Intro to UX Design

Overview

Project Description

I wrote and taught my own user experience design curriculum at the Innovation Center of St. Vrain Valley Schools. This institution is the technology campus of the St. Vrain Valley School District, and it opens paths for students across various high schools to pursue careers in STEM. My pilot course consisted of 7 high school students from across the district.

Final Deliverable

I created a complete, semester-long UX design course that I handed off to staff members at the Innovation Center. This was an 18-week introductory course intended for a high school class of around 6 to 30 students from 9th through 12th grade.

Logistics

Location: Innovation Center | 33 Quail Rd Longmont, CO | 303-702-8200

My role: I was an adjunct instructor. My responsibilities involved class planning, UX material preparation (research and design), teaching students, and grading

Tools used: Figma, Figjam, WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools)

Mentor: Brittney Urich VanHorssen https://brittneyurich.com

Contacts: Axel Reitzig reitzig_axel@svvsd.org | Kyle Liss liss_kyle@svvsd.org

Duration: 18 weeks, meeting 2-3 times per week according to the SVVSD calendar

Semester Timeline

Course Elements

Lesson Slides + Class Activities

The curriculum included weekly lesson slides, discussions, and class activities that covered different aspects of the UX research + design process.

Assignments

Each lesson came with a homework assignment for students to complete that built up to their final project. This assignment closely resembed in-class practice to keep students confident about the directions/procedures they needed to follow.

Exams

The course had a total of 3 exams. One was a pretest and posttest of the entire course content to assess student growth. The remaining exams were on UX research and UX design, splitting the content into 2 distinct units.

Final Project

Students worked on a website redesign of Barbed Wire Books, a local bookstore in Longmont. Their final deliverable was a portfolio case study outlining their entire UX design process. Assets from homework assignments were used in the final documentation.

Course Planning

Each week, I would meet with my mentor and Innovation Center instructors to run through my course material. Course slides and assingments were hosted on the Google Suite with our digital classroom on Schoology. In-class activities were often done using Figma/Figjam or tangible mediums. All exams were taken on paper.

UX Design Course Outline + Materials

Classroom Gallery

I walked my students through the end-to-end design process, starting with UX research and ending with UX design. We focused on professional methodologies, content/theory, and hands-on practice. Towards the end of the semester, I brought in guest speaks to give students insights about professional life and industry.

Google Sites

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