User Experience Design Learning Path
mysliderule.com
mysliderule.com
Designers of Hacker News, we'd love your help on 2 things:
1. We'd love your feedback on the curriculum itself. e.g. Do the topics and flow look right? Are the projects sufficient?
2. If you're a UX designer who loves to teach and mentor new professionals, I'd love to talk. We're planning a learning experiment that combines the power of the internet with one-on-one human contact.
It seems rather strange that there isn't a single reference to HCI in a UX curriculum. I know it may sound like the "hard"/science-y part, but HCI is fundamental - quite a few principles (such as Fitt's law or the 10 Nielsen & Molich heuristics) came from HCI research and stood the test of time - they're still valid, today. Usability testing was also built out of HCI research. Also: cognitive modeling, the focus on the user, and so on.
tl;dr: You should introduce HCI from the start. There's open courseware on the subject. You can't claim to know (or teach) the essentials of UX design without a good knowledge of HCI as a subject.
Most UX methods and guidelines come from HCI (and HCI, of course, comes from other disciplines).
I don't think you can simplify it to HCI preceding UX or UCD methodologies.
As you point out, HCI of course comes from other disciplines and just like the field of UX, it's borrowed a lot. HCI, Human Factors, Psychology, etc., all borrow techniques from others (as you've acknowledged)and a lot of what they do has been developed in parallel.
A lot of UX and design methods were developed in parallel by designers with at traditional design background or others without formal research backgrounds. Despite UX being characterized as a science or more rigorous than traditional design, it is largely a pragmatic practice.
Is knowing some HCI useful for design? Sure, but necessary? The best designers I've worked with have none, while going from HCI to design requires a drastic shift in mindset. Keep in mind that HCI first and foremost is a computer science discipline practiced exclusively by computer scientists. Design is mostly practiced by those trained as designers, in design school by people who have never been remotely near HCI. They are definitely analytic, but are not data driven (well, google, and in the web world where engineers have taken over, but that's a new trend and not necessarily a lasting one), their method is design thinking rather than the scientific method.
Most work on HCI was at the measure level. If you follow HCI research, you may notice a trend: lots of publications based on ethnographic methods, qualitative approaches and the like. HCI (as in "HCI academic research") is, nowadays, much closer (methodologically) to design thinking than to experimental psychology.
> I'm betting you are on the HCI side and not the design side right?
I do both. I work in the industry (UI design, front-end dev, evaluation) and I'm a PhD student.
> Keep in mind that HCI first and foremost is a computer science discipline
I've the opposite opinion on this. From all the disciplines that "inform" HCI, CS would be the least important. But ...
> practiced exclusively by computer scientists.
I guess you're right on this, at least in the academia. I do have the impression that most HCI researchers have a CS background. But, at least in my country, this is mostly because CS departments have much more funding to hire researchers than the others.
Just because HCI researchers are trying to do design doesn't mean they have mastered it yet. CHI also doesn't yet know how to handle work from real designers (vs. HCI researchers talking about what they think those designers should be doing). It is more of an aspiration for the community at this point; they haven't asserted much leadership in the field yet (in terms of practice).
> I do both. I work in the industry (UI design, front-end dev, evaluation) and I'm a PhD student.
Did you go to design school? Can you sketch? How about your storyboarding skills? What is your experience with color? Do you have a portfolio ready to show off at any moment? I know I sound harsh, and I'm not trying to say you aren't a real designer, but CS people who say they practice design rarely cross those lines above. I'm a CS researcher, not a designer, and my wife (visual/interaction designer, design school background) calls out my BS all the time.
> I guess you're right on this, at least in the academia. I do have the impression that most HCI researchers have a CS background. But, at least in my country, this is mostly because CS departments have much more funding to hire researchers than the others.
As far as I can tell, there is very little HCI content that is geared toward designers. Those HCI courses that pre-exist are all aimed at computer scientists; the designers in the meantime have their own programs (e.g. interaction design departments) that are quite separated from what the engineers are doing.
