5 minutes with… Matthew Gould, director of Lushai, co-founder of UX Gym and co-founder of the UX Homegrown design conference.

Ahead of our Auckland DA Workshop: Building Digital Design Capabilities we caught up with our workshop facilitator Matthew Gould. Matt is the Auckland director of Lushai, co-founder of UX Gym and […]

4 years ago by

5 minutes with… Richard Shed

Ahead of his upcoming UX gym workshops on Design Thinking and Service Design, we spoke with facilitator Richard Shed. Richard is a design lead with over 18 years of experience […]

5 years ago by

UX Gym Workshop Wellington: UX Intensive Week — A week long introduction to user experience design

This course combines all our one day courses into a week long deep-dive into experience design. It takes you through a full digital UX project from initial research to finished design. The week is designed to give you an understanding of the principles behind a modern user centered design process and practical experience of some of the most common activities you will encounter in a typical user experience project. With this course you can apply what you learn immediately to your current projects, use what you learn as a base for further study, or develop a case study to showcase for potential employers. No previous design or digital experience is required.

Schedule

  • Day 1 | Introduction to User Research More details
  • Day 2 | Introduction to Information Architecture More details
  • Day 3 | Design Part I Designing for people More details
  • Day 4 | Design Part II Designing for systems More details
  • Day 5 | Introduction to Prototyping & usability testing More details

Who is it for

No prior knowledge is required to do this course, it is suitable for absolute beginners. However the course is primarily aimed at:

Digital designers

Web, interaction and UX designers who want to build on their UX skills, put into practice approaches they have read about, adopt a user centered design approach or better their understanding of the principles behind common UX design methods.

Graphic designers

Traditional designers who want to transition into digital design or learn how to work better with their UX colleagues.

Novices and graduates

People new to the industry looking for the opportunity to learn and practice user experience design and use that experience to gain a foothold into the industry.

Strategists and analysts

Senior practitioners who want to gain an understanding of the principles of user experience design and experience how those principles are practiced on the ground.

Developers

Developers who want to build on their UX skills or learn how to work better with their UX colleagues.

Product owners and project managers

Product owners and project managers who want a better understanding of how a user experience design approach can get them better outcomes on their products and projects.

For full details click here.

UX Gym Workshop Auckland: UX Intensive Week — A week long introduction to user experience design

This course combines all our one day courses into a week long deep-dive into experience design. It takes you through a full digital UX project from initial research to finished design. The week is designed to give you an understanding of the principles behind a modern user centered design process and practical experience of some of the most common activities you will encounter in a typical user experience project. With this course you can apply what you learn immediately to your current projects, use what you learn as a base for further study, or develop a case study to showcase for potential employers. No previous design or digital experience is required.

Schedule

  • Day 1 | Introduction to User Research More details
  • Day 2 | Introduction to Information Architecture More details
  • Day 3 | Design Part I Designing for people More details
  • Day 4 | Design Part II Designing for systems More details
  • Day 5 | Introduction to Prototyping & usability testing More details

Who is it for

No prior knowledge is required to do this course, it is suitable for absolute beginners. However the course is primarily aimed at:

Digital designers

Web, interaction and UX designers who want to build on their UX skills, put into practice approaches they have read about, adopt a user centered design approach or better their understanding of the principles behind common UX design methods.

Graphic designers

Traditional designers who want to transition into digital design or learn how to work better with their UX colleagues.

Novices and graduates

People new to the industry looking for the opportunity to learn and practice user experience design and use that experience to gain a foothold into the industry.

Strategists and analysts

Senior practitioners who want to gain an understanding of the principles of user experience design and experience how those principles are practiced on the ground.

Developers

Developers who want to build on their UX skills or learn how to work better with their UX colleagues.

Product owners and project managers

Product owners and project managers who want a better understanding of how a user experience design approach can get them better outcomes on their products and projects.

For full details click here.

