Michigan State University

UX Design From Concept to Prototype

Great design doesn’t come out of nowhere; it is born, nurtured, and grown--all through a systematic, learnable process.
Length 1 to 3 months
Effort 3-4 hours per week
Price Free
Subject Design
Level Beginner
Languages English
Video Transcripts English, Vietnamese
About this Course
In this UX course, you will explore the process of taking a basic concept, grounded in user needs, and developing it into a design that will address those needs. In the course, you will gain hands-on experience with techniques such as sketching, scenario development, storyboarding, and wireframing that will help you transform your understanding of what your users need into a compelling user experience. You will then learn how to turn wireframes and interaction architecture into interactive prototypes that can be tested with prospective users and iteratively refined into a high quality design that that is ready for a hand-off to the development team for implementation.

What you'll learn

What to learn:
  • Define and scope the design problem you will try to address

  • Create user stories and storyboards to transform information about user needs into design concepts

  • Produce sketches and conduct brainstorming sessions to generate many design ideas from which you can construct a high-quality design solution

  • Develop interface wireframes to concretize the design and enable early user testing

  • Conduct user tests with paper prototypes to get preliminary user feedback on the design concept and interactions

  • Develop high-fidelity mockups that specify visual design elements

  • Create Wizard of Oz prototypes to efficiently test complex interactions and interactive systems that are not screen-based (e.g., smart assistants)

Course syllabus

Week 1: Introduction to the Design Process

Week 2: Ideation

Week 3: Design Constraints and Making Choices

Week 4: Building Blocks of User Interaction

Week 5: Low to Hi-Fidelity Prototyping

Week 6: Conceptual Issues in Prototyping and Design

Meet the instructors

Predrag Klasnja

Assistant Professor

School of Information