Udacity UX Design Nanodegree Review 2023: Learn to Enhance User Experience
Looking for an in-depth Udacity UX Design Nanodegree Review? I know you are creative and love designing. That’s why you are planning to make a career in UX. I took this Nanodegree in April. It elevated my ability to make high-fidelity interactive designs. But will it be the same for you?
Udacity is offering personalized discount.
So why UX Design? As products become more digital and as humans spend more time on screens (upwards of 11 hours a day!), companies are having to ensure their products are delivering an engaging experience to their customers.
Well-designed user experiences are not only great for the customers, but also for business.
As pet Forrester Research, a well-designed user experience can increase conversions by 400%.
To develop an app/website that giver a better user experience, one should have the creativity and know design principles in order to make a great product.
Today many organizations provide training on UX, Udacity being one of them.
But honestly, I didn’t enroll in this Nanodegree to go for a job, rather I wanted to enhance the user experience of this website.
Udacity was well known to me and I knew the value they offer.
Hence I enrolled in this UX design Nanodegree.
Also Read: Udacity Review: Will I get a job after completing Nanodegree?
In this Udacity UX design Nanodegree review, I am going to shed some light on the course syllabus, to check whether the course is worth it or not.
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Udacity UX Design Nanodegree Review
UX Designers have never been more critical to businesses than they are now, and I am excited to help you become one!
Let’s keep rolling..
After I enrolled in, I was asked to set up 3 months timeline for the program.
Here I had to select my project deadlines at my convenience.
I found this feature quite interesting as you can plan your entire program in a stipulated time frame of 3-4 months.
Not only monthly, but you can also schedule your timetable weekly.
Honestly, this feature didn’t work for me much as I didn’t follow any specific timetable, but you can.
This is useful for those attending college or going for a job, as managing both is quite troublesome.
The second thing I admire about Udacity is its interactive shell.
I have been through many online courses in my career, and I can say that Udacity’s interactive shell provides a better experience than other online education platforms.
Have a look at it.
The program is initiated by Mrs. Shiung Lui, a UX designer from Google.
She covered all the fundamental concepts of UX like
- What is good UX?
- How do we select a good design problem?
- What are some principles we can use to quickly evaluate a design?
The entire syllabus is divided into 3 courses followed by 3 projects along with the Capstone project.
Every lesson was followed by a simple quiz is in the form of fill-in-the-blanks or true or false.
These quizzes were simple to answer provided you listened to the instructor carefully.
For a few times, I had to replay the video to answer these questions.
I tried not to go to the next lecture until and unless I have answered all the quizzes. I suggest the same.
On the left-hand side is the help button, where you get access to your mentor and peer chats.
There were already some pre-answered questions to my doubts, so I didn’t participate much in the discussion, but you can.
Every project you submit gets reviewed, and our project reviewers will provide personalized feedback on how you can improve your work.
These projects will serve as portfolio items that you can use to demonstrate your skills. After completing this program, you will not only be equipped to bring UX Design into your current role, but also be prepared to apply for UX Designer or Product Designer jobs.
In addition, you will use one of your completed projects from this Nanodegree program to build a case study that can be incorporated into your UX portfolio that demonstrates your skills to prospective employers.
Also Read: Digital Marketing Nanodegree Review
In this Udacity UX design Nanodegree review, I am going to shed some light on the course syllabus, to check whether the course is worth it or not.
Syllabus for Udacity UX Designer Nanodegree
The entire syllabus is divided into 3 courses followed by 3 projects along with the Capstone project that will help you master UX portfolios.
Let’s discuss all of them in detail.
Course 1: UX Fundamentals & Design Research
For any UX project, it is paramount to do the initial research required to understand the user’s requirements.
In this course, you will learn how to interact with users, ask them relevant questions and understand their problems.
Based on the data gathered, you’ll now use psychology to design rough sketches.
This course is divided into 3 lessons beginning with Introduction to UX, UX Research, and Design for Humans.
The first lesson begins with a brief intro to User Experience(UX). In this, you learn about the heuristic evaluation of product designs.
A heuristic technique is an approach to discovery or problem-solving that has broad guidelines. In short, it is a method of evaluating the usability of a product (e.g. website).
Analyzing the scope of a research topic to select a design problem.
The next lesson takes you deep into the research needed to identify the end user’s requirement.
As discussed earlier, research is an important part of designing the user experience, this lesson teaches you to execute a research plan.
Interviews are part of doing research. You need to ask a certain set of questions to the user to get the required information.
In this lesson, you will analyze quantitative data obtained from the user interview using the affinity diagramming method.
The third lesson is interesting, where you learn to appeal to human emotions through design. For instance, a food delivery startup’s website should arouse a sense of hunger through content and design.
Project 1: Formulate a Research report
In this project, you have to prepare a set of questions, recruit some research participants, and analyze findings to come up with a research report.
As discussed earlier, the very first step to designing a great product is interacting with users and understanding their needs. You have to draw your insights from those interviews to get an overview of the research topic.
The aim of the project is to ask the right set of questions to decode the user mindset and identify design opportunities to create rough sketches based on design psychology principles.
Course 2: Concept to Low-Fidelity Prototyping
This course has 5 lessons in total. The first lesson will take you through the Double Diamond design process to create product concepts. A Double Diamond Model is a sort of process for people who want to create things.
Here’s an example of the model.
The next concept you will be taught is Guerrilla testing.
