What You’ll Learn
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An understanding of the importance of users’ needs, goals and tasks.
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An understanding of empirical measurements of user behaviour.
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An understanding of validated learning through prototyping and iterative design.
Course Requirement
There are no formal requirements or admission criteria, although candidates should have decent written English skills.
Course Features
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18 hours study time
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1 hour assessment examination
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Physical classes.
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BCS Study materials.
Examination Format
60 minutes supervised examination, with 40 multiple choice questions.
Pass mark is 65% (26/40)
Course Syllabus
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Introduction
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Guiding Principles
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- Importance of taking the user’s perspective
- Principles of user centred design
- Perspectives of systems
- Difference between usability and user experience
- Benefits of accessibility
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3. User Research
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- Research method to understand the context of use
- Principles of contextual inquiry
- Difference between opinion-based and behaviour-based research methods
- The components of the context of use
- The potential users of the system
- The importance of gaining informed consent form the users
- Steps in a suitable user research technique
- Questions to ask in user interviews
- kinds of data that should be collected during a site visit to users.
- How to Interpret the data from a site visit in ways that can be used to develop a shared knowledge of the context of use.
- Discount usability research techniques (daily studies)
- requirements gathering and conceptual design
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4. Documenting User Research Findings
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- Specific users of the system
- descriptions of users that can be used for design.
- the rationale for focussing on user needs.
- key user needs.
- elements of a user story.
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5. Measuring Usability
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- Definition of usability
- How the definition of usability can be used to construct measures of usability.
- How to choose between good and poor design ideas by using behavioural data.
- The role design experiments play in validated learning.
- Differences between quantitative and qualitive usability research.
- The importance of good usability and iterative design.
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6. Information Architecture
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- How information flows between a person and a product or service.
- How to Choose appropriate schemes for classifying, organising and structuring information including functions and features.
- The steps in carrying out an open and a closed card sort.
- Comparison of an implementation model, a mental model and a conceptual model.
- The concept of affordance.
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7. Interaction Design
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- User interface design patterns
- How to choose the correct interactive control in a user interface design.
- How the choice of user interface control has an impact on the time it takes users to achieve their goals
- The concept of progressive disclosure.
- Difference between interaction design and information architecture.
- Why user interface consistency is an important design principle.
- Importance of focusing on the user’s tasks when designing the flow of a user interface.
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8. Visual Design
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- Fundamental principles of visual design.
- Advantages and disadvantages of using metaphorical representations in visual design.
- Fundamental basics on web content writing.
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9. User Interface Prototyping
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- Types of prototypes
- Appropriate type of prototype for the phase of design.
- The importance of identifying multiple different design solutions before deciding on a
- Specific design solution.
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10. Usability Evaluation
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- Difference between a usability inspection and a usability test.
- Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics and other usability principles
- Usability evaluations to test design hypotheses.
- How to moderate a usability test
- Good and poor tasks for a usability test.
- How to record the data from usability evaluations.
- Interpreting the data from usability tests to distinguish high and low severity usability problems
- The difference between observation and interpretation.
- W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
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