UX Gym Workshop Wellington: User Testing & Prototyping

User testing designs through prototyping helps us to safely explore risky ideas, get a feel for how real people will respond to our designs and most importantly lets us fail cheaply and privately instead of publicly and expensively. But how many users do we need? How do we identify what to test? How do we know the way we designed and ran the test is producing valid results? How do we recruit people? How do we integrate user testing into a project without adding unsustainable expense and time to a project?

This 6 hour course teaches current best practice for user testing digital products and services. It gives you hands on experience of designing and running effective user testing sessions suitable for both new designs and existing products and services.

It covers:

    Current user testing theory

  • How to identify when user testing is required
  • Common user testing techniques
  • Identifying the most appropriate technique for your needs
  • How to ascertain the number of users you need for valid results
  • How to recruit users
  • How to design effective tests
  • Common prototyping tools
  • Using modern prototyping tools
  • How to create prototypes
  • How to interpret test results

You get practical experience in:

  • Identifying areas for testing
  • Designing user tests
  • Creating low fidelity paper prototypes
  • Creating prototypes using a modern prototyping tool
  • Running user tests
  • Interpreting test results
  • Iterating your design based on your test results

Who is this course for?

This course is suitable for anyone looking for an evidence based approach to validating their existing digital products or new design ideas. It is particularly suitable for:

  • Designers and developers
  • Product owners
  • Project managers
  • Entrepreneurs and startups

 

No previous design or coding experience is required.

You will need a laptop capable of connecting to a wireless network. We may be able to provide you with a laptop if you don’t have one – please contact us at least two weeks before the course date.

All other materials are provided.

UX Gym Workshop Auckland: User Testing & Prototyping

User testing designs through prototyping helps us to safely explore risky ideas, get a feel for how real people will respond to our designs and most importantly lets us fail cheaply and privately instead of publicly and expensively. But how many users do we need? How do we identify what to test? How do we know the way we designed and ran the test is producing valid results? How do we recruit people? How do we integrate user testing into a project without adding unsustainable expense and time to a project?

This 6 hour course teaches current best practice for user testing digital products and services. It gives you hands on experience of designing and running effective user testing sessions suitable for both new designs and existing products and services.

It covers:

    Current user testing theory

  • How to identify when user testing is required
  • Common user testing techniques
  • Identifying the most appropriate technique for your needs
  • How to ascertain the number of users you need for valid results
  • How to recruit users
  • How to design effective tests
  • Common prototyping tools
  • Using modern prototyping tools
  • How to create prototypes
  • How to interpret test results

You get practical experience in:

  • Identifying areas for testing
  • Designing user tests
  • Creating low fidelity paper prototypes
  • Creating prototypes using a modern prototyping tool
  • Running user tests
  • Interpreting test results
  • Iterating your design based on your test results

Who is this course for?

This course is suitable for anyone looking for an evidence based approach to validating their existing digital products or new design ideas. It is particularly suitable for:

  • Designers and developers
  • Product owners
  • Project managers
  • Entrepreneurs and startups

 

No previous design or coding experience is required.

You will need a laptop capable of connecting to a wireless network. We may be able to provide you with a laptop if you don’t have one – please contact us at least two weeks before the course date.

All other materials are provided.

UX Gym Workshop Wellington: User Interface Design — Designing for Screens

This practical course focuses on design for screens, from application user interfaces to web design. This course could be taken as a complement to one of our user centered design courses or as a stand alone course for designers, developers and product managers who want to learn more about making design decisions for screens.

NOTE: This is a design course, not a coding course although it does include a summary of the most common technologies used to implement web and UI design.

It covers:

  • Graphic design for screens including layout, type management, colour and image handling.
  • Making layout and design decisions for responsive layouts and various screen sizes
  • An introduction to how design is implemented on the web and native apps
  • Basic IA, usability and user centered design processes for UI design
  • Selecting UI controls and common UI design problems
  • An introduction to UI libraries
  • An introduction to design software for UI design
  • Modern UI design conventions and emerging trends
  • Solving common UI design problems
  • Best practice for documenting and managing screen design
  • User behaviour and decision making for screen based designs and interfaces

Who is it for?
This course is suitable for:

  • People with little or no previous experience of screen design
  • Graphic designers and service designers who want to learn more about user interface and web design
  • Product owners and managers who want to be able to better communicate with their UX and UI designers

If you are unsure if this course is right for you please contact us, we are happy to talk over the course with you in more detail.

