UX Design Classes Live Online

User experience (UX) design is a vital component of any successful product and is a skill set that will continue to be in high demand as more and more companies focus on their online and digital presence. UX Designers are front and center to ensure users have an easy time using whatever product or website they interact with. UX Designers also work hand in hand with web designers to ensure the website looks professional and runs seamlessly. If you are interested in the end-user experience elements associated with products and websites, learning UX design can help you understand the key ins and outs of how a customer-centric website looks, feels, and runs.

While the term was coined in the 1990s, UX design has been a vital part of engineering and design for as long as human beings have mass-produced tools and products. UX design has, since the 1950s, primarily focused on the ways in which humans interact with technology and design products and tools based on those interactions. As the market for webpages, digital applications, mobile games, software and other computer applications becomes increasingly crowded, companies are more attentive than ever to ensuring that the user experience of their products and services is pleasant, intuitive, and memorable. In addition, non-commercial institutions and organizations value the accessibility and ease of use of their web presence. This means that UX Designers can find work in virtually any industry since they are an essential part of all web design projects.

UX Design Skills

User Behavior Testing

UX design is unique among the major digital design fields in that it neither emphasizes computer-aided design tools nor programming languages. Instead, most UX design work involves user testing and data collection. UX Designers will usually (but not always) have a functional design they can test and collect feedback on. They can work directly with potential users through small group testing or indirectly by collecting and analyzing things like surveys and anonymous feedback reports. UX Designers will need to learn how to conduct practical research, collect user feedback, interpret that feedback and communicate their findings to stakeholders, team leaders and designers. Unlike most design positions, UX design is about answering practical questions of how an application will feel once it is in someone's hands rather than abstract questions about how it should ideally look and function.

Figma

Despite the focus on user research, there are still a few tools aspiring UX Designers can learn to make their work easier and more efficient. The most common tool used for UI design applications like Figma, which was recently acquired by Adobe. These tools let users create wireframe layouts of user interfaces and model what a web application will look like when sent to developers for programming. The primary advantage of tools like Figma is that they can be used to create working, interactive prototypes of web applications that UX Designers can use to gather feedback from real-world users quickly and easily. Figma is particularly popular because, as a browser-based application, UX Designers can start to modify designs from anywhere, including as they are asking users to provide them with feedback on the designs, making more robust and comprehensive testing possible. 

User Interface Design

It is important to understand that user interface design and user experience design are different. User interface (UI design) design refers to designing how the user interface looks, while UX design refers to how the interface feels when a user starts interacting with it. UI Designers focus more on the visual appearance of an application and its digital assets, while UX Designers focus more on the practical aspects of the process. However, at many smaller firms, these two jobs are undertaken by the same person or team of designers, and even at larger companies and agencies, the two kinds of designers will work closely together. As a result, it can be very helpful for aspiring UX Designers to learn some UI design skills and vice versa. Learning these skills can help UX Designers better understand the creative design limitations of their feedback, and learning UX design skills can help UI Designers create more accessible, intuitive designs on their first pass.

UX Design Goals

Sometimes, the UX design process can feel a bit opaque since there is so much to account for, and there aren’t necessarily ‘correct’ answers when designing a user experience. Still, there are a few goals that all UX design projects aim to achieve when designing an interface. Ideally, UX Designers will be working to make digital applications that are responsive, accessible, and easy to use.

Accessibility

One of the major goals of any user experience design project is ensuring that the interface being designed is as accessible as possible. As more and more basic social functions are moving online (everything from job applications to paying bills commonly utilizes online portals), it is more important than ever that everyone can utilize these systems easily. UX Designers are tasked with ensuring that interfaces are accessible for users of all experience levels and are easy enough to navigate that essential functions aren’t hidden or opaque. This is especially true of services that will be accessed by users who don’t often utilize the internet and have lower computer literacy, such as services provided by government agencies or within the healthcare field. Anyone interested in working to create a more accessible and open internet will want to consider learning user experience design.

Intuitiveness

Another important aspect of building a user interface is ensuring that it is intuitive and user-friendly, particularly for first-time users. Given the sheer number of webpages produced every day and the amount of time the average adult spends online, there is no shortage of webpages vying for a user’s time and attention. This means that if a given application is difficult to use or hard to grasp almost immediately, a lot of users will simply move to a different program or application. UX Designers are often tasked with ensuring that the functions of an application are immediately apparent to the user and that they can intuit how to use these functions based on their prior knowledge of digital applications. This can be as simple as understanding what kinds of shapes and colors draw the eye to certain parts of the interface or as complex as understanding how human beings learn as they interact with technology.

