Interaction Design Foundation Courses -Review
I’ve been a member of the Interaction Design Foundation for a couple of years now, I’m currently taking my fifth course there. Since I’ve seen several questions about it in design forums, here is my overall experience in case it’s useful for someone considering following this path.
How I Landed On IxDF
Despite having a Licentiate Degree in Design and almost 18 years of experience, I kept the habit of studying as a way to continue learning and keeping myself up to date in the ever evolving field of digital design.
Through the years, it became a bit of a struggle to continuously search for valuable material to study, follow the right people on social networks, blogs, sites, etc. With the idea of finding a sustained way to keep improving my profile and skill set, it occurred to me that instead of periodically searching and reading articles and study material, taking courses could provide me a better way of learning without having to worry about constantly searching for relevant study content.
By then I already knew about Interaction Design Foundation, both because it’s arguably the most prestigious design educational organization out there (words from Forbes and Core77 about that), and because I had already read articles in their blog several times, especially on user experience design and user interface design. So after some research and comparing with other organizations, I was ready to take my first course.
Getting Started
I went to their website to check their UX Design courses, and found 33 courses covering every aspect of UX design and other design related disciplines that serve as very valuable tools for any product or service design role, from beginner to advanced levels.
It could have taken me a bit to choose where to start with so many courses, but there’s a super helpful dropdown that filters the courses according to the desired learning path:
Using that, and since the courses are already divided in beginners, intermediate, and advanced levels, it was quite easy to choose my first course (UX Management: Strategies and Tactics).
So I got my membership (USD 132 yearly), that makes all courses available, and jumped to it.
The Courses
Courses are organized in lessons, and the content combines text, videos and images (they explain that the combination ensures a more efficient way of learning). At the end of each lesson there are some questions, most of them multiple choice (automatically evaluated at the moment) and some open ended ones (written, they may take a couple of days until evaluated). From the UX perspective this is very well designed (kind of a gamified experience) since hitting the right questions feels quite rewarding, especially if you aim at a high score to show off on your certificate 😉
The contents are conceived to endure in time, despite of how fast things change in the digital world, they focus on “timeless knowledge” -principles of brain science, psychology, emotional design, etc-, a very important matter since investing time in getting knowledge and tools too tied to trends won’t take you to an enduring growth.
The people involved are known authorities in the field, such as Don Norman and Daniel Rosenberg in the board, Frank Spillers and Alan Dix as course instructors, etc. This is one of the reasons the IxDF has its status in the world of interaction design.
The Certificates
Going back to my initial dilemma of how to continue developing my profile and skill set in a complementary way to my work as a Lead UI/UX and Product Designer at Avi-on Labs, another challenge was giving tangibility to that development, since your knowledge is not visible for the rest until you get the chance to apply it. With that in mind, I gave special value to the certificates you get when you complete each course, adding industry-recognized certificates to my CV for each course completed was a way to give that tangibility that I was looking for to everything I was prepared to learn. Depending on the final score on a course, you can get a standard certificate (scoring no less than 70% of the total points), Top 10% in class (scoring no less than 90%), and Best in class (scoring 100% of the points). These are the ones I got so far:
The Take Away
Choosing how to carry on a learning routine is not an easy task, since there are many options out there. Interaction Design Foundation courses are to me one of the best options. I’ve learned -and continue learning- valuable and perdurable knowledge that has helped me improve all aspects of the projects I’m working on, going from the quality and effectiveness of the designs, project and team management, and how to use UX design as a business tool to help the company I work for to achieve their goals. Besides the impact on the duties of my work, I’m also getting certificates that I can show on my CV and professional profile that makes all that knowledge and skill set enhancement visible for anyone interested.
