One piece of UI design that people really don’t think about or talk about is spending. What is the budget? How are we going to get there? Entering into this, our client has a notion of where they’re going to go. Often, our clients engage us from what we’ll call an “experience blueprint” for a project that has yet to be defined. They have a high-level idea of understanding of what they think they need.

Online UX design education shows we go through a journey with the client. It’s essentially about discovery, vision, narrative, and creating what we’ll call a blueprint for opportunities. Now that can be digital. It could be physical. But it becomes a document, and it becomes the way forward in the UI design.

The Cost

Also in that document, we’re looking at what the cost implications are. Everyone wants digital in the built environment, but they don’t really understand the process and what you need to go through to make it authentic and relatable. So whether it’s a light touch or a heavy touch, we try to give the client a sense of the cost.

Cost doesn’t just include the physical hardware, but also the back end: the UX development process, the software, how the UI system is going to operate, how it self-refreshes, all of those things based on what we think is appropriate for the project and client.

There are a lot of moving parts, but that up-front work saves the client a lot of time and cost, if it’s done appropriately. A good brief is broken down into several buckets, the tactical elements of what’s required, so the client and the team have an understanding of the project’s scale, cost, audience, and intent.

The Vision

Often, briefs focus more on technical needs and detailing all sorts of UX design elements. However, there is part of the brief that’s more of the narrative of what we aspire to for the project. It details what the client’s aspirations are and how our UX design team can build on those aspirations. A client might have a big, global wish for something, but we have to balance that aspiration and the real-life elements together into a brief.

Personally for me, and as a firm, we want to have a narration around the project that gives it a sense of opportunity. It helps the client to see and focus on vision and not get caught up in some of the smaller parts of the process.

I think a really important issue when it comes to online UX design education, designing and the design space in general is that design teams themselves are often not diverse. Because of this, I’ve had several experiences when working with design teams where people are designing products and experiences, and they continue to forget about communities of color.

When you think of how many AI-enabled products come out and are unable to detect dark skin, it tells you that throughout the design-thinking process, there was probably no UX or UI researcher, designer or strategist who was a person of color who thought, “We should also be testing folks of color to see how they would interact with this product.”

The Need for Diversity in Imagery

Another thing I think people should be mindful of when designing is imagery and branding—especially when designing an app or a website. A lot of times, for communities of color, we go on a website, and we don’t see ourselves on that website at all. There is no one who thought, “We should diversify our imagery so that people can see themselves in this product.” That absence is something that can also be alienating. It goes against the root of what UX and UI design are: the ability to be empathetic.

The Need for Self-Examination and Reflection

I think that the root of the problem is really the fact that there is a lack of work done within the design space. People need the ability to look at themselves and examine the unconscious biases they have. I think that’s something that needs to be implemented within the design-thinking process in addition to having diverse teams. We want to ensure that the products that we’re coming out with are truly equitable and inclusive.

Frequently, we have these different designs that are coming out. The service, product or experience is not actually effective because the design team is not taking into consideration the actual problem space itself that may be specifically harming communities of color or other marginalized communities. It is not solving the real solution because the act of delving deeper into the nature of the problem was missing from the entire design-thinking process.

The Critical Role of Background Research

In order to make sure that we are really thinking about the full context when it comes to defining the problem space, especially when it comes to working with Black, Indigenous, and communities of color, I always like to stress the importance of first doing background research. What is the historical context? What institutional or interpersonal practices and policies have impacted these communities? This research can be done through currently published journals.

Another essential practice is intentionally connecting with community experts who have a strong sense of what the problem space is. Being able to have that context and not go into defining a problem with a colorblind mentality is really critical when it comes to determining the actual problem.

As we move away from motion pictures in the 20th century, we see the emergence of digital UI and UX design, right, and new worlds. Those were the first times we were confronted with the promise of digital technology and the kinds of new interfaces it would enable us to create, and where our creativity, combined with the complexities of the hardware and software, led us to consider other approaches to UI design.

When we have the mouse, we are already engaging with content that’s given to us on that same screen within which then there is hyperlinking for example, right, the idea of a click where you can go from one side to another, the idea of a keyboard where you can write and what you’re writing, the commands you’re putting; the input then translates into some understanding, some level of computation that takes place that then takes you to somewhere else. It’s really opened up a fissure into the linear narrative formation into one that’s based on decision trees with multiple possibilities.

So, although technology was advancing, we were reverting to interfaces with which we were extremely acquainted. And, as an example, consider my father, who is from the Caspian Sea. And he, I believe he loved fishing. And the size of his catch was always determined by the size of his audience.