No previous UX, UI, or design experience is necessary.

You will need a laptop with your graphic design or layout programme of choice although if you don’t have access to a laptop or to graphic design software let us know and we can arrange to provide some for you.

We will provide all other materials.

 

How does this differ from our ‘UX Crash Course’ and ‘Intro to UX’ courses?
Although our ‘UX Crash Course’ and ‘Intro to UX’ course do include a section of designing for screens their primary focus is on teaching an evidence based user centered design process. They teach a process that includes research, design and testing.

Just as our ‘User Research’ and ‘User Testing and Prototyping’ courses go deeper into the research and testing aspects of this process, the ‘User Interface Design: Designing for screens’ course is focused primarily on the design phase and goes deeper into the mechanics of making detailed user interface decisions.

UX Gym Workshop Auckland: User Interface Design — Designing for Screens

his practical course focuses on design for screens, from application user interfaces to web design. This course could be taken as a complement to one of our user centered design courses or as a stand alone course for designers, developers and product managers who want to learn more about making design decisions for screens.

NOTE: This is a design course, not a coding course although it does include a summary of the most common technologies used to implement web and UI design.

It covers:

  • Graphic design for screens including layout, type management, colour and image handling.
  • Making layout and design decisions for responsive layouts and various screen sizes
  • An introduction to how design is implemented on the web and native apps
  • Basic IA, usability and user centered design processes for UI design
  • Selecting UI controls and common UI design problems
  • An introduction to UI libraries
  • An introduction to design software for UI design
  • Modern UI design conventions and emerging trends
  • Solving common UI design problems
  • Best practice for documenting and managing screen design
  • User behaviour and decision making for screen based designs and interfaces

Who is it for?
This course is suitable for:

  • People with little or no previous experience of screen design
  • Graphic designers and service designers who want to learn more about user interface and web design
  • Product owners and managers who want to be able to better communicate with their UX and UI designers

If you are unsure if this course is right for you please contact us, we are happy to talk over the course with you in more detail.

No previous UX, UI, or design experience is necessary.

You will need a laptop with your graphic design or layout programme of choice although if you don’t have access to a laptop or to graphic design software let us know and we can arrange to provide some for you.

We will provide all other materials.

 

How does this differ from our ‘UX Crash Course’ and ‘Intro to UX’ courses?
Although our ‘UX Crash Course’ and ‘Intro to UX’ course do include a section of designing for screens their primary focus is on teaching an evidence based user centered design process. They teach a process that includes research, design and testing.

Just as our ‘User Research’ and ‘User Testing and Prototyping’ courses go deeper into the research and testing aspects of this process, the ‘User Interface Design: Designing for screens’ course is focused primarily on the design phase and goes deeper into the mechanics of making detailed user interface decisions.

UX Gym Workshop Wellington: Information Architecture 101 — Introduction to Information Architecture

Learning how to organise, describe and present the information in your website or app is one of the fundamental skills that makes up UX design. Information architecture is the glue that holds complex digital products together and enables users to navigate and make sense of them.

This introductory course teaches you the basics of designing solid information architecture (IA) for websites, intranets, search and web applications. You will learn what and how to research to identify the elements of an effective IA. We’ll cover how to analyse and synthesise your research results. Most importantly you’ll learn the basics of designing IA and how to create sitemaps, wireframes and other artefacts to communicate that design.

Who is it for?

People wanting to learn what IA is all about: Anyone who deals with online or digital products and needs to understand the basic principles and application of best practice IA design.

Designers who want to learn about making their designs scale

Web, interaction and UX designers who want a better understanding of how to break down their design elements into information chunks and patterns, and to communicate better with their developers, stakeholders and business analysts.

