How Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF) helped me to grow as a Product Designer | A Review of the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF)
I’m Shoaib Mahmud, Sr. Product Designer of Truck Lagbe. Truck Lagbe is the first and the largest online platform in Bangladesh to hire pickup, truck or covered van in minutes.
I started my UX Career back in 2016. My learning journey started off quite haphazardly. I was mostly studying UX from random articles, youtube videos, community friends. I lacked direction and my study had no structure. Getting different opinions and different theories left me quite confused. In dec 2018, I discovered Interaction Design Foundation through a friend & never looked back.
About IxDF
Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF) is the biggest online design school globally with 100,799 graduates. The curriculum and content are structured at the graduate level. Courses are focused on interaction design, computer science, user experience, information architecture, and design.
IxDF Guided me step by step to grow
IxDF showed me a learning path! That’s so relaxing!
Each path has some set of courses that will lead you from beginner to expert.
I have completed 7 courses so far from IxDF. Let me walk you through the summary of these…
01 Design Thinking
- Apply an iterative, user-focused design process to generate innovative ideas that solve complex, ill-defined problems.
- Make use of practical design thinking methods such as interviews, co-creation sessions and rapid prototyping, in every stage of the design process.
- Initiate a new working culture based on customer needs and wants, so all work is focused on creating holistic and sustainable customer value.
- Employ user research techniques to ensure products and solutions are truly relevant to their target audience.
02 User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide
- Carry out a user-focused design process to create designs that are truly relevant to users.
- Communicate to internal and external stakeholders about the importance of UX design and user research.
- Carry out a design process that avoids the most common mistakes seen in design projects of designers who are new to UX.
- Analyze and improve the visceral, behavioral and reflective levels of the user experience of existing products or services
03 Become a UX Designer from Scratch
- Apply an iterative, people-focused process to generate designs that are truly relevant for the target group of people.
- Gain an understanding of users, through methods such as interviews and personas.
- Create simple prototypes and validate them through usability testing.
04 Conducting Usability Testing
- Design a user test and set test goals to evaluate products and interfaces.
- Build a user test plan using industry best practices.
- Run a user test smoothly and effectively, avoiding common mistakes throughout.
- Provide actionable insights to stakeholders through reports on the results of usability test observations.
05 Mobile User Experience (UX) Design
- Design mobile interfaces based on mobile usability best practices.
- Use personas and task modelling to inform the design of a mobile user experience.
- Design mobile interfaces that cater to the different operating platforms (e.g. iOS vs Android).
- Design mobile user experiences that are engaging and fun
06 Human-Computer Interaction — HCI
- Carry out a design process that focuses on people’s needs to ensure that designs are easy and pleasurable to use.
- Create and enhance user interface designs based on principles of human cognition.
- Design engaging user experiences for desktop, mobile and physical devices.
- Evaluate the user experience of a design through user tests and expert evaluations.
07 How to Create a UX Portfolio
- Craft the perfect online and PDF UX portfolio that will impress recruiters.
- Find and work on design projects, so that the final product is well-designed and demonstrates a high level of design skills and knowledge.
- Write effectively — to create engaging and compelling copy not only in UX case studies but across all UX work.
I strongly recommend you to join IxDF
As a young designer with no proper institutional background, it was hard for me to have faith in the things I was doing and learning.
I questioned myself “Do I know what I need to know?” I was feeling like an imposter. A person who pretends to be someone else!
Since studying under Interaction Design Foundation, I managed to gain major confidence in my abilities. Although the classes were online, I never felt disconnected from the teachers or students. You will find world-recognized UX designers, Researchers, Product Manager who are studying here. You can connect with them.
The rankings posted later after our class tests helped boost my confidence and kept me feeling challenged.
It was quite thrilling trying to ace every test so I could be on top of the class! I felt united this way with my peers.
The difference between my mentality when I started and when I had completed a few courses here is massive!
What I loved the most about IxDF is the information learnt was able to immediately implement as a Product Designer. The best part was all the contents are in detail & in plain English. All the contents were super engaging. They teach every topic in-depth and provide wonderful insight after each lesson. The questions they ask us to solve after every lesson was helpful too. The lessons taught never bored me as everything said was useful and practical.
Memberships Fees
Compared to other learning platforms such as General Assembly, Coursera, etc. In my opinion, Interaction Design Foundation is the best in terms of being cost-efficient.
Yearly cost:
Student: $96 or ৳8000/- (Access only 2 courses at a time)
Professional: $120 or ৳10000/- (Access to Unlimited courses at a time)
Get 2 months FREE membership
You can use this Referal Link to get 2 months free membership.
Note: You need a Dual Currency Credit card to buy IxDF membership. Feel free to knock me if you need any help.
Conclusion
I no longer feel confused regarding the world of UX. Their niche-learning system focusing solely on Design and UX has helped me get an in-depth knowledge of how this industry works. They helped me get a birds-eye view of the UX world. I can now proudly say I have a clear understanding of my goal now. My experience at Interaction Design was amazing. Whatever I learnt then and whatever I’m still learning now, is like a torch lighting my way through my journey!
All the best for your UX journey! Please don’t forget to clap if you find this article helpful.
