- User-Centered Design Certificate
"The University of Washington's User-Centered Design (UCD) Certificate is an evening, graduate-level program in the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering for students who want to enhance their skills in user experience (UX) research and design.
UCD Certificate students learn sophisticated methods for planning and developing intuitive, user-friendly product designs. Students study the latest theories and practices to keep user needs at the forefront of each stage of the design process."
- Usability Study
My best work from the certificate program was a team project planning and executing a usability study for a local business. I chose an afternoon schedule for winter quarter without realizing it meant my classmates would be grad students instead of moonlighting tech workers. It was a refreshing and rewarding experience.
My teammates were two young women in the HCDE Masters program. There were some communication challenges due to age difference, but we became friends and worked well together. This was my favorite and best quarter of the three required by the program.
Our team's business partner was Recreational Equipment Incorporated (REI). They requested a study of their catalog website's online shopping paths for product dichotomies, and provided these examples:
- Technical products (packs, tents, etc.) / Non-technical products (clothing, etc.)
- Require fit (packs, footwear, etc.) / Don't require fit (sleeping pads, etc.)
- Inexpensive / Expensive
- Require advice from experts / No advice required
I asked our REI contacts how they regarded their website and they responded that it's a standard sales funnel. With that in mind I devised the plan to apply the sales-funnel model to their site and use the stages of the funnel as an organizing tool to compare shopping paths. One of my teammates handled the test-subject recruiting and scheduling, and created the test's shopping scenarios. The other researched and set up a remote testing side of our study. We rotated roles during the tests between moderator, notetaker, and facilitator, however, after the first few participants my teammates asked me to be the moderator for the remainder of the sessions.
We didn't find distinct patterns among dichotomies, but virtually all the products required some degree of expert advice. Although REI's website provided a wealth of expert advice, and five of eight participants expressed a need for advice, only one participant found it and used it.
Our main finding was that content from the website's Interest stage of the sales funnel, expert advice and how-to-choose articles, etc., should be better integrated with the Desire and Action stages. I cite specific examples and proposed solutions in this summary I produced the summer after I completed the program. Here is the full report we produced as a team.
We didn't have time to edit the eight hours of video to produce a highlights reel as a team, so I did it myself after spring quarter. This document describes the process I used and includes links to the video clips.
- Outcome
After deciding to refresh my design education I narrowed my choices to UW's UCD Certificate and General Assembly's UX program. I felt a sense of loyalty to UW, where I had originally studied design, and I felt it commanded more respect as an institution. However, I wish the certificate program had provided more-targeted UX training. I have a lot of professional design experience already so some aspects of the program were redundant for me.