I'm not a computer scientist, nor a engineer. I graduated from a Comm. & Arts department, with a degree in a "hybrid" between Comm. Science, Design and IT. I do have a portfolio in UI design, I have a little experience in print medium, a solid understanding of colors and typography. I can sketch but I'm a lousy, lousy drawer. I also developed (and do the tutoring) on a small course in UX design, which my company gives to new trainees (engineers, most of the time).
I guess you pictured me as someone from CS with a interest in UI design. I'm not. I'm a UI designer and front-end developer. I'm also a researcher and I do user testing, which is why I also know HCI (and also why I can see the discipline as the foundation of IxD, even though most of the time it isn't acknowledged as such).
> As far as I can tell, there is very little HCI content that is geared toward designers. Those HCI courses that pre-exist are all aimed at computer scientists; the designers in the meantime have their own programs (e.g. interaction design departments) that are quite separated from what the engineers are doing.
I partially agree with you, here. Most HCI courses do exist in CS/engineering departments (at least, in my country). And - what is worst - they're taught by CS with little to zero experience in HCI. However, the interaction design programs - the ones geared towards designers - they do teach HCI. Maybe with a different label, maybe the teachers don't attribute the contents to HCI & HCI authors, but it is HCI nonetheless. Of course, the emphasis is totally different, and they focus a lot more on prototyping
Think "social science approaches to technologically mediated phenomena".
BTW, a good application of Hicks' law is in a book called "The psychology of menu selection: Designing cognitive control at the human/computer interface" (POMS) by Kent Norman. There is an online version:
Are there topics within HCI that you think are more fundamental than others?
- Introduce HCI as a discipline (multi/transdisciplinary origins);
- The Human (cognitive, social and motor aspects);
- The Computer (I/O devices and modalities, interface types);
- The relation (importance of context, tasks);
- Usability (what it is? Start with ISO 9241 definition - "The effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular environments". Refer also to e.g. Sharp, Rogers & Preece "usability objectives", mostly to introduce safety as part of usability);
- Guidelines (heuristics, design "rules");
- Introduce evaluation (testing/empirical vs. inspection/analytical; method examples and when to use which one; you may also introduce the usage physiological measures).
I may be missing something, but I think this would give a clear overview of the the field - what's at stake when you design interfaces.
PS: The pop - up registration form on the website is a fine example of how subscription pop-ups should be done. Only when the user feels that he/she is interested in learning from the website, the pop-up comes up.Its placed well in the website and only shows up when necessary.
There are simply too many invasive and intrusive pop-ups on websites these days that immediately come up when opening the webpage. The worst part is that they keep on nagging you until you either give them your email or leave the website. It ruins the browsing experience and comes of as desperate. Its also a shame that well known websites are now doing this and its really annoying.
If your content is good enough, users will subscribe on their own.
[0] A resource which was developed by Theresa Neil and Balsamiq is great for beginners getting started in User Experience Design.
I am not a fan of using video primarily over text. This is also why I am not a fan of Khan Academy, so maybe it's just my preference and doesn't reflect what most of your users want but I do have facts and reasoning to back up my opinion. Anything that requires sound is going to limit it's use to a private setting, and videos can't be skimmed or used as a reference. I understand their occasional value for supplemental lessons, but I don't they should be required to use tutorials.
There may be a demand for UX designers but as much as I would love to focus my career in that area, I won't because UX is a bike shed. Even if you designed the perfect UI, you would never get it past clueless management without having it mangled. The fight to do your job makes of 90% of your effort, and you will always lose.
If you don't mind, I'll mention it on my blog as well. I've started writing about my process in trying to improve my design skills (http://designwithdave.com), and I think my (few, but growing) readers would find it useful.
Minor annoyance: clicking on "Demystifying Usability Tests: Learning the Basics" leads to an external page where I have to sign in to see the video (no need to sign in for the first video, "What is UX Design"). Do I really need to create another fake account just to see the video?
This is v1 though, and we'll work to make the experience better.
It looks like the only way I can look at the curriculum is by joining sliderule...which I don't want to do, yet.
Also, UX isn't exclusive to software.
If you want to code, then learn coding. But if you want to do design, you are going down a very different path and might not have the luxury of ever coding again (even if you know how).