Responsiveness

Responsive design refers to building a web application that functions and runs smoothly on any device. Today, there are so many mobile devices, desktop monitors, and handheld tablets that it is unlikely that any collection of people will be viewing a web application on the same device. This means that designers need to account for these differences when building a user experience. This is most commonly a matter of ensuring that a webpage or digital application can run on desktop computers and mobile devices since, according to Pew Research, phone usage has outpaced desktop computer usage for accessing the internet. Owing to this, more and more user interfaces are being built with mobile users in mind and this shifts the way that these pages need to be designed. Learning UX design skills will entail learning how to account for these differences to create more responsive designs.

UX Design Career Opportunities

UX design is a primary skill set for many digital products, websites, apps, and web developers' career choices, but there are many other supplementary skills UX designers need to know as well. Knowing this, it's important to understand which career path is right for you in order to make sure UX design is the right skill for your career goals and to have an idea of other helpful programs and tools you may want to learn. Learn more about the careers and salaries you can achieve by learning UX design.

The two most common job titles for UX design specialists are UX Designers and UX Researchers. UX Designers are employed to work on specific design projects and to conduct testing and iterative design on webpages, software applications, mobile apps, video games and more. These designers are often tasked with handling the creative and technical elements of user interface design, and they may be expected to know how to use programs like Figma and Illustrator to assist in the creative portion of a user interface design project. In the US, UX Designers earn about $95,000 annually.

UX Researchers are less involved in the specific design process of a given project and are more involved in the research phase of design. For some UX Researchers, this means working on a contract basis with companies looking to test their designs and interfaces. These researchers will be primarily responsible for data collection tasks, and most of the analysis and iterative design work will be handled by other design team members. Other UX Researchers will be employed for more general testing purposes. Rather than testing any specific design, they will be responsible for attempting to test and theorize big-picture user habits and behaviors so that UX Designers will have a better understanding of common user behaviors when they start their work. UX Researchers are more likely to be self-employed or work as part of a design studio, and in the US, they have an average annual salary of about $110,000.

The demand for individuals with UX design knowledge is strong, and knowing this skill set can lead to many fulfilling career opportunities, including User Experience Designer, UX Researcher, Designer, Digital Designer, and more. Some careers, like those in digital design, require knowledge of coding, graphic design, and visual effects in order to ensure all elements of a polished website or app are accounted for. For those jobs, you’ll want to have some subject-specific training and understand many key technologies, concepts, and terms in order to succeed and command a high salary.

Virtual UX Design Classes from Noble Desktop

You can learn this versatile and in-demand skill set from anywhere with live online UX design training. You will interact with the instructors in real time and work on a variety of hands-on projects. The cohort style of live online training also helps students to stay engaged and on track to complete the course. Live online training allows students to ask questions and receive personalized feedback from expert instructors, and these courses give students a place to collaborate on their research, which is an important part of the UX design process. Instructors are even able to directly interact with a student’s device using online learning applications, with a student’s permission, to help demonstrate difficult concepts or highlight successful parts of their work. Once you have a firm understanding of UX design, you’ll be able to start developing an impressive range of websites, web-based applications, and much more.

Several schools, including Noble Desktop, the provider of this tool, offer live interactive UX design courses to help you meet your goals. Noble offers a beginner-friendly UX Design Certificate taught by experienced professionals that covers a robust introduction to UX Design concepts. This career-focused training program aims to teach students the skills they will need as a professional UX Designer. Students enrolled in this class will learn how to test interface designs, compile user feedback and use that data to make recommendations to potential stakeholders and clients. Since this course aims to prepare students for a career in UX design, they will work with hands-on examples of real-world applications and learn important UX design theories that they can apply to virtually any project. Like all of Noble’s career certificate programs, this course provides students with professional development assistance, including portfolio-building workshops and one-on-one career mentorship sessions.

If you’re looking to enter a career in user experience and user interface design, check out the UX & UI Design Certificate, which covers a plethora of introductory to intermediate UX and UI design principles and other helpful supplementary tools like Sketch, Photoshop, and Illustrator. The UX and UI Design Certificate is great for career starters and career switchers alike because students will design work for their portfolios as well as gain many new skills, like user research, prototyping, testing, and more. This certificate is broken into five unique units, so it is manageable and accommodating for those with busy schedules. For more details, check out the FAQ.

