In regards to ethical issues, the most important thing is to be very, very sensitive. When we go out and interview people, we want to really understand the world. Because human beings are very complex creatures, our world sometimes is very vulnerable.

What I would always recommend when you interview someone is to be hypersensitive to where they are and look at their body language either when they’re closing up, when they’re opening up, when they’re looking away, when they’re looking straight at you, when their eyes open up with excitement, etc. If we see them closing up, it means that we’re touching something that is sensitive there.

This is really where our ethics come into the picture. Do we want to probe them more and push them towards more answers, or is this enough information for us and do we want to back up? The idea is to really respect whoever you’re interviewing and observe what they’re not saying, and be sensitive about when you’re going to explore further.

In your online UX design education, it’s important to keep the method of your research at the forefront of your mind. Your UX and UI decisions are based on these interviews, and it’s important that the UX design and UI design data you gather are collected in ethical ways.

Often, when designers use the word modeling, and if you were to look up an industrial design model, you would see a product that really looks like the real thing. So if you looked at the model of a shoe, a model of a surgical tool, or a model of a bandage, it’s just going to look like that specific product that represents the product design concept.

But that model in what we call the high-fidelity state is not really for testing. That model is to show what we call a proof of concept or to illustrate our final design intent to help others visualize the concept. But before we ever get to that model, we’re doing all sorts of Frankenstein modeling or low-fidelity models, because we’re just trying to figure this idea out. So, there may be several steps that lead to a satisfying end result.

If we never made a drone before, we’re trying to figure out how we can pull together a drone. You might buy existing products that work similarly, take them apart, and reverse engineer them to try to understand from a product development standpoint how they work, how they fit together, and how the pieces fit. You might be taking measurements or looking at the circuits.

But you’re really trying to understand the design from existing products, and some of these things can be almost exactly what you want to create. At other times, though, the design may be very different. But we’re trying to look for those influences and inspiration from analogs. Then we’ll pull that design together into functional or semi-functional prototypes where we’re just testing these ideas. For prototyping for designers, it really is about the inquiry of trying to test hypotheses about how things might work. This process is similar to what you might learn from a professional product design education.

Designing products from models is about aesthetics. So, sometimes we’re making form prototypes where we’re trying to understand how things should look or feel in the hand or while in use. Sometimes we’re experimenting with different materials on an object. We might want to see how one material behaves versus another. That can range from a fit in the hand to how it feels to your skin, but also it includes functionally pertaining to how these things work.

If you had something that had to spin or hinge or had to be very strong, you would want to test it to see if that material and that form factor or that shape would actually be able to do what you want it to do. You can learn more about this process by getting an online product design education.

Steph Mantis gives this advice on product design education: “Once you have a rough sketch and you’re starting to know the direction you’re moving in, you want to start thinking about materials. You want to start thinking about ‘How do I refine this?’ And ultimately, you want to think about ‘How am I going to communicate this to my fabricators, and my audience?'”

She goes on to explain, “If you can communicate it to your fabricators really clearly, you can use a number of tools. It can be auto-card; it can be solid works. I’ve designed stuff where I just put together a mood board. I say, ‘Like this, not like that.’ And I give that to a factory, and it communicates enough for them to get to the next sketch, which then comes back to me so I can critique that.”

Mantis makes it clear that at the end of the day, it’s about how you are communicating this idea of yours. You can use various tools for product design and product development. Pinterest, for example, is great for mood boarding. The Internet itself is a plethora of images that you can easily just start pulling out and organizing. It’s a source of online product design education. She personally likes things like Google Drive to organize concepts and uses spreadsheets to start her sourcing and pricing. Steph says she also likes Keynote.

“I think Keynote is really easy,” she continues. “It’s an Apple-based product. It comes on every Mac product basically. It’s cloud-driven, so it’s super easy to pull presentations together, share them, edit them, get them on your phone, get them on a tablet, get them on a desktop.”

Usability tests in online UX Design Education come in two broad categories: moderated and unmoderated.

A moderated UI usability test is when the researcher or you, as a designer, work with the user, either in the same space or online, to take them through the prototype. You ask the questions while the user completes the tasks answers the questions.