It is a technique that helps product teams to validate critical assumptions at a cheap cost and with rapid speed. It’s called guerrilla testing.
The second lesson will teach you to prioritize ideas as design features based on a value-complexity matrix to create an MVP (minimum viable product)
You will learn about UI Principles in the third lesson, where you will learn to create user-friendly designs by organizing visuals and touchpoints.
The other two lessons are clickable prototyping and usability testing.
In this, you will explore various tools used for prototyping (e.g. Figma) where you define user flow and interactions.
Once you have created a digital journey map, you have to conduct in-person and remote tests to get feedback on the prototype you have just created.
Project 2:Develop a Validated Low-Fidelity Prototype
It’s time to apply all you have learned in the second course.
In this project, you have to work on a product idea and apply the design sprint process to come up with a user-tested low-fidelity prototype of your solution.
For the design sprint process, you have to get insights from the research you have done.
The first step is to set up the infrastructure to start the design sprint and analyze research findings.
The next step will be to brainstorm ideas on paper sketches followed by digital sketches using various design tools.
At last, you’ll conduct a usability test of your prototype with a few users to check whether the prototype is up to the mark. Later you need to create a second iteration of the prototype based on the feedback given by users.
Course 3: High-Fidelity Prototyping to Post-Launch Analysis
Finally, you have made several prototypes based on the user feedbacks, now they need to be enhanced for engagement.
This course contains four lessons that will teach you to improve on your design based on the engagement data.
The first lesson is UI Design Basics.
Both UI and UX go hand-in-hand. It’s important to recognize UI trends to apply various interaction and typography styles. Even the font plays a significant role in the user experience.
The second lesson focuses on building interactive designs.
Here, you will learn to apply design principles to generate high-fidelity mockups.
Later you need to prepare designs for the engineering handoff.
Now that you have made a design based on research and feedbacks and is ready for production. Further, the design needs to be optimized using engagement data for improving design performance.
Project 3: Create and Improve a High-Fidelity Design
In this project, you’ll upgrade the low-fidelity prototype using a data-enhanced high-fidelity design by submitting a midterm and a final project.
Once a low-fidelity prototype ensures that the core functionality of your product addresses user needs, the next step is to make the interface more delightful.
In the midterm project, you’ll develop a style guide and component library to create a high-fidelity mockup of your low-fidelity prototype.
The final project will let you improve the accessibility of your product/design and perform iterations.
After completing all the above projects, it’s time to have look at the capstone project. The capstone project will require you to demonstrate all your design skills. Let’s have a look in detail.
Capstone: UX Portfolio Design
For any UX designer, it’s important to showcase their designs in a portfolio in order to display their abilities and experience to the world. This Capstone Project will make you understand what you should and shouldn’t include in a portfolio.
In this project, you will apply personal branding methods to create a smarter portfolio that consists of projects completed in this Nanodegree program.
In short, this project will help you complement your abilities as a UX designer.
In this, you have to document the methodology you went through to complete your projects.
Lastly, you have to design an “About Me” page that conveys you are a professional UX Designer.
Read: Designlab UX Academy review
Also, I have included some real-life Udacity UX Nanodegree reviews which I found on social media.
Here’s a list of them.
Udacity UX Design Nanodegree Reviews
I am glad to have completed the new Nanodegree’s, Udacity it was worth sacrificing my nights and weekends to learn excellent practices from great google professionals, Feather Docs and Context Leap, as well as Michael Dedrick and Gabriel Ruttner
Good Experience
On my birthday this year, I got myself a nice present! #1 on my 2020 new year’s resolutions #checked ✅ I am so happy to have completed the #udacity #ux Nanodegree program. Looking forward to starting a new learning journey; because I am utterly convinced that learning something new every day matters! A great #user_experience is not a luxury because #Generation_Z will not settle for a poorly-designed solution. And yes, this generation will radically change the workforce forever! (Per #CNBC link below.) #UXers know this, and they have the mindset and tools to design with users in mind! Happy to join the UXers club!
Valuable content
After 3 months of hard work, dedication and commitment, I am happy to announce that I have completed the User Experience Nanodegree from Udacity. It was a great learning experience, many lessons have been learned, and wonderful projects have been built. I enjoyed the course and the value that has been added to my career and personal skills.
I found this one on Twitter
I was especially impressed by Ana Chiarelli, who designed a beautiful Coffee shop app.
You can find the design of the app here
This is what she has to say about the program
Honestly, I haven’t found any improvement review yet. If I find I’ll surely update them here.
Here is a video from Brian Design, a UX Nanodegree Graduate where he reviews the ND.
In the next video, he has reviewed his final project. Do have a look over this
Conclusion: Is Udacity UX Design Nanodegree Worth It?
“UX designer” is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after job titles in tech. Being a UX designer is rewarding, challenging, lucrative, and interesting. You get to work with people but also quite a lot with software as you are responsible for designing apps and website experiences
From the syllabus and reviews, it is clear that this UX Nanodegree program is capable enough to make you a successful UX Designer.
The course seems to cover all the concepts of UX designing and will surely be a highlight on your resume.
The reason for recommending this course is that it has helped many to date to kick start their career in UX, some landed in a decent salary job while some started freelancing. Both options are viable.
Akshay Vikhe
I am a professional digital marketer and have worked on various UX projects. I like to review courses that are genuine and add real value to students career Here’s my story
