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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Design Principles: an Introduction by University of California San Diego

4.6
stars
1,316 ratings

About the Course

What makes an interface intuitive? How can I tell whether one design works better than another? This course will teach you fundamental principles of design and how to effectively evaluate your work with users. You'll learn fundamental principles of visual design so that you can effectively organize and present information with your interfaces. You'll learn principles of perception and cognition that inform effective interaction design. And you'll learn how to perform and analyze controlled experiments online. In many cases, we'll use Web design as the anchoring domain. A lot of the examples will come from the Web, and we'll talk just a bit about Web technologies in particular. When we do so, it will be to support the main goal of this course, which is helping you build human-centered design skills, so that you have the principles and methods to create excellent interfaces with any technology....

Top reviews

PV

Nov 21, 2019

The course was simple and crisp yet covered it all - interaction, visual and usability. Liked the duration of the videos followed by reading material that covered the highlights of the topic.

NS

Mar 16, 2016

The basic principles of design and their philosophies were covered well in this course, and it was taught in a quick, efficient manner. I liked undergoing this course and would recommend it.

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1 - 25 of 178 Reviews for Design Principles: an Introduction

By Audra B

Aug 28, 2016

This course was very informative and well structured. I feel like the concepts stacked and that by the end I had a better understanding surrounding the "why" behind a lot of these concepts.

By Анна Р

Feb 15, 2016

Thank you very much for this interesting course! I still do these excersizes and try to notice good and bad design solutions in everything what surrounds me. I love this course and I am reading now Don Norman's 'The Design of Everyday Things' to understand design principles more deeply. It's an upgrade for me!

By Ilya G

Mar 4, 2019

I finally understood how to evaluate hypothesises. Great!

By Jaime F V

Aug 30, 2016

This course as much content in it and it's difficult to have an holistic idea how it all fits together. Some videos are taught having the same problem like, for example, some tools/themes are presented without us knowing what they are for. E.g., Chi-squared test and null hypothesis. Only after a while we understand their use. This bring a lot of overhead to us who are learning.

Some videos seem to have been re-worked over time and present cuts or jumps.

As for assignments, they should be better worked because some questions are not clear or misleading regarding the criteria that you want to evaluate.

For example, I already reported that in Question 2. and 3. of the assignment for the 3rd week. The example you give is a short introduction with two problems: 1) "I did the website", which can make the participant not to be at ease to criticize and 2) we're no evaluating the participant performance but the website. Next, you ask us to rewrite the introduction, which we do with those two problems in mind. Now, when we do the peer review we realize that you're expecting for us to rate the new introduction based on having "early prototype" and "user feedback". The original problems just seem not to count. Only by chance you can eventually write the new introduction touching the points that count for grading.

By Olga P

May 8, 2016

It was a good course overall, but some of the material was very complex and would require more than 3 weeks of study. I am not sure whether it will be useful in a real life, especially calculating Chi-squared and such. I also wish the professor would simplify the language in which he speaks in the lectures.

By Arko G

May 26, 2020

The third week assignment and cumulative quiz are divergent to the course content.

By Ian A

Apr 23, 2016

I feel that this specialization is not focused enough on developing portfolio pieces. One portfolio piece at the end of an 8-month course does not seem adequate to me. So I wish we focused more on developing high fidelity work - in addition to the need-finding, user research, sketches, short weekly assignments. This high fidelity, digital work could even be optional, but I need some guidance on what work to develop and how the overall process should look.

Even being allowed to enroll in the capstone before completing the first 7 sections would be helpful.

The review is kind of about what you are looking to get out of these classes. If you just want to LEARN about UX and human centered design, then it's a 4-5 star course. But if you want to PRODUCE some great work that will help you land a job in the industry, it might not be for you.

By Adam B

Apr 30, 2020

"Design Principles" is a bit of misnomer when considering the entirety of this course. Be prepared for design (literal, graphic) the first 2 weeks and statistics the 3rd week.

The lectures during week 3 felt rushed.