In an unmoderated test, the users work by themselves. There is no one there in the room, or in the virtual room, to help them, prompt them, or ask the question in a different way. This really tests the UI design. So, unmoderated tests can be challenging for users, but, equally, can give you really good insight into where those UX challenges are. If the users are struggling to complete the test, then that is a clear indication that something with your solution isn’t quite right, and may need some extra attention.

Ethnographic research is becoming a key part of our toolbox as designers. This type of research is not necessarily needed for every product development project, but it can be extremely valuable to make sure that you’re still responding to the needs of your market.

The idea of ethnographic research is that you’re going to really dive into a user group or type of user. You’re diving into their lives and the way they actually use your product and incorporate it into their day-to-day activities. You not only engage them and talk to them, but you also really observe the way they live and use your product.

This type of research is very different from a quantitative type of research where you simply ask people questions and analyze their responses. This used to be the main type of research you’d learn about in product design education. The people’s responses would be turned into graphs and heat maps, and you’d learn how to study those.

In today’s online product design education, the focus is going to be on ethnographic research, which is qualitative instead of quantitative. It’s usually done with a very small sample. A group of six to 12 people is a good size. You don’t need to deal with hundreds of people.

The difficult part, when you do ethnographic research, is not the research itself. It’s easy to engage people, extract some information and observe how they use your product and how they live.

The difficult part is to take that observation and turn it into an insight about your product design. That’s where it gets very challenging. We spend a lot of time actually training our team to make that passage from observation to insight.

There’s a lot of secret sauce that takes place during that passage.

Exploration in product design and product development depends on the project or the product. Exploration is a part of the process that goes beyond what you learn to do in online product design education while sitting at a desk. You get to break away from that and explore.

For example, if you’re designing a telescope, you go look at all kinds of different telescopes. You look at big ones, and you look at little ones, and you also look at stuff that’s shaped like a tube. You look at things people put up to their eyes and how the image gets from space to you, to your brain.

You try to literally think outside of the box. You’re way out, and you don’t have to presuppose what you’re going to figure out. It’s really the most fun part of the project because you’re just looking around and finding anything you want.

Or you go to the store, and you look at things in that category. Or if it’s a medical product, you go visit the hospital and see how all the other things in the operating room are being used.

It’s one of the most fun parts of the project and something that product design education has a harder time explaining than most technical concepts because, at this stage, everything is open. You can Google anything, and it’s part of the project. So, this is a fun kind of thing.

Thinking about inspiration is interesting because, in truth, inspiration is everywhere. Inspiration isn’t a cookie-cutter concept, where you can simply define it as one thing and be done with it. It’s really about being open-minded and being receptive to things that are coming your way. You might have this idea of a design or product, and then, you see chewing gum while you’re walking down the street, and suddenly, inspiration hits you, just like that. Maybe the shape of the chewing gum becomes a doorknob, or at the grocery store, you see a strange looking red carrot, and that suddenly becomes the base of a lamp.

This is to say that inspiration and influence can show up everywhere. It’s about you being open to it and not filtering as many things out because, as you walk around in your life, you’ll realize that even the most highly ridiculous idea can actually trigger a really positive reaction. It’s not like you can simply count to three, and suddenly, you’ll have the key and code for unlocking inspiration. It’s really about being open-minded and being brave enough to take ideas that you see and process them, using your mind to turn them into new thinking and new ideas.

This can come from a wide range of things whether it be colors, shapes, sounds, or details; it’s endless. You just have to start walking. Start allowing yourself to see and to be receptive. The great thing about inspiration is that it truly comes from everywhere, and as you walk through life, you’re going to realize that. Inspiration for me was completely different at age 20 than it is today.

Today, I find inspiration in sound; I translate sounds that I hear into shapes. I find inspiration in food; I taste something, and the flavor suddenly becomes something new. I ask myself if color has a shape or if different colors like green and blue have a different vocabulary. Ultimately, you have to figure out what inspires you because inspiration is just as personal as people think it is. Again, you have to be very open. There’s no right or wrong; there’s only moving forward. Just allow yourself to be surprised.

To learn more about finding inspiration and harnessing creativity, as well as product design and product development, think about starting on a path with product design education. If you’re interested in learning about these things from the comfort of your own home, online product design education might be perfect for you.