Noble also offers shorter courses catering to students with different UX Design interests, including a UX Design in a Day course, which covers the basics of UX Design in six hours, as well as a few courses covering Sketch, one of the best tools used for UI and UX design for websites and mobile applications. All Noble classes include a free retake and a guarantee that you’ll learn the skills covered in the syllabus, subject to terms and conditions.

Other Virtual UX Design Classes

Other schools, including American Graphics Institute, Thinkful, Wyncode, DevMountain, and General Assembly, offer a variety of courses and bootcamps. Much like Noble Desktop, these schools offer their courses both in-person and online and are taught by industry experts. These other schools also offer short subject-specific courses as well as longer-form bootcamps to best meet the needs of students. 

For example, AGI offers a 2-day UX Design Principles course to help students new to UX Design learn the introductory principles needed to create successful user experiences. This UX Design training class is fantastic for those looking to understand the user experience design workflow and is taught by AGI’s team of knowledgeable instructors. Additionally, NYIM offers a UX Design Bootcamp. Courses such as these offer students robust options for learning UX design online.

Since UX Design is such a versatile skill set, you’ll want to be sure to choose a course that meets your goals, whether you’re aiming to advance in your career or trying to learn the basics for your first UX design job. So when choosing a live online web design course, you’ll want to focus on the tools in focus and the course duration. There are a lot of different live online UX design courses to choose from, and students should consider their own goals and schedules when selecting a course.

Thinkful offers a full and part-time UX/UI Design Bootcamp that aims to teach students the skills that they need to find work as professional UX/UI Designers. The program is structured to teach students how to design interfaces from the early planning phases using programs like Figma, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Then, once students have a working knowledge of UI design, they will put these skills into practice by building a working model of a user interface. With this in hand, students will start testing that interface and gathering user feedback before iterating on their initial design and learning foundational UX design principles. Courses like these are ideal for students looking to learn how to work in an environment where they are responsible for designing and testing a webpage or digital application.

Other programs, like DevMountain’s UX Design Bootcamp, emphasize the research and prototyping elements of the UX design process. Many professional UX Designers are not responsible for handling the creative design elements of a web project, and courses like these forgo UI design training to emphasize more immersive research and development training regimens. These programs aim to teach students how to conduct complicated and nuanced user research and apply existing user experience design theories to their work. Students enrolled in courses such as these will receive targeted UX design training that they can attempt to parlay into a UX Researcher or UX Designer career.

Students looking for a less immersive training program may want to enroll in a course like General Assembly’s Online UX Design course. Classes like these provide students with in-depth UX design training but are intended for beginners just getting comfortable with the field. Students will learn the basics of UX design through hands-on, practical lessons that mirror the kinds of research projects that real-world UX Designers will need to complete. Courses like this aim to teach students foundational UX design skills that they can use to supplement their existing training or lay the groundwork for additional professional development instruction.

Some students may feel that UX design is intriguing, but they aren’t sure they want to enroll in an immersive training program. These students should consider a course like Media Training’s UX Design Intro. These accelerated courses provide students with an introduction to the basic principles of UX design and will introduce them to important concepts that they will need to consider, such as how to perform user research and what kinds of design concerns a UX Designer needs to pay attention to. These classes are good first steps for students interested in UX design but not ready to commit to a larger career training program or for students who want to learn UX design at their own pace.

Finally, students may want to consider a course like The American Graphic Institute’s Introduction to Figma class. UX Designers will want to learn how to use interface design applications to prototype and test their designs, so having a background understanding of a program like Figma can save time and hassle when performing user testing. These short courses are a good place to learn the basics of a software application, and many schools also teach similar introductory courses that cover UX design concepts and philosophies. Students enrolled in these courses will need a lot of additional training if they hope to start new careers, but these classes can be a great way to pick up basic skills and figure out what aspects of the UX design process are most interesting to you.

Remote UX Design Corporate Training

Whether your business is starting a UX team or upskilling current employees, you can likely benefit from UX design training for employees. Even if you are building your first webpages as a company, training your employees in UX design is a good way to ensure that the finished product is easy-to-use, memorable, and user-friendly. Live online training is available from Noble Desktop for companies looking to do this. You can send participants to regularly scheduled group classes held virtually or schedule a private session for your team. Noble can conduct the training for beginner to advanced users and customize the lesson plan to fit the needs of your team. Noble also offers discounted vouchers for employers looking to offer their employees the chance to learn UX design (or anything other career skill) in any of Noble’s open enrollment courses. For more information about corporate training, please email hello@nobledesktop.com.