Training
UX Design Essentials for Mobile
Make it mobile
User-centered design
Make it intuitive
Make it simple
Evaluating design
Workshop
10 Steps to a Great Mobile UX
Prefer a one-day course?
Thinking about doing an iPhone, iPad, or Android app? Started one, but not sure how to design the UI? If so, this one-day one mobile design class is for you.
This two- or three-day course—targeted specifically at teams new to mobile design—will give your team the practical essentials to understand:
- Why mobile user experience matters
- How mobile design differs from desktop design
- Designing for touch and small screens
- Mobile design principles and guidelines
- Using an efficient, user-centered design process
- Making a design intuitive, simple, focused, and delightful
- Designing tasks and screens
- Design communication techniques: sketching and prototyping
- Evaluating designs, giving and receiving effective feedback
- Performing informal usability studies
Taking UX Design Essentials for Mobile will give your team the essential, practical knowledge it needs to create great mobile user experiences and make better design decisions quickly and confidently.
Two day version
Day 1 (8:30 am – 5:00 pm)
- Part 1: Why mobile user experience matters
Designing for mobile
- Part 2: What not to do and mobile myths
- Part 3: Making it mobile (instead of just really small)
- Part 4: Mobile capabilities and constraints
- Part 5: Designing for touch and small screens
A user-centered design process
- Part 6: Basic design process
- Part 7: Value propositions
- Part 8: Mobile scenarios
- Part 9: Personas
Making designs intuitive, simple, and focused
- Part 10: Make it intuitive
- Part 11: Make it simple
Making designs delightful
- Part 12: Make it look great
- Part 13: Designing like Apple and Google
Day 2 (8:30 am – 5:00 pm)
Mobile guidelines
- Part 14: Mobile web guidelines
- Part 15: Native app guidelines
Putting it all together
- Part 16: Task flows
- Part 17: Screen design
- Part 18: Scenario design challenge
Communicating design
- Part 19: Design communication techniques: sketches and prototypes
Evaluating designs and usability
- Part 20: How to evaluate a UI
- Part 21: Informal usability studies
- Part 31: Giving and receiving feedback
- Course review and wrap-up
Three day version
Day 1 (8:15 am – 5:00 pm)
- Part 1: Why mobile user experience matters
Designing for mobile
- Part 2: What not to do and mobile myths
- Part 3: Making it mobile (instead of just really small)
- Part 4: Mobile capabilities and constraints
- Part 5: Designing for touch and small screens
Understanding mobile UI elements
- Part 6: Overview of mobile web guidelines
- Part 7: Overview of iPhone vs. iPad vs. Android guidelines
- Part 8: Controls, commands, and UI text
- Part 9: Icons, graphics, fonts, colors, animations, and transitions
- Part 10: Errors, warnings, confirmations, and notifications
Day 2 (8:30 am – 5:00 pm)
A user-centered design process
- Part 11: Basic design process
- Part 12: Value propositions
- Part 13: Mobile scenarios
- Part 14: Personas
- Part 15: Branding
Making designs intuitive, simple, and focused
- Part 16: UI is communication
- Part 17: Make it intuitive
- Part 18: Make it simple and focused
Making designs beautiful and delightful
- Part 19: Make it look great
- Part 20: Make it delightful
- Part 21: Making it responsive
- Part 22: Designing like Apple and Google
Day 3 (8:30 am – 5:00 pm)
Putting it all together
- Part 23: Common UI patterns
- Part 24: Designing screens
- Part 25: Common screen patterns
- Part 26: Navigation
- Part 27: Designing tasks
Communicating design
- Part 28: Design communication techniques: sketches and prototypes
Evaluating designs and usability
- Part 29: How to evaluate a UI
- Part 30: Informal usability studies
- Part 31: Giving and receiving feedback
- Part 32: Workshop
- Course review and wrap-up
While there is no one right way to learn how to design a great mobile user experience, here’s our approach:
Top goals:
Learn how to design specifically for mobile devices and how mobile design is different—great mobile experiences are far more than just small desktop apps and sites. Learn an efficient, user centered design process to help you make good design decisions quickly and confidently. Learn how to make designs that are intuitive, simple, delightful, and easy to scan. Learn effective design teamwork and how to give and receive effective feedback.
Great mobile apps take full advantage of the mobile device to deliver the top mobile scenarios. They are optimized for mobile scenarios by focusing on doing “one thing” well, taking full advantage of the capabilities and constraints of mobile devices to do what they are uniquely great at. Well designed mobile apps feel simple because they don’t bother with features, settings, or details that users don’t care about.
Design process, avoiding the classic mistakes: Understand why smart people who are masters of technology create poor UI designs. Learn to avoid the classic mistakes that everyone tends to make. Having a clear understanding of why design goals are important and when they are worth doing.
Effective communication: Many design decisions ultimately boil down to communicating to your target users effectively. This is true for both interaction and visual design. The heart of the course is learning how to use the language of mobile UI to communicate to users in a way that’s concise, natural, and intuitive.
Users are people: We are interacting with people not robots, so it’s important to understand the human emotion and perception side of UX design. Issues like simplicity, personality, delight, trust, and performance must be part of the design equation. Many inexperienced designers overlook these important issues, and design purely from the mechanical point of view.
Practical: UX design is a practice, not a subjective art. UX design isn’t hard if you use the right tool for the job. You can do this! You will learn practical techniques that you can actually use on your project (no exercises use sticky notes!) And you’ll get straight answers to your questions. (No, it doesn’t depend!)
Audience: Software professionals who are inexperienced with UI design generally and mobile design specifically. None of our courses require any prior design training or experience, and we strive to achieve the above goals without getting too wonky. (If you can’t use it, we don’t discuss it!)
Where is UX Design Essentials for Mobile offered?
UX Design Essentials for Mobile is offered onsite only. Train your entire team at your location according to your schedule. Contact us for more information.
What is the cost?
$12,000 per team, plus travel expenses. We offer a 25% discount to 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations ($9000 per team, plus travel expenses).
Can we customize the class exercises?
If you choose, we will work with you to customize the class exercises to use your product. There’s no better way to satisfy your goals than to apply the course material directly to the problems you need to solve. At the end of the class, your team should have made many significant improvements and have a clear understanding of your remaining challenges and how to address them.
Who is the instructor?
All course material created and presented by Everett McKay.
How large are the classes?
Invite as many people as you like, up to a maximum of 20 participants.
What materials are provided?
All participants receive an electronic copy of the course materials in pdf format for their personal use.
For more information and availability, please contact training@uxdesignedge.com.
“Everett’s UX Design Essentials for Mobile was a great introduction to mobile UX for many of our new hires. It stressed the fundamental practices of usability and user experience while layering in the best practice for mobile web and app development on the major platforms. The exercises were enjoyable and the discussions were very thought provoking. We highly recommend the UX Design Essentials for Mobile class.”
J Schwan, CEO and Founder, Solstice Mobile
“This is the most useful training course I have attended in the past decade. Everett has superior command of the subject matter and real-world experience to back it up.”
UX Design Essentials for Mobile student
“Thanks so much for the course. It was a great overview of the mobile space and just what I needed to get my head around the project I am working on.”
UX Design Essentials for Mobile student
