User experience design training by
Hands on
user experience
design coursesThe
best way to learn something is to do it
Hands on
user experience
design coursesThe
best way to learn something is to do it
UX Gym offers user experience design courses where you experience UX design techniques first hand and can put what you learn into practice straight away. Our courses are aimed at both designers and non designers looking to add to their skill base and gain practical UX experience. No previous experience is required.
Public CoursesWe provide customised user experience training and capability building for organisations. We've done this for government departments such as the Department of Internal Affairs and Statistics NZ, and private companies such as Fraedom.com and Wine-Searcher.com. To enquire about our private courses and capability building service get in touch:
Contact UsReading about user experience design techniques on the internet is a great start, but only putting them into action prepares you to use them as part of your everyday practice.
We have temporarily put a pause on all our courses until the government advises it is safe to run public events. We can still offer online training to organisations and online coaching for individuals. In the short term we have some free web seminars available on our youtube channel here We are also working on redesigning our courses to make them available as online learning courses.
You can see our full list of courses we usually offer (and will soon offer again!) here. Subscribe to our newsletter below to get a notification when we start up our public courses and get our first online course ready.
Thanks for your patience and look after yourselves!
The UX Gym team (Matt, Lulu and Janine)
Get hands-on experience of a digital UX design project from start to finish in this intensive one day workshop. This course is designed to give you an understanding of the principles behind a modern user centered design process and practical experience of some of the most common activities you will encounter in a typical user experience project. The day is designed so you can apply what you learn immediately to your current projects and also use what you learn as a base for further study.
This course gives you hands-on experience of a digital UX design project from start to finish in an intense one day workshop. On this course you take a project through a complete design life cycle from initial research, to ideation, to design to user testing. As well as gaining practical experience of the some of the most common user experience design methods as you work through the project you learn the principles behind them so you can make good decisions about what approach and methods will get you the best outcomes for your own projects. The goal of the day is for you to be able to take what you learn and apply it immediately to your current projects and also use what you learn as a base for further study.
No prior knowledge is required to do this course, it is suitable for absolute beginners. However the course is primarily aimed at:
Web, interaction and UX designers who want to build on their UX skills, put into practice approaches they have read about, adopt a user centered design approach or better their understanding of the principles behind common UX design methods.
Traditional designers who want to transition into digital design or learn how to work better with their UX colleagues.
Senior practitioners who want to gain an understanding of the principles of user experience design and experience how those principles are practiced on the ground.
Developers who want to build on their UX skills or learn how to work better with their UX colleagues.
Product owners and project managers who want a better understanding of how a user experience design approach can get them better outcomes on their products and projects.
You are put in a team and work on a digital design project throughout the day learning and applying user centered design methods as you go. No coding is required and most teams elect to design their project on paper in order to keep the focus on design decisions not implementation.
You will learn the basic principles of user experience design including it’s history and common terminology used.
You will get an introduction to basic principles and best practice for user researchYou learn how to identify if research is required, what kind is required, and the basics of designing research to get valid outcomes. You experience implementing a common research method and learn how to synthesise and interpret user research results.
You learn the basic principles behind making good interaction and UI design decisions and experience putting those principles into practice.
You learn what you can and can’t user test, how to design user tests that are likely to get you valid results and experience designing and facilitating user tests for you project.
There are no prerequisites for this course, no previous experience with design or coding is required.
All materials are provided.
Like our 1 day UX Crash Course this course gives you hands-on experience of a digital UX design project from start to finish, but it goes into more depth in each area. This course is designed to give you a more thorough understanding of the principles behind a modern user centered design process and more practical experience of some of the most common activities you will encounter in a typical user experience project. The day is designed so you can apply what you learn immediately to your current projects and also use what you learn as a base for further study.
You are put in a team and work on a digital design project throughout the day learning and applying human centered design methods as you go. No coding is required with the focus for this day on design decisions rather than implementation.
