(Online Course Review) User Experience Design Fundamentals, Version 4

Overview

Review Published: July, 2015.

Hosted on the Udemy online learning platform, this course is a broad examination of UX design and the theory behind it.

From initial strategy & scope all the way through visual design, this 10-hour course provides a detailed look at the principles that make great digital products.

Rating:

3.5 / 5

(Promising Content, Presentation is Clear)

What does this score mean?

Difficulty:

Beginner (Broad approach to design strategy & implementation).

Length:

10 hours.

Where to Buy It:

(Quick Note) Where available, affiliate links are used to provide convenient access to the reviewed item. This does not affect the review, and links to the WorldCat library system are provided as an non-affiliate alternative.

Check your Local Library:

In addition to books and periodicals, many local libraries give their patrons access to a wide array of video and instructional resources. Check with your local library for details.

What's Good

Great structure & organization; the course is broken up into bit-sized chunks that lay out each stage of UX design projects.
Experienced instructor; with nearly 3 decades of experience, Joe's comfort and skill with the subject matter clearly shows.
Additional resources; with more courses available on his own website and a healthy Facebook community, you can always find the next step to improving your UX design skills.

What Can Be Improved

Lack of practical application; while each stage and aspect of a successful UX design is touched upon, you're not explicitly shown the technqiues to accomplish it.
Subject matter can sometimes be vague; considering how much is covered in just 10 hours, this is to be expected, but can still intimidate newcomers at times.

The Bottom Line

Great for theory, not much application; while this course is very thorough giving you a ground in UX design theory, there is not much attention paid to the actual tasks needed to accomplish each stage of a project (check out my review of the "Springboard UX Design Course" for a great option).
Good value; for less than $100 (much less if you wait for a sale), this course will give you a valuable framework for understanding what goes into designing digital products (and why it matters).
For beginners to get a great foundation of detailed UX theory; while I found that additional application-based resources were necessary afterward, this course helped me to contextualize and understand the overall UX design process very well (i.e. understanding what makes up a UX process, and how they fit together).