By Vanessa

Jun 2, 2020

The course material seems old

By Alwin T

May 11, 2019

(My reviews assumes you follow the whole specialization process by UC San Diego) As the second part of the specialization, this is a good introduction towards design, and specifically in the end, towards UI design with mentions about typography and gridlines progressively throughout the course. The assignments are also useful for learning process without any complicated steps. I think this course is clear enough for people who want to dive into design principles especially for non-design people.

By Stephanie B

Mar 7, 2018

This course is suitable for those who are new to design. I found the course to be a bit basic (I have a background in design) but I still enjoyed the lecture content and was able to extract several useful concepts. The assignments take a decent amount of time and I'd recommend taking notes throughout the course in order to efficiently complete the last assignment (Q&A) and final quiz. Overall, a worthwhile course in intro to design.

By Tamella H

Sep 26, 2017

This is my 3rd class in this specialization and I experienced some issues from peer graded assignments. I had to edit it again because some of the answer that were completely correct been selected as incorrected from the peers. It took me extra time and I think it could be avoided by having more mentors for grading process too. That is the only pitfall, otherwise it was in a good way very challenging course.

By Suleiman A S

Oct 26, 2019

I have to commend UC San Diego and the Instructors who created this course. This course gives you an introduction to begin your design journey with powerful suggestions of recommended books to explore further. Even only reading The Design of Everday Things by Don Norman is worth it. Though no course is ever a perfect 10, this is a great starter.

By Perks

Mar 30, 2017

This course is boon for designers. Very detailed and absolutely rewarding specially for those starting a new career in this field.You have the best faculty here. You not just learn the tools of the trade you are walked through this course by one of the authority in the field.

By William H R

Nov 16, 2015

This course raised my awareness of the design of everyday objects that I had always taken for granted before. It's definitely a great intro course into design -- and to raise everyone's awareness about how things are presented to the user -- and why that matters so much.

By Lea M S

Sep 21, 2016

Fantastic course! Learned a lot from it - both theoretically and practically. The hands on exercises were very smart and applicable. I'm left with a lot more interest in the subject, a bunch of books for ruther reading and some new tools under my belt. Thanks!

By Jinwang D

Apr 8, 2018

I am a junior visual designer. I think the course is great in general. However, the last parts of week 3—"Comparing Rates" little hard to understand. And the difficulty level jumps drastically from week 2 to week 3 which is little hard to adapt for me.

By Giny C

Mar 31, 2019

This course is a bit challenging for students without mathematical backround. Yet, the lecturer illustrates the idea of mathematics part in a simple way so that art students can also understand the course material. I enjoy this course very much :)

By siva p

Aug 31, 2016

Excellent.Learned three distinct set of skills. 1) Product design that makes the job easy for the user. 2)Elements of importance in designing layout for soft screen 3)Conducting experimental studies on users.Great course!!! Good teaching Scott...

By Leonel M D

Dec 6, 2016

This is a well-designed course with assignments from which one can learn a lot. It is only 3 weeks long so it is very accesible. In particular I enjoyed week 2 where topics about typography, spacing, layout of contents etc., were addressed.

By Susanne D

Oct 4, 2015

I enjoyed this course a lot. Very useful information about basic design principles (within subject design, between subject design, online studies, etc). Also good to catch up and remember things from past studies.

By Muhammad A I

Apr 12, 2017

Learnt alot of new things even though I'd say i've got experience in this field. Evaluation and conducting interviews as part of principles is a fresh way to look at how we understand design! :) Recommended.

By Manuel A O S

Jan 12, 2020

El diseño es un universo muy amplio de posibilidades, pero este curso te brinda un entendimiento claro de lo que puedes encontrar una vez decidas tomar este camino como diseñador de experiencias de usuario.

By Shirley W

Oct 9, 2019

I have always been impressed by Mr. Klemmer's concise but vivid explanation over the topic of HCI. This is an introductory lecture, indeed, but it for sure a good guide for sailing off into the wider sea.

By Nipun V

May 3, 2020

It is a fundamental course for everyone who is into the field of digital design. It clears the basics of design thinking with real-life examples and show the application of the same in the digital world/