You will learn the basic principles of user experience design including its history and common terminology used.
You learn how to identify if research is required, what kind of research is best suited to your project, and the basics of designing research to get valid outcomes. You experience implementing a common research method and learn how to synthesise and interpret user research results.
As well as covering all the material found in our 1 day crash course you get to spend more time learning how to facilitate research to get usable results and learning how to synthesise your research results to identify themes, needs, and opportunities.
You learn the basic principles behind making good interaction and UI design decisions and experience putting those principles into practice.
This includes the material covered in our crash course but also goes into more depth on best practice UI/Interaction design and how to design to accomodate common user/customer behaviour.
You learn what you can and can’t user test, how to design user tests that are likely to get you valid results and experience designing and facilitating user tests for you project.
This is an experiential course. You learn by doing, developing a project throughout the 2 days taking it through a full UX design process from initial research through to usability testing. To ensure you can use what you learn during the week in your regular design practice you are given:
You get common UX methods that make up a typical UX design process. These are practical ways of working that you can take away and start applying immediately.
You get the foundation theory behind these methods - why we work the way we do. This gives you a basis for further study and helps you judge how appropriate any method is for a given problem. A firm grasp of basic principles also makes it easier for you to alter a method or develop your own methods as needed.
You apply the principles and methods to your project. This experience of applying a clean principle and method to messy human behaviour is essential if you are going to learn how to practically solve real design problems in a human centered way.
No prior knowledge is required to do this course, it is suitable for absolute beginners. However the course is primarily aimed at:
Everything you need will be provided. We don’t supply lunch but we do do a morning coffee run and supply fruit and snacks to keep you going.
Early bird pricing with $200 discount on tickets purcahsed before June
This course combines all our one day courses into a week long deep-dive into experience design. It takes you through a full digital UX project from initial research to finished design. The week is designed to give you an understanding of the principles behind a modern user centered design process and practical experience of some of the most common activities you will encounter in a typical user experience project. With this course you can apply what you learn immediately to your current projects, use what you learn as a base for further study, or develop a case study to showcase for potential employers. No previous design or digital experience is required.
The UX Intensive week is an experiential course. You learn by doing, developing a project throughout the week taking it through a full UX design process from initial research through to usability testing. To ensure you can use what you learn during the week in your regular design practice every day of the course you are given:
You get common UX methods that make up a typical UX design process. These are practical ways of working that you can take away and start applying immediately.
You get the foundation theory behind these methods - why we work the way we do. This is to give you a basis for further study or self development. Principles help you judge how appropriate any method is for a given problem and give you enough understanding to alter a method or develop you own methods as needed.
We work every day from 9:30am to 4:30pm.
Sept 4 - Sept 8 2017
Thinkspace - 3 Glenside Crescent, Auckland
Sept 18 - Sept 22 2017
115 Tory Street, Te Aro Wellington
We encourage you to create a blog to document how you have applied a UX process and developed your project each day during the course. Although not compulsory, this helps to reinforce your learnings and can then be used to create a case study for future employers. We can set you up with a blog service if you need us to.
We will have two drop ins during the week from leading UX practitioners who will share a case study, discuss the reality of doing UX design in the real world, and answer your questions.
No prior knowledge is required to do this course, it is suitable for absolute beginners. However the course is primarily aimed at:
Web, interaction and UX designers who want to build on their UX skills, put into practice approaches they have read about, adopt a user centered design approach or better their understanding of the principles behind common UX design methods.
Traditional designers who want to transition into digital design or learn how to work better with their UX colleagues.
People new to the industry looking for the opportunity to learn and practice user experience design and use that experience to gain a foothold into the industry.
Senior practitioners who want to gain an understanding of the principles of user experience design and experience how those principles are practiced on the ground.
Developers who want to build on their UX skills or learn how to work better with their UX colleagues.
Product owners and project managers who want a better understanding of how a user experience design approach can get them better outcomes on their products and projects.