How do we move through 3D ideation, especially today, with so many digital tools available? I find in my classroom quite often (in fact, it happened today), when people hear the words “3D sketching”, they think it means in the computer. It’s not so in my classes or in my studio. Because what I want to do is to free up the sketching as quickly as possible and make it as free as possible.

Starting Product Development Off Screen

By working with cardboard and non-precious materials, you can sketch quite quickly. In the physical realm, on the desktop, as opposed to on the screen, you happen upon happy accidents all the time. You see relationships very differently. I believe it maps in the brain differently from looking at a screen.

Product Design Should Be Done Quickly But Not Preciously

Even if you’re looking at a three-dimensional object on the screen, you’re still having a 2D experience. It’s the richest when you start by working with simple materials, and quickly but not preciously, to frame out the basic structure of the design.

Online Product Design Education Still Necessary for Presentations

If you’re comfortable in the computer and you want to go back in, by all means, go back in. Ultimately, in this day and age, we need to do so for presentation and production methods. But during the ideation phase, if we only remain on the screen, I don’t think we involve our full artistic self.

Online UX design education will teach you to always consider your user’s journey and what your user is using this app for. As designers, we can go a little bit off on a tangent and want to create something for ourselves, but that’s not what UI design is about. So you really need to consider the final outcome and who is using and engaging with this product.

Before you even start working on design, it’s really important to have a good background knowledge of who the person interacting with your product is. We will always try and engage with our readers’ feedback. We get people who contact us and tell us the difficulties they might be having with the app. I think UX is an important thing to consider and try and make those changes where you can. But it’s also a good thing to consider early on when you’re designing the UI and creating the code, that these problems might arise.

So you need to go back and be able to adjust things. Some things can be really easy fixes, and some things could be more difficult. But you’ve got to constantly be considering feedback, comments, and your readers to keep adjusting and refreshing your product to make sure it’s right for them, it’s what they want, and it’s something with which they can engage.

You can get a mix of feedback about your app, and I think you just have to be really sensible and consider what the information is. Some people will be unhappy with what you’re creating, or their comments just have value for them. It might not be something you can fix. There are limitations in what you might be capable of doing in your UX design. If you can go away and consider it, and think, “Yes, this is something I think is going to make it easier,” and it’s easy to implement, then just go on and do it.

It’s those sorts of little changes that can make a world of difference to someone interacting with your product. It’s not always easy to make changes. It depends on your company. It depends on what you’re making and what you’re producing. But you can go and make minimal changes, and they can make a big difference.

The research process is quite sophisticated and nuanced when done right. There are steps that I always think we should take before we dive into any data. One of these steps is to understand the goal. What is the purpose of the research? We must ask ourselves this because the research itself is just a basic definition. It applies to every research education, including online UX design education.

It’s only meaningful when it’s there to be a means to an end. It’s not the end itself. We should always ask ourselves the big question of what are we trying to achieve? What is the research going to help us do?

Often, by the way, it takes much longer to figure out the challenge. It also takes time to home in on the question than to do the research. We often must wrestle our clients to the ground to say, what is it that you’re trying to understand?

I often find that the hypothesis is the most critical part of the research. It is because usually, the questions are not that hard to answer but, they need validation. In this case, when you come up with a great hypothesis, you know which direction to follow. Otherwise, you’re just bombarded with so much data.

You go in, and you try to validate the hypothesis. Or, as I said, elaborate on that hypothesis. Maybe say, no, that was the wrong hypothesis. We’ve got to start again, and that’s very valid too. It is because you want to nip it in the bud if it’s wrong. You do this before you proceed to spend many months of work and money developing something that’s wrong.

There are two key steps to take if you can before you dive into research, including UI design. One is to ensure you figure out what you’re trying to solve. For example, you are investigating UX and UI improvement. What is the ideal research question? Then, the other is where do we think is the answer? Could it be here? Maybe not.

Sometimes, I’ll tell the teams to go in with a blank slate; they should not have a hypothesis yet. Go in like you’re an anthropologist in a foreign culture, and you want to discover. Because if you’re too myopic in your thinking, you may discount other avenues. Sometimes, it depends on the timing, or how much information you have, to go down the route of having a hypothesis or two and trying to confirm it.