Business analysts and product owners: Business analysts and product owners who work with designers or have had to take on the role of information architect in a project or product environment. This course will help you understand the fundamental components of what makes up the information design of a website.

What will you learn/experience?
Part 1: What & why
Where we identify information architecture concepts in modern web design and why it’s a necessary part of software development.

Part 2: What makes up IA
Where we look into the different components of information architecture and how to identify them. These form the basic terms and concepts you need to consider when designing IA.

Part 3: How to design IA
Where we look into the process of how modern information architecture is created, covering common tasks and activities used to create an IA that will work for your users and business.

Part 4: Communicating IA
Where we look at how to communicate basic IA design concepts in order to create cohesive specifications that third parties are able to communicate, implement and test such as wireframes, content models, sitemaps and task flow diagrams.

Outcomes
This course will give you practical understanding of:

The fundamental components of information architecture to help you design better websites, intranets, search systems and web applications.
The process required to build good information architecture.
What the different deliverables or artefacts are to communicate information architecture.
How to validate and test your information architecture.

There are no prerequisites for this course, no experience with design, coding or development is required.

Bring a laptop or tablet if you have one, but you can do the course without it. All you really need to bring is a UX mindset.

UX Gym Workshop Auckland: Information Architecture 101 — Introduction to Information Architecture

Learning how to organise, describe and present the information in your website or app is one of the fundamental skills that makes up UX design. Information architecture is the glue that holds complex digital products together and enables users to navigate and make sense of them.

This introductory course teaches you the basics of designing solid information architecture (IA) for websites, intranets, search and web applications. You will learn what and how to research to identify the elements of an effective IA. We’ll cover how to analyse and synthesise your research results. Most importantly you’ll learn the basics of designing IA and how to create sitemaps, wireframes and other artefacts to communicate that design.

Who is it for?

People wanting to learn what IA is all about: Anyone who deals with online or digital products and needs to understand the basic principles and application of best practice IA design.

Designers who want to learn about making their designs scale

Web, interaction and UX designers who want a better understanding of how to break down their design elements into information chunks and patterns, and to communicate better with their developers, stakeholders and business analysts.

Business analysts and product owners: Business analysts and product owners who work with designers or have had to take on the role of information architect in a project or product environment. This course will help you understand the fundamental components of what makes up the information design of a website.

What will you learn/experience?
Part 1: What & why
Where we identify information architecture concepts in modern web design and why it’s a necessary part of software development.

Part 2: What makes up IA
Where we look into the different components of information architecture and how to identify them. These form the basic terms and concepts you need to consider when designing IA.

Part 3: How to design IA
Where we look into the process of how modern information architecture is created, covering common tasks and activities used to create an IA that will work for your users and business.

Part 4: Communicating IA
Where we look at how to communicate basic IA design concepts in order to create cohesive specifications that third parties are able to communicate, implement and test such as wireframes, content models, sitemaps and task flow diagrams.

Outcomes
This course will give you practical understanding of:

The fundamental components of information architecture to help you design better websites, intranets, search systems and web applications.
The process required to build good information architecture.
What the different deliverables or artefacts are to communicate information architecture.
How to validate and test your information architecture.

There are no prerequisites for this course, no experience with design, coding or development is required.

Bring a laptop or tablet if you have one, but you can do the course without it. All you really need to bring is a UX mindset.

UX Gym Workshop Auckland: Introduction to User Research

Probably no other area of design has more impact on how successful your initial design decisions are going to be than user research. Most of us aren’t designing for ourselves, and a good understanding of who our users are and what their needs are is vital for successful design. This course teaches you how to identify the best type of research for a project, how to execute your research so you get the most useful results given the time and resources you have available to you, how to execute your research and how to make sense of your research results.