So, depending on the engagement he had and the amount of absorption and enthusiasm, he would sometimes tell the same tale in 30 seconds and other times it would go on and on. And the fish of this size would eventually grow into a monster that he had captured, right? So, these new technologies are assisting us in transitioning from linear storytelling to interactive stories with decision trees, and then with augmented reality and immersive technologies, we are transitioning from screens to scenes where you are totally involved in an environment that you are in, which is known as UX.

And the ramifications are numerous. But what I find interesting is that we are attempting to return to that fundamental desire that we have to communicate with one another in ways that are more demanding of the audience, and that there is an expectation of what I term cohabitation cooperation, cohabitation, and cohabitation and co-creation.

The artist’s position is no longer one of “I will direct everything, and then I will present it in front of the public, and they will consume it.” I will always be co-creating with my audience, a little like the street magician who must always account for how the audience connects with the tale that is being delivered. These skills can be acquired through online UX design education.

“I remember in 2012, just not being able to use any emojis that were my skin tone. And that’s something that was just the norm. And so I think a really big thing within the design field itself, is something that I call the white default, which is essentially, the norm is viewed as white,” says Jacquelyn Iyamah.

So, you end up with these products like emojis, Band-Aids, self-driving cars, soap dispensers that just don’t speak to communities of color. They specifically don’t speak to folks who have dark skin. Online UX Design Education must be able to be mindful of that as well as be able to, within the design thinking process, continuously question ourselves and our biases. These issues are something that’s really critical to ensure that we’re not designing products that continuously harm.

“The kind of conversation or the kind of arguments against bias that takes place is often a matter of representation. So let me give you a little historical point here. Technologies that we come to use, if and when they’re created within a capitalistic society, then the way those technologies are pursued is usually to cater to the needs of the corporations that are creating it,” says Amir Baradaran.

Kodak is a good example of that, whereby for people of color, you had a hard time being able to actually have good photos because it was never created for BIPOC. Because it was adjusted only to fair skin, who then had better purchasing capabilities, it never even cared to allow for having devices that actually would better capture the reality of our skin colors.

So, for example, when the camera has a hard time recognizing people of color or being able to distinguish between males and females in darker-skinned bodies and faces, obviously, we have an issue. That should be regulated. We should look for a better representation of data, based on which then machines can learn.

UX is user experience design. Daniel Holtzman informs us that it’s a big field and it encompasses a lot of things. It comes from a few older practices, some of which form part of what UX is and some of which have been more or less replaced by it. Back in the day, it was more commonly referred to as HCI, or human-computer interface.

There are elements of it which touch UI. There are elements of it which touch technology. There are elements of it which touch business. But really, it’s about understanding how a product or an experience is going to affect a user’s life. How can you create the product or experience in a way that allows someone to use it better, get more out of it, find more delight in it and ultimately engage with it more successfully?

UX design has grown from a lot of things, and it’s at a point now where it’s really exploding. There is a lot going on as interfaces and technologies evolve.

We’re seeing voice interfaces. We’re seeing VR, AR, all of these emergent technologies, all of which are going to require that people not only understand how to bring those experiences to life but also do it in new ways. We’ll have to take all the things we traditionally do in a more digital format and bring them to these other types of formats.

We’re finding that people are specializing, but more people are also becoming generalists. The industry is at a point where it’s diverging. Before, we had a convergence of a bunch of different practices coming together under the helm of UX. Now, what we’re seeing is people specializing and diverging into these different areas.

As these areas become richer and more complex, we’re going to need people who are paying more and more attention to these specific things and are able to specialize in them.

If you have interest in learning more about both UX design and UI design, an excellent place to start would be online UX design education. It’s a convenient and accessible way to gain a much deeper and more complete understanding of these topics and many others.

One of the most valuable parts of online UX design education is the look back at the most innovative UX developments in history.

Moving on to the ’70s and Xerox, Apple, and the PC. This is the era of personal computers. Suddenly, psychology and engineering are merged together, and that evolves into the first graphical user interfaces and the mouse, which was invented by Xerox. Apple, in 1984, develops the Macintosh — the first ever mass-market PC that involved a graphical user interface, a mouse, and a built-in screen.

Now, we arrive to the big, big, big deal of UX design. That is Donald Norman. In the ’90s, Donald Norman was the first ever person to implement the word UX in his job title. He was hired by Apple as a UX architect engineer. He was a cognitive scientist who wanted to evolve what designers had understood up until to that moment as UX. He wanted to evolve that and to expand that into the realm of the physical, including UI and UI design, industrial design, the graphical user interface, the physical interaction, even the packaging.

So, thank you Mr. Norman because, thanks to you, the world now is a better place.

