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Design UX Basics What Do UX Designers Do? Problem Solvers

jsdevtom
jsdevtom
16,963 Points
Posted by jsdevtom
jsdevtom
16,963 Points

Is it just me, or does the amount of business jargon crammed in to the UX courses make them insanely annoying?

'Moving forward' 'Cutting edge' 'UCD' - User centred design. 'Deep dive'

It also makes me wonder if they are using this language because it is what they have used to convince by others that UX is more important than it really is. As opposed to just being 'good design'. Don't get me wrong these courses are helpful, they would just be easier to learn from without all of the meaningless words...

aidap
aidap
5,612 Points

I agree

Josie Nagy
Josie Nagy
14,992 Points
Josie Nagy
Josie Nagy
14,992 Points

Sorry, but I respectfully disagree.

UCD is not a jargon, it's standard terminology used in the UXD field. UX requires in general more abstract, big picture thinking than for example writing code or just visual design. Honestly I think she's done a good job at making this course as simple as humanly possible.

So maybe that may seem a bit pretentious or wordy in comparison to the practical, hands-on JS courses, but definitely not meaningless.

Try reading Alan Cooper's - Essentials about Interaction Design, a book of 550 pages or more (not 2 hours) that covers some of the topics she mentioned in her course:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/289062.About_Face_3

"You might be tempted to throw up your hands and say, “I don’t know who the users are” or “Everyone is a potential user.” But that doesn’t help you focus your design at all—without a concrete and honest description of those people, your design will proceed with no grounding in reality.”

"Many UX experts learn the IA principles since they believe the information architecture is a foundation of the effective design. If the content is badly organized, users may have difficulties with navigation, so they can get lost and feel annoyed. That’s why even compelling content elements and powerful UI design can fail without appropriate IA."

"Conflating these two questions can be one of the biggest pitfalls in the design of an interactive product. Many designers are tempted to jump right into active design and render possible solutions.

Regardless of how creative and skillful you are, we urge you not to do this. It runs the risk of turning into a never ending circle of iteration; proposing a solution without clearly defining and agreeing upon the problem leaves you without a clear method of evaluating the fitness of the design. In lieu of such a method, you, your stakeholders, and your clients are likely to resort to taste and gut instinct, which have a notoriously low success ratio with something as complex as an interactive product."