Hi!
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Linnéa Kusagård, and I’m a designer, and design student, based in Sweden. I recently found out that I performed in the top 1% of course takers at the Interaction Design Foundation. This still feels unbelievable to me, and I’m going to enjoy it for all it is worth. Now, however, I will start celebrating by reviewing some of the courses I have finished so far. Hopefully, it can give you some insight into IxDF and their courses.
My Story
I first turned to IxDF during a period where my chronic pain was unpredictable. I had previously taken design courses in person, but now I needed something self-paced. The courses that I started taking were all a part of IxDF’s UX-design learning path. Since then, I have continued branching out and designed my own tailor-made learning experience. (Feel free to look at what courses I am currently taking at my profile on IxDF’s website)
Insanely enough I guess it has only been a couple of years since I graduated from upper secondary. I recently became employed at two different companies. My first real design-related jobs. I work with branding, social media presence and web design. The courses I have taken have helped me a lot in the workplace. I have the words to explain the value of all that I do, explain why a design does or does not work, and tools to help me through the design process.
Even if you are a great designer it can be tricky to find work, and I reckon I got a bit lucky. I’m still learning so much, and honestly I’m having a blast with it.
Taken from Design Thinking: The Beginner’s Guide
I really enjoyed this course. It was one of my first courses, and it motivated me a lot. You learn about the design process and how to approach it to nurture ideation and innovation. There seems to be a new and improved version of this course up on interaction-design.org called “Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide”. I will be reviewing the good ol’ “Design Thinking: The Beginner’s Guide”, but the purpose of the courses seem to be the same.
Here’s a great quote from the course:
I keep encountering people who jump to solutions and who fail to question assumptions—engineers, business people, and yes, designers (and design students). These encounters made me reconsider. I observed design students who were acting mindlessly, simply doing their assignments as presented. No creativity, no imagination, no questioning. That's not what design thinking is about. As a result, I have changed my mind: Design Thinking really is special.
Don Norman’s quote summarizes what captivated me about the course. It helps you look at design (and maybe life as a whole) a bit differently. The design process is and should be allowed to be fun and imperfect. This course reminds us again and again that you can “fail forward”. If you are afraid of trying “bad” ideas you will miss the opportunity to learn from and correct them. The Design Thinking Process (pictured above) is something the course comes back to over and over again. Something I appreciated is that IxDF went beyond explaining each phase of the design thinking process. The course material also includes a variety of methods for each step. I have gone back multiple times after the course to look for inspiration and help with designers block.
Screenshot of discussion in the Become a UX designer from Scratch course
Become a UX designer from Scratch
This course is thorough. It is packed with information and provides a lot of tools for new designers. The lessons themselves feel varied. Some consist mostly of text while others also feature videos. I appreciated the videos lectures a lot. The tutors were often experienced designers with a lot of knowledge of the topics they discussed. However, what really made an impact on me was how likeable all of them were. It may sound irrelevant at first, but I think that’s a great sign of a successful UX-designer. The fact that they were able to present information in a way that was easy to understand, and made me trust them, showcased their empathy and communication skills.
A fun part of this course was to see all the other students take on the assignments. As you can see in the screenshot, I feel like the community is very supportive, and you can often get very good feedback from the other course takers. The assignment in the picture is called “Building customer journey maps” and is a good example of a typical lesson of this course. Most home assignments followed the introduction of a new method. I like this layout. You learn something new, try it out and then look at how others approached the same task.
Similarly to the last course, I have revisited the course page to look for inspiration. Not least because of the “Create your first UX portfolio” section.
I think my short review has come to a natural end. I found these courses very helpful as a part of my design journey. Feel free to check out my LinkedIn to see what other resources I have made use of.
I wish all of you the best.
Safe learning!