This is my method for doing research analysis for UX and UI design.

After I have observed my users and the task they’re doing, and after I’ve spoken to them, I’ll have a bunch of qualitative data that I want to analyze. After analyzing the data, hopefully I’ll understand some really meaningful insights about those users’ needs.

The first thing I would do to go about finding those insights is to gather all the data I have, which will include recordings and notes.

I always recommend you record your interviews, and good online UX design education will suggest that, too. Record the interviews and take notes. If possible, have someone else with you during the interviews who will also take notes. This is helpful because two people will hear and see different things, so you’ll get a second perspective on the interviews.

Once I gather the data, I’ll look at it to see what different data points are there. By data points, I mean that I would go over the interview and circle key ideas or key words that come up. Then I would write each one of those on a different Post-it note and stick it to the wall.

Today, we use Miro a lot, or other similar online and digital platforms. We have digital Post-its! Those are great collaborative tools. So, just write those ideas or those data points that are coming up on your board, digital or physical.

The next thing that I would do is start to cluster things that are similar in themes or ideas. By doing that, you’ll start to see patterns. You’ll start to see recurring themes and similar things that are coming up from many different people.

Once you understand that an issue has come up from different people, you can start to analyze it and ask what that action means. From there you would start to derive insights. This stage is what I call unpacking the data.

Getting the insights is one of the trickiest parts of analyzing the research for your UX design, but the process is only these simple steps. The more you analyze your UI data in this way, the easier it should be to find those important insights.

One important thing to consider when you’re planning and preparing for your usability study in online UX design education is how to avoid bias. This is important whether you’re testing a prototype, testing the competition, or even just having a conversation with your users to discover more about their needs how to incorporate that into your UX design or UI design.

You really have to be careful not to introduce your own biases into the conversation. Biases are very broad topics, and there’s a lot of information to learn about them and how to control for them. The easiest way to do that is by working with a diverse team with diverse backgrounds and diverse experiences.

The importance of user testing is that when you are designing, you often come with biases, and those can make their way into your work. When you’re designing for a group of people who are not necessarily you, in your demographic, or even related to things you have an interest in, you’re going to come into it with assumptions that might not be true at all. That means that it’s important to ensure you test the way real uses would actually use what you’re designing.

Getting that sort of data is going to help you to make more educated decisions in your UI and UX, especially when you’re working with a team, each individual has their own assumptions, and you really need something to drive the direction of the design.

Online UX design education is imperative for web designers to become great at what they do and improve the UX. Whenever you design accessible interfaces, you’re making the experience better for every user, not just for those with certain disabilities or handicaps.

There are a ton of things to consider when creating an effective UI design. How large is the text, and is it easy to read? Is there enough contrast between the text and its background? How large are the buttons, and are they clickable?

To create the best UX design, we really have to place ourselves in the shoes of our users who have more specialized UI needs by reading up on books to help us think them through. But more importantly, it is a must that we actually go out into the field and speak with those users ourselves so that we can fully understand their needs and capture them accordingly.

When I’m teaching students, I often treat them like they’re just starting out a project. Later on, once they think they’re further along, I have them complete 30 drawings. I don’t have them complete one or two. They’re not doing five or 10. They’re producing 30 unique sketches.

How do you push yourself to really think past your initial ideas, understandings and assumptions and go beyond and then keep going beyond?

When you start out, whether for an assignment in a product design class or your early career, it’s really hard. You have just a couple of ideas, and you can’t imagine how you can come up with 30 to complete the exercise. But, if you keep pushing, let yourself go and imagine and put some of the thinking and self-editing aside, you find yourself producing some of your richest work. Even your most far-fetched ideas can have real legs and potential.

It’s important to put all of those ideas down on clean paper. Each sketch must be a finished drawing with a title and your name on it too. We actually put all of the sketches up on the wall, and then we walk through those ideas. You need to really understand that sometimes there are groupings and themes within them. There are similarities. There are wild ideas that sometimes generate the best discussions, and students at first push back.

Origin of the Exercise

This design exercise was actually something that a teacher had me do when I was in school. It was one of the few times in graduate school that I stayed up all night worrying. I then realized how liberating it was to create so many sketches and all of the potential that really lives in this exercise. I also recognized how important it was to not require this exercise just once but, instead, a couple of times throughout a project.

Online Product Design Education

You must make sure that you’re always continuing to push forward. I don’t only mean by producing 30 drawings. It can be in other ways. As you will learn in all of your product design education classes, you can improve your chances of having a successful career in the product development field by making sure that you’re always pushing yourself forward and beyond what you first think, the idea you first land on and your first understanding of anything.