 

Who is it for

No prior knowledge is required to do this course, it is suitable for absolute beginners. However the course is primarily aimed at:

  • Designers & developers: Designers and developers who want to learn how to discover the needs of the people you are designing for.
  • Strategists and analysts: Senior practitioners who want to gain an understanding of the basic principles of user research and put some flesh around their current practice.
  • Product owners and project managers: Product owners and project managers who want a better understanding of what their researchers need, how to use research to increase the quality of their decisions or who want to build the capabilities of themselves and their teams.

 

On the day

  • You will learn how to identify if a project needs user research: You will learn how to analyse a project to identify if that project needs formative user research in order to achieve its goals.
  • You will learn how to identify the kind of research you need: You will learn the different types of user research available to you and how to identify which one is the most likely to get you valid results given the time and resources available to you.
  • You will experience putting user research into practice: You will get to work in a team to design and execute a research project.
  • You will experience analysing and making sense of user research results: You will learn about common analysis techniques to make sense of the data you have collected and you will get to use one of those techniques on your own data.
  • You will learn how to present research finding: You will learn how to present you research in a way that is meaningful and compelling.

 

There are no prerequisites for this course, no previous experience with design or research is required.

All materials are provided.

UX Gym Workshop Wellington: UX Crash Course

Get hands-on experience of a digital UX design project from start to finish in this intensive one day workshop. This course is designed to give you an understanding of the principles behind a modern user centered design process and practical experience of some of the most common activities you will encounter in a typical user experience project. The day is designed so you can apply what you learn immediately to your current projects and also use what you learn as a base for further study.

This course gives you hands-on experience of a digital UX design project from start to finish in an intense one day workshop. On this course you take a project through a complete design life cycle from initial research, to ideation, to design to user testing. As well as gaining practical experience of the some of the most common user experience design methods as you work through the project you learn the principles behind them so you can make good decisions about what approach and methods will get you the best outcomes for your own projects. The goal of the day is for you to be able to take what you learn and apply it immediately to your current projects and also use what you learn as a base for further study.

Who is it for

No prior knowledge is required to do this course, it is suitable for absolute beginners. However the course is primarily aimed at:Digital designers: Web, interaction and UX designers who want to build on their UX skills, put into practice approaches they have read about, adopt a user centered design approach or better their understanding of the principles behind common UX design methods.Graphic designers: Traditional designers who want to transition into digital design or learn how to work better with their UX colleagues.Strategists and analysts: Senior practitioners who want to gain an understanding of the principles of user experience design and experience how those principles are practiced on the ground.Developers: Developers who want to build on their UX skills or learn how to work better with their UX colleagues.Product owners and project managers: Product owners and project managers who want a better understanding of how a user experience design approach can get them better outcomes on their products and projects.

On the day

You will take a UX project from research to testing

You are put in a team and work on a digital design project throughout the day learning and applying user centered design methods as you go. No coding is required and most teams elect to design their project on paper in order to keep the focus on design decisions not implementation.

You will learn the basic principles and definitions behind user experience design

You will learn the basic principles of user experience design including it’s history and common terminology used.You will get an introduction to basic principles and best practice for user researchYou learn how to identify if research is required, what kind is required, and the basics of designing research to get valid outcomes. You experience implementing a common research method and learn how to synthesise and interpret user research results.

You will get an introduction to basic principles and best practice for interaction design

You learn the basic principles behind making good interaction and UI design decisions and experience putting those principles into practice.

You will get an introduction to basic principles and best practice for user testing

You learn what you can and can’t user test, how to design user tests that are likely to get you valid results and experience designing and facilitating user tests for you project.

There are no prerequisites for this course, no previous experience with design or coding is required.

All materials are provided.

UX Crash Course: Wellington 17th March

In association with Lushai and UX Gym, Design Assembly brings you: UX Crash Course: A hands on introduction to user experience design Friday 17 March BizDojo 115 Tory Street, Te Aro Wellington […]

7 years ago by

UX Crash Course: Auckland 10th March

In association with Lushai and UX Gym, Design Assembly brings you: UX Crash Course: A hands on introduction to user experience design Friday 10 March Whitespace Shared Space 3 Glenside Crescent Auckland […]

7 years ago by