Interaction Design Specialization

In this course, you will learn how to design technologies that bring people joy, rather than frustration. You'll learn several techniques for rapidly prototyping (such as Wizard of Oz Prototyping) and evaluating multiple interface alternatives -- and why rapid prototyping and comparative evaluation are essential to excellent interaction design. You'll learn how to conduct fieldwork with people to help you get design ideas. How to make paper prototypes and low-fidelity mock-ups that are interactive -- and how to use these designs to get feedback from other stakeholders like your teammates, clients, and users. Armed with these design-thinking strategies, you’ll be able to do more creative human-centered design in any domain.

This is the first course offered in the interaction design specialization series. Browse through previous capstone projects for some inspiration here: https://medium.com/capstone-projects/capstone-projects-2019-abc67d3f6f26

What makes an interface intuitive? How can I tell whether one design works better than another? This course will teach you fundamental principles of design and how to effectively evaluate your work with users. You'll learn fundamental principles of visual design so that you can effectively organize and present information with your interfaces. You'll learn principles of perception and cognition that inform effective interaction design. And you'll learn how to perform and analyze controlled experiments online. In many cases, we'll use Web design as the anchoring domain. A lot of the examples will come from the Web, and we'll talk just a bit about Web technologies in particular. When we do so, it will be to support the main goal of this course, which is helping you build human-centered design skills, so that you have the principles and methods to create excellent interfaces with any technology.

People are social creatures and the modern Internet reflects that. Technology has made collaboration at a distance possible in new ways that present their own set of challenges. This course will introduce you to the major challenges and opportunities for creating online communities. What does the future hold? Learn how social computing can create collaboration experiences that go beyond what’s possible face to face.

In this course, you will learn relevant fundamentals of human motor performance, perception, and cognition that inform effective interaction design. You will use these models of how people work to design more effective input and interaction techniques. You’ll apply these to both traditional graphic and gestural interfaces.