboards and its resources will be mentioned.
- UI Elements: We can say each piece that will create a visual language that contains many items such as checkbox, icon, breadcrumb, button. In this regard, we will learn what the elements are, how they are used and with which criteria they are selected.
- Grid Structure and Responsive: Although each screen has different sizes, grid structures are used to provide transition between these screen sizes. One of the important topics of the grid structure design module that helps you both place your layout and design experiences compatible with each screen.
- UI Kit: UI Kit, which is the last subject of our design module, covers the creation of a visual kit by integrating all the topics in the design module, which are processed to create and use a common language both within the kit itself and between different screens. Each participant will be required to design a UI Kit after design module training.
Module 5#Prototyping and Validation
With the design decisions we make as a result of the researches, the tasks we assign, and the visual language we have prepared, this module, which has fast and effective solutions to answer questions such as how the experience we have designed will look like in the digital environment, how users use this experience, is the most important part of being able to get your design accepted. In order to anticipate risks or avoid unnecessary effort, at this stage, participants are given prototype and validation information.
- Prototyping: Prototyping, which can be done in physical and digital environments, is a fast application used to test the usability of the product and to detect errors early. It is an important step in making arrangements and seeing the stage of the experience you have designed in general without including all the details.
- Usability Tests: Usability tests where the outputs of the Human Mind and Usability topic described in the first module intersect and process with the prototyping results. These usability tests, such as A / B Test, 5 Second Test, Eye Tracking, guerrilla test, where you can easily observe the prototypes you have made, the advantages and disadvantages that real users experience, is a phase that should be done before proceeding to the final stage.
Module 6#Master
In our last module, the last leg of visual and technical issues such as presenting our design to users and transferring it to the software will be covered.
- Mockup: When it comes to the presentation stage, with mockups it is planned and prepared visually how the experience you designed will seem on phones and computers.
- Presentation Design: How to prepare a narrative that highlights the features of the experience you have designed is also one of the most important parts of a job, and it takes its place in our last module. It is a stage of preparing a presentation that becomes stronger and integrated with your important Experience Design decisions such as mockups, visuals you prepared, typography items you choose.
- Transfer to Software: This last stage, where the experience you have designed is now transferred to real life, is produced as a product created by working with software developers, with all the information we have prepared since the first module.
After Bootcamp?
As ITUX, we also make plans to continue our personal development, such as workshops / events that we will do to get the above basic information and reinforce the information.
In this process, we welcome to communicate all graduates / students / companies who want to work with us.
Thank you for reading!