We start at the start - learning about the people we are designing for. Most of us aren’t designing for ourselves. No other area of design has more impact on how successful your initial design decisions are going to be than user research. On the first day you will learn some fundamental research methods, and the principles behind them. You will conduct some first hand user research then use common design thinking methods to create a design concept for the week based on the research findings.
You will learn how to analyse a project to identify if formative user research is needed in order to achieve project goals.
You will learn the different types of user research available and how to identify which one is the most likely to get you valid results given the time and resources available to you.
You will work in a team to design and execute a research project.
You will learn about common analysis techniques to make sense of the data you have collected and you will get to use one of those techniques with your own data.
You will learn how to present your research in a way that is meaningful and compelling.
On the second day we dive into information architecture (IA), one of the fundamental skills that makes up UX design.
We will go through the basics of designing solid information architecture, taking a user centered approach to identifying the language, taxonomy, navigation and categorisation that enables users to effectively use your product or service.
We then put what we’ve learnt into practice by developing the information architecture that will support the design concept you created on day 1.
We look into the different components of information architecture and how to identify them. These form the basic terms and concepts you need to consider when designing IA.
We look into the process of how modern information architecture is created, covering common tasks and activities used to create an IA that will work for your users and business. You will put these into practice on your own project.
We cover how to communicate basic IA design concepts in order to create cohesive specifications that third parties are able to communicate, implement and test such as wireframes, content models, sitemaps and task flow diagrams.
On day 3 we cover designing for human behaviour. We look at how our design choices influence the decisions people make and how we can use language, layout, colour, images and type to communicate clearly and persuasively. You will learn the basics of interaction design and how to help users make sense of complex systems and make good decisions.
On this day you start to flesh out your high level design and begin to take your first steps to creating a rough clickable prototype.
We’ll cover user behaviour and decision making for screen based designs and interfaces and how to design interactions to accommodate common user strategies.
How to use layout, type, colour and images to communicate and persuade.
This includes best practice for selecting user interface (UI) controls and solving common UI design problems.
We’ll introduce the foundations of designing to positively influence people’s behaviour.
We cover how you can make sure your design is accessible to users with different physical and mental abilities.
We’ll cover emerging design trends such as collaborative design methods and non visual interfaces including bots, conversational interfaces and AI.
On day 4 we extend our design exploration to the ins and outs of designing for systems and screens. We look at the implications of different devices and screen types, how your design will be implemented and how technical realities effect user experience.
On this day you will tighten up and add more detail to your design and refine your clickable prototype.
We look at making layout and design decisions for responsive layouts, various screen sizes and touch devices.
We cover what designers need to know about how design is implemented organisationally, on the web and in native apps.
We look at the pros and cons of using a standardised UI library.
We cover the most popular design software used by both broad UX designers and UX designs with a UI focus.
We look at the various methods used to document and communicate design decisions such as service design blueprints, Wikis, style guides and wireframes.
On day 5 we cover using prototypes to test emerging designs and best practice for validating existing designs. User testing designs through prototyping helps us to safely explore risky ideas, get a feel for how real people will respond to our designs and most importantly lets us fail cheaply and privately instead of publicly and expensively.
This is our last day. You finish your design and complete your prototype. We then test your design using observational time on task testing and iterate the design based on what we’ve learnt.
We look at how to identify what needs testing and how to design a test that will get you valid results.
We cover how many users you need, how to recruit them and how to prepare for and facilitate an effective usability test.
We look at the pros and cons of heuristic reviews (expert review) and how to conduct one.
We cover the most popular prototyping tools in use at the moment.
We look at how to interpret what you see during a test and how to communicate that to your clients or stakeholders.
Lockdown web seminars
Learn common mistakes people make that invalidate usability tests.
Previous web seminars
Learn 4 useful principles about how people make decisions, and what these mean when designing products and services.
Learn a practical method (and the principles behind it) for creating interview questions designed to minimise bias and create deeper, more insightful conversations.