Course 1: Foundations of user experience design by Google
By: Liz Red
Tags: Uxdesign, Design, Google Ux Certificate, Uxcareer, Interaction Design

Page 1 of my UI/UX Notebook with one of Steve Jobs’s famous life hacks.

Backgrounds and stuff.

It felt like an internship, the beginning. There’s this guy who was very happy to share his knowledge, the colorful set-up that exudes their patented Googlyness, and me, the newbie student that thought, hey maybe I can try this course out and see if I can make that huge leap.

I think it was years before that I realized I have a knack for design. I get enraged when things just don’t work. People blame themselves for not making it work, but me? Well, my question was always- “why did they make it this way?”, “Why put the backspace under the send key in this virtual keyboard? It’s prone to accidental hits!”, “Why place the mirror at the end of the stall? People can’t take their time to look at themselves before they go out of the toilet!”; “Why is this search bar not searching for anything? I have a simple question. This will just clog up your customer hotlines, I swear.”

At that time, I think I’m just really trying to nitpick and pass the blame, but the more I read about design, the more I realize the importance of designers in creating a good experience for literally everything… and since I complain too much about these things, why not be a part of the solution for once. Hence, here’s me learning something new.

Introductions, expectations, and commitments.

It’s exciting. I got to say. The main lecturer is a part of Google’s Privacy team whose job is to design how their billion users and the next billion users would understand the privacy terms of one of the biggest tech companies in the world that most certainly affects how we interact with the interwebs right now. It’s very cool. His responsibility can’t be overstated, also it’s a good display in terms of magnitude — just how the design can affect everyone, from the fine prints to the app interaction itself.

The course was a great start. There’s four weeks of tackling the basics. There’s the terminologies, the goals and scope of UX/UI design, different approaches in the design process, introduction of the people in the design team, and, of course, why it would be amazing to participate in this field.

A good design starts with the users in mind. That’s the standard. In the course, it was reiterated over and over again that inclusion of different people with varied backgrounds would help diversify our considerations in order to create an experience that would cater to a wide category of users. From there, the concept of the Next Billion Users was also explained, and because of these new users, this career path that understands how we interact with computers would be even more important as we navigate through the changes in society, brought about by new technologies, even more complex personalities, and disruptive business models brought upon by these very own paradigm shifts.

Creating the presence online

I think this has been the spotlight of Course 1. We created our own platforms on different social media sites from which we will try to create our portfolio. What amazes me is that by putting this exercise at the beginning of the course, it will give us, students, something to talk about on those platforms as we go through this journey. Right? Talking about designing an experience! Now, imagine putting this part at the end of the course. All these progress gems will be forgotten by then.

So, I created a website in Wix, which I will populate with creative thoughts later on as I progress. The idea is that the website will host my projects and other main assignments that employers can peruse later on. The peripheral social media platforms would support my online presence. It’s my chance to interact with UX communities on these sites and of course share my work, ideas, and resources. Giving and sharing is very important, and the UX people (as I’ve heard) are the kindest people ever.

Forgot to include the all powerful Linkedin.

I also created another Twitter account for the sole purpose of interacting with other designers and linking cool design stuff. Of course, Medium is where my heart is so I’m starting out here (with a few followers). I will cross post this to my account in Wix once I get that site up and running. I’m still trying to aesthetically fix it.

I don’t have Instagram yet, since the frameworks and all the mock-ups are still at the later part of the certification course, but I’m already active on Reddit. The UX community there is very helpful (r/UXDesign). I saw posts of hopeful and exhausted designers, newbies that are asking for career advice, tips and tricks and even portfolio and case studies. It’s such a real community. Try to check it out

We were also asked to approach designers and talk to them about their responsibilities and projects (if they can talk about it). This is amazing because through this exercise, I was forced to message a few designers, which by the way are complete strangers through LinkedIn. Sadly, none of them replied, but still. It was exciting because for a few seconds or so, I felt like I’m a part of the community- just like that (snapping my fingers). I reached out and it’s not so bad. It made me hopeful that I can finally make this leap sooner than later.

UX and specializations

Aside from creating our presence online, I think another highlight of this course is the introduction of the different career paths of a UX designer. There are many specialities that one can focus on considering the design process. A designer for sure wears many hats, as for me, I think I would do great in UX research and interaction design. Coming from business development, we do research and culminate it by building our business strategy from there, then we execute. I need more experience of course, based on the few portfolios that I saw, researchers should have a very curious mind and are able to translate this to questions that would help shed light to those problems that the design has to solve.

Interaction design is also a very interesting field. I love anticipating movements and thinking of ways and succession to improve how everything goes. Seriously, I’m very very excited to do this everyday.

Next Certification

I got my Certification last Aug 4, 2021 — with Google’s signature and all. I’m very happy to finish this and I will be moving on to the next course as soon as possible. The feeling’s really amazing after getting things done. I really hope I can sustain this level of enthusiasm until the end of the course. It gets harder but well, life is anyways, why not enjoy it at the same time right?

More to come! Thanks for reading!