with Director, Product Design at Dropbox
19 JANUARY - 7 MARCH 2022
DURATION:
6 WEEKS
MONDAYS & WEDNESDAYS
5 PM PST / 8 PM EST
Get ready to rethink your approach to UX Design. Learn Hang Le's step-by-step method for creating award-winning UX Design, live online.
Each week, you’ll apply what you’ve learned in your own UX design project. By the course end, you'll finish with a product design you can't wait to pitch to stakeholders.
Do you see yourself below?
Then this course is for you.
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YOU'RE READY FOR YOUR BIG BREAK
Overcome your barriers to success, whatever they are — refine your process, learn how to interview, and set your portfolio apart.
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YOU'RE FRESH OUT OF DESIGN SCHOOL
Uplevel your work from the basic design school process and find your right fit in the industry.
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YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A NEW ROLE
Influence partners better with killer presentation strategies and make the case for how your designs bring value to the business.
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YOU'RE BRUSHING UP YOUR PORTFOLIO
Add a stellar new piece to your portfolio and sharpen your interview skills as you pursue fresh career opportunities.
Jumpstart Your Career
This course is for anyone wondering where they fit in the design world. Find out what UX looks like as a career and build the hard and soft skills at each design stage to make it yours.
Practice and Perfect
You’ll learn in live sessions with Hang and a peer group of motivated designers. Enjoy a hands-on, individualized learning experience through live workshops, office hours with Hang, and a final course project.
Perfect your skills through practice and frank instructor feedback. Learn how to pull the maximum value from user research and analysis, wireframing and testing, and visual design.
Create a portfolio-ready project, with direct input from an award-winning UX designer. You'll finish this course with a piece of work that speaks to your new design strengths.
Make yourself an invaluable part of the business model. Learn how to look at your design from a business perspective and master skills like UX persona development, user research, and problem framing.
Present your designs — and yourself — persuasively. Learn the right way to present design work and how to clear the first hurdle in your career journey: the interview process.
LE LinkedIn Profile
- Director of Product Design, a Dropbox company
- 10+ years of improving lives with impactful UX and product design
- Growth-oriented design manager for Fortune 500 companies (SAP) and unicorns (Samsara, Earnin)
- Speaker at industry-wide innovation events including FinTech Design Summit and Tradecraft
- Award-winning designer and empathetic mentor for diverse professionals at all career levels
COURSE INTRODUCTION
Refine your career vision and learn where UX fits into the broader development cycle.
- Craft, business, communication & prioritization
- Popular tools & approaches
- UX designer vs. the UI designer vs. the product designer
- Types of roles, responsibilities & skills
Assignment #1: Project Case Study
Choose an existing product, service, or website you'd like to optimize, or create your own. Answer the provided questions to guide your initial exploration of your chosen case.
Go Deeper: Read at least 3 job postings with a combination of these titles: UX designer at Google, product designer at Facebook, UI designer, UX/UI designer. Reflect on what role you align with and an area that you plan to explore.
This class shatters the biggest myth of UX design: you can focus on design and leave the business to the other guys.
- The role of design in business
- Creating useful UX personas
- Use case, frequency & life stage
- What 90% of UX personas get wrong
Hang demos some of the tools she uses in her everyday work and shares her favorite tricks to optimize the research stage.
- Techniques: Qualitative & quantitative
- Working around access blocks
- Uncovering needs, pain points & needed features
- Demo: User research
Assignment #2: User Personas
Run user research with 3-5 people fitting your persona assumptions. Revise your assumptions and create personas based on your research.
Learn how to analyze user feedback and narrow down the problem your design needs to solve.
- User journey maps
- Forming a goal
- Framing and solving problems with “How Might We”
Add to your creative toolbox with rapid ideation techniques and helpful prioritization frameworks for narrowing down the right one.
- Rules of effective brainstorming
- User journeys and ideation
- Use case methodology
- RICE or Value/Effort framework: How to prioritize
- Breakout room: Ideate with classmates
Assignment #3: User Journey
Create a journey map across personas, highlighting user pain points. Form a "How Might We" statement to summarize your focus problem and ideate solutions, choosing one.
Go Deeper: Form a list of use cases for your chosen solution.
Discover the ingredients of a great wireframe and prototype, plus Hang's time-tested techniques for enhancing product quality for B2B and B2C clients.
- What’s the point of prototyping
- Why early-user responses to the MVP matters for UX decisions
- When to use low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes
- How to use wireframing tools for maximum end-product quality
Assignment #4: Wireframe
Wireframe 3-5 key screens to visualize and test your idea.
Workshop user testing methods, tools, and interpreting results with Hang and your peers.
- Qualitative vs quantitative testing and common methods
- Common methods
- Formulating testing goals
- Effective testing & asking the right questions
- Analyzing & documenting usability test results
Determine how well your design helps achieve your original business goals.
- Workshop: Test your improved designs on each other and provide feedback. What changes can you implement to make the design even better?
Assignment #5: User Testing
Test your wireframe or prototype with 3-5 people. What surprised you about their experience?
Go Deeper: Revise your design based on that feedback.
Turn from the practical aspects of design to the beautiful: Hang demonstrates key visual design principles and how to apply them in a real project.
- Elements of visual design
- Tips in making great looking and polished design
- Demo: Visual design techniques
Learn how the best product companies evaluate and improve on the MVP and how to draft success metrics of your own.
- Minimum Viable Product
- Measuring design & business success
- Phased releases & iterative learning
Assignment #6: High-fidelity Design
Design at least one screen in high-fidelity.
Go Deeper: Form the success measurements you'll use to evaluate your design. What is the must-have feature in your MVP?
Designers trying to move up the career ladder quickly learn that there is a right way and a wrong way to present their work. Today you will, too.
- Impact, not effort
- Storytelling, speaking patterns, and getting to the point
- Communicating technically complex data & details
- Questions every UX Designer will face
Assignment #7: Begin the course project.
Simulate a UX feedback session as it happens in top product companies like Dropbox, with Hang and your peers weighing in on student projects. Six volunteers will present their final decks.
- Workshop: Final presentation and feedback
Create a deck of 5-10 slides breaking down your design for stakeholders. Use the assignments you've completed in the previous 4 weeks as the basis for starting this project.
Your presentation will make the business case for your design by addressing each design stage you worked through in the course. Hang will provide personal feedback on your finished deck.
You may present either your work from this course or an existing portfolio piece.
This special bonus class prepares you to master the complex mix of technical talent, design thinking, and soft skills that is the UX design interview.
- Understanding the room, roles, and what each person is looking for ​
- Common interview questions (and what they’re really asking) ​
- How to get the job when you're not the perfect match
What our students say
"The assignments really help lock in what Hang teaches us in class. Practical application helps me learn better than simply listening to a lecture."
"I love how practical this course is! It’s not your typical cookie cutter bootcamp, it actually shows you what the current workforce looks like in the UX world! I’m really enjoying it so far :)"