Posted: January 13, 2024
A personal rundown of the 32 UX courses I've completed with the Interaction Design Foundation, covering everything from design thinking and user research through to AI, accessibility and mobile UX.
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I’ve been working in UX/UI for almost 15 years and wanted to get some formal qualifications behind me. I found the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF) courses great for filling in the gaps in my knowledge. They helped balance my practical skills with time-tested design and research theory. True to their name, IxDF focuses on the fundamentals, which means the skills you pick up stay relevant for years. There’s a mix of multiple choice questions, short essays, videos, peer knowledge sharing and optional exercises to help grow your skills and portfolio. For the price and quality, it’s been a great investment and well worth it.
I signed up to study online via the Interaction Design Foundation over several months, aiming to spend at least 30 minutes each day working towards completing over 30 UX certifications.
To date, I’ve completed courses on Accessibility, Agile Methodologies, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented and Virtual Reality Design (AR/VR), Dashboards, Design Thinking, Gamification, Gestalt Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Information Visualisation, Interaction Design, Journey Mapping, Mobile UX Strategy, Mobile User Experience (UX), Perception and Memory in HCI/UX, Psychology of E-Commerce, UI Design Systems and Patterns, Usability Testing, User Experience, User Research Methods, UX Management Strategy, Visual Design and Web Design.
Empower yourself with cutting-edge skills that will enable you to both seamlessly incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) tools into your design process and learn the basics of how to design for AI.
Learn both the theory and the real-world implementation of agile, its different flavours, and how you can work with different versions of agile teams.
Mobile UX design skills are now an essential part of any UX designer’s skill set. This course will provide you with the foundations of mobile UX so that you can break into this extensive market.
A strong UI design is essential for the success of a digital product in today’s saturated market. Mobile devices’ screen real estate is small, and people are on the move, so a good UI is even more crucial. You’ll learn to encourage task completion and to make your products intuitive and easy to use.
Interactive systems are more than just functional. If we hope to engage more effectively with our users, user experience is crucial. To create successful user experiences, we need to know how humans think and feel.
In a service design process, you use an in-depth understanding of the business and its customers to ensure that all the touchpoints of your service are perfect and, just as importantly, that your organization can deliver a great service experience every time. It’s not just about designing the customer interactions; you also need to design the entire ecosystem surrounding those interactions.
Create user-friendly mobile experiences that captivate and engage your users like never before! Transform your ideas into highly successful products with this comprehensive course on Mobile UX Strategy.
Gain a holistic understanding of visual design and increase your knowledge of visual principles, colour theory, typography, grid systems and history. You’ll also learn why visual design is so important, how history influences the present, and practical applications to improve your work. These insights will help you to achieve the best possible user experience.
A large part of human interaction relies on perception, our ability to sense the world around us. But we also need to join perceived events together, which is where memory comes in.
This course is a hands-on introduction to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), where you’ll learn how to apply cognitive psychology and human-centered design principles to create intuitive, user-friendly digital products.
How to create an experience map, customer journey map and service blueprint. An understanding of the three most common types of journey maps and why they work so well.
Implement design patterns that facilitate people’s needs in a way that is ethically sound—for instance by avoiding dark patterns that manipulate people’s behaviors.
Design e-commerce websites which increase customer retention and loyalty in an ethical manner.
How to craft compelling UX case studies that tell a story and motivate recruiters to invite you for job interviews.
Manage a product’s path of use from introduction to the market and onwards to ensure that it’s constantly relevant to its customer base.
Create complex interface designs that are visually intuitive to understand and operate by applying Gestalt principles.
Design engaging user experiences for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) through the use of storytelling techniques.
Learning how to design intuitive and easy-to-use products by taking inspiration from physicality.
Present complex and abstract data in a visual way which is easy for people to understand.
Create immersive player experiences that help contribute towards business goals and performance.
Super practical advice on how to run and set up a design business, attract clients and market your services.
An overview of how to create test scripts, interview and run usability tests.
A more in-depth look into interaction design and usability.
A short introduction to web usability.
Really challenging and eye-opening course to learn more about inclusive design and accessibility.
Great advice on aspects to remember when designing for smaller screens and devices.
Great practical advice on how to grow your company’s UX maturity and balancing users’ needs with business objectives and ROI. Highly recommend.
Really practical advice on how to carry out UX research and the various techniques.
This is the course that goes before the “Become a UX Designer from Scratch”.
This was a pretty advanced course and highlighted some areas I need to learn more about.
This course alone is enough to justify the cost of the yearly membership.
This course did an excellent job of filling in some of the gaps in my UX knowledge and provided a solid foundation to build upon.
If this sounds like the way you like to work, get in contact to tell me a little about yourself and your project and I'd be happy to help. Send me an email at hello@richmcnabb.com.