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Designlab UX Research & Strategy Course Syllabus

This document outlines a 4-week course on UX foundations that covers topics like understanding customer needs, conducting user research, analyzing competitors, validating assumptions, and usability testing. Over the course, students will learn research methodologies and tools, conduct their own user research, and create artifacts like empathy maps, customer journeys, hypotheses, and landing pages to test their assumptions. The goal is for students to build skills in empathizing with customers and gaining real-world experience applying UX design processes.

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Riazboni
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281 views

Designlab UX Research & Strategy Course Syllabus

This document outlines a 4-week course on UX foundations that covers topics like understanding customer needs, conducting user research, analyzing competitors, validating assumptions, and usability testing. Over the course, students will learn research methodologies and tools, conduct their own user research, and create artifacts like empathy maps, customer journeys, hypotheses, and landing pages to test their assumptions. The goal is for students to build skills in empathizing with customers and gaining real-world experience applying UX design processes.

Uploaded by

Riazboni
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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PA RT 1 O F 3 O F U X F O U N DAT I O N S E R I E S

UX UX Research & Strategy


Most people still dont know the difference between UX and UI. One of the main differences is
customer insight through research and validation. If you want a job in UX, explaining how you
would research, validate and gain insight is what would make the difference between being taken
seriously and getting thrown in the fake UX pile.

In this course you will not only learn different techniques, you will do them on a weekly basis to
gain experience. Youll have real experience to draw upon for that all important interview.

OVER FOUR WEEKS, WE WILL COVER

Introduction to Product Design


We learn about the human needs behind product design and how a user-centered design process can
help us deliver better products.

What are products? Why should we research?


What is user experience design? When is the best time to research?

Project: Choose 3 products and describe them in terms of the tangible and intangible needs that they serve.

Part 1: Empathizing with your customers


Youll learn how to build empathy through research techniques based on the core principles: Immerse,
Engage, or Observe.

Contextual inquiries Customer Interviews


Diary Studies Customer Surveys

Project: You will be given a set of research problems for which you must suggest the most appropriate form
of research and explain why.

Part 2: Empathizing with your customers


Now that youve done the research its time to take all the data and create something
meaningful. In this session we will look at the artifacts that we create from user research, how we use
them, and how we create them.
Empathy Maps Customer Journey Maps
Storyboards Tensions - Contradictions - Surprise map

Project: Conduct your own user research on a topic that you agree on with your mentor. This will be your
area of inquiry for the remainder of the course. You will create a research plan and execute the plan to
provide the datapoint for your outputs

Understanding your competitors


How do we assess our competition ? In this unit we will provide a structured way for you to assess and
report on competitors or your existing offering.

Heuristic Review Feature Matrix


Feature Analysis Kano Diagram

Project: Complete a detailed review of the competitors in your chosen area.


Defining the problem
Now that we have built empathy and have a deeper understanding of our customers lives, we are in a
good position to create some problem statements or Points of View.
How we might statements Points of views

Project: Based on your research so far, create Point of View and How Might We statements for your
customers.

Hypotheses and Validating assumptions


We should always be aware that even though we have primary research, the creation of our Define
statements will be based on many assumptions. We need to clearly define what these hypotheses are,
work out how we will test them, what success looks like, and either validate or invalidate the assumptions.
Identifying Assumptions Create Experiments & Success metrics
Creating Hypothesis Create a learning canvas

Project: Look at all the artefacts that you have created up to this stage. Define what the assumptions are on
a learning canvas.

Testing our assumptions


As part of the design process we need to create artifacts to test our so that we can test our assumptions.
The questions we may ask at this stage are is it usable? Desirable? Useful?

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Usability testing


testing Data driven design
Landing page testing

Project: Create a landing page that claims to solve the problems you have identified earlier. You will list the
features you think are important and A/B test them to validate their relevance. You will provide a completed
learning canvas showing the results of your testing

Project: Conduct usability testing on a nominated product and provide a report outing the tasks, completion
rates and key areas for concern.

TOOLS WE RECOMMEND

You wont need any specific digital tools for this course. Just a desire to learn more about the people around you.

Empathy Map
Post-it Notes Sharpies
Template
(Download)

Your mentors are also a great resource to discover tips and tricks to improve with the tools.
W H AT YO U L L L E A R N

Why understanding customers is important How to build empathy for your customers in your
team

Which methodologies to use for your When to research and why


projects

W H AT YO U L L C R E AT E W H AT Y O U L L C O N D U C T

User test plans Customer Journey Map Contextual Inquiries Customer Interviews
Surveys Kano Diagrams User Surveys Heuristic Reviews
Empathy Maps Point of View Statements Feature Analysis Usability Testing
Storyboards Learning Canvases

Still have questions? Contact us

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