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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Conduct UX Research and Test Early Concepts by Google

4.8
stars
4,898 ratings

About the Course

Conduct UX Research and Test Early Concepts is the fourth course in a certificate program that will equip you with the skills you need to apply to entry-level jobs in user experience (UX) design. In this course, you will learn how to plan and conduct a usability study to gather feedback about designs. Then, you will modify your low-fidelity designs based on insights from your research. Current UX designers and researchers at Google will serve as your instructors, and you will complete hands-on activities that simulate real-world UX design scenarios. Learners who complete the seven courses in this certificate program should be equipped to apply for entry-level jobs as UX designers. By the end of this course, you will be able to: - Plan a UX research study, including the project background, research goals, research questions, Key Performance Indicators, methodology, participants, and script. - Explain the importance of respecting privacy and user data. - Conduct a moderated and unmoderated usability study. - Take notes during a usability study. - Create affinity diagrams to group and analyze data. - Synthesize observations from research and come up with insights. - Develop persuasive presentation skills to share research insights. - Modify low-fidelity designs based on research insights. - Continue to design a mobile app to include in your professional portfolio. To be successful in this course, you should complete the previous three courses in the certificate program. Or, you need to have an ability to conduct user research to inform the creation of empathy maps, personas, user stories, user journey maps, problem statements, and value propositions; as well as an ability to create wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes on paper and in Figma....

Top reviews

JH

Nov 2, 2022

One of the most useful courses for me. I have gathered soo much knowledge from this course. The work and assignments might seem a bit cumbersome, but trust me when you do those you will learn a lot.

MA

Jul 23, 2023

Amazing course!.... It has provided me the knowledge and skills I need to succeed in my chosen field. I'm confident that this course will help me reach my goals. Thanks for making this available!

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1 - 25 of 852 Reviews for Conduct UX Research and Test Early Concepts

By BrandDad U

Jun 29, 2021

First off I LOOOOOOOOVE this Cert! I'm learning alot and its at my own pace and from a great established company. But course 4 was definitely a lowlight for me. Allow me to explain. Let me start with my appreciation for thorough teaching and explanatory practices when relaying information to a body of individuals for the purpose of educating them. That being said. This course #4 was dragged out ENTIRELY too long. While I understand that research is a huge vital part of the UX process, this seemed a BIT MUCH. Especially the parts where we have to do the same things voer and over different ways. I think there should be a separate practice modules for each task. So that if someone is not catching on to the content, they can review as much as they want and come back. I myself dont plan on being a UX researcher, so I personally felt that the constant looping around the same subject felt like a very cumbersome and restricting experience. Please update and polish for those that come behind us. Keep up the good work!

By Mark R

Aug 16, 2021

I felt while Jason was knowlegeable thogh his weekly assigments could be confusing for many students, incluiding myself. I had to re-read the instructions more than once on a few of the assignments. On the most recent assignment for week 4, I graded 7 assignments and many students were missing different parts of the assignment or were not clear on how to present the assignment.

I believe an exemplar or some type of example would have helped immensely. Also, I found that in general most of the assigments took twice or three times the amount to complete.

Reading the discussion boards I found that there are quite a few confused students. Considering that many of these students do not speak English well or it is their second language it would behoove Jason to really examine how he is presenting the weekly assignment. I think Jason needs to revisit the way he is presenting the assigments and possibly re-write a few of the instructions.

By Eva R

May 16, 2022

I am sorry to say but I hated this course - after doing such a hands-on fun wireframing course this killed my motivation, I couldn't come back to it for 2 weeks. I am sure Jason is an amazing person in real life, but his 'reading' was putting me to sleep, as a person with English as a second language I found too many complicated words were used and just too much listening and reading - not much action. The information just kept repeating itself, this could have been a shorter course I think. I will agree with other comments - the peer-graded assignments in general on Coursera I find silly because some people just downgrade you on purpose? In this course, some assignments made no sense when it came to 'Instructions ' vs. 'Submission ' - that should really be corrected! The random question pop-ups in the middle of the videos are frustrating.

By mohamedsafwt a

Jul 2, 2021

I think the course is magnificient, but the idea that students are grading others is not fair at all. I already finished all the materials, but because some smart people reviewing I wont be able to get a certificate which is frustrating.

By AK C

Aug 18, 2021

All the 4 courses I enrolled in were ok!. I didn't find it great. The instructors were just reading out from the screen. I wanted to experience real teaching. Some assignments were fun, but overall it's time to change the teaching style. 

By Christian L

Jul 1, 2022

The most valuable aspect of this course was learning about usability studies and conducting our own on our family and friends using the low-fidelity prototype we created. I learned a ton from this.

This course took me 12 days of study to complete with an average of 2h per day (over 20 calendar days). I was able to breeze through the videos (using 1.25x speed) and the readings and quizzes in a fraction of the estimated time but the weekly assignments were time consuming! I regularly exceeded the weekly assignment estimated time of 60m. Here is the actual time I spent working on weekly assignments: 1. build a research plan (25m); 2. conduct a usability study (3h8m); 3. observations into insights and affinity diagram (2h40m); 4. update your prototype and research presentation (2h50m). Conducting the usability study took up the most time because it required emailing friends and family and recruiting them to send a screen capture video of them interacting with the prototype. I'm posting this review to help other students get a better gauge of how much time the weekly assignments will take. Don't be intimidated! Just get started and you'll find it's not that difficult to complete, just time-consuming. I found some parts of this course unhelpful and redundant (i.e., tips for creating a strong presentation, presentation tips, overcome stage fright, tips for giving an effective presentation, etc.). I think it would've sufficed to consolidate all the public speaking tips into one reading and point students to extra resources. Afterall this is a UX design course not one on public speaking.

By Florencia P

Jun 30, 2021

I feel the course 4 is too long (content repeats itself throughout the weeks) and somehow It seems unnecessary to the UX learning journey as a standalone course. I strongly believe it could be added as a section to another course.  Thanks

By Ricardo U

Jul 5, 2021

It's a really boring course compared to the other ones.

By Kim E

Sep 8, 2021

This module wasn't the best it didn't provide as much information as other modules and required a lot of work with very little information provided. This resulted in a lot pf people submitting work which wasn't formatted correctly or hadn't been shared correctly. Could you get a job based on the information provided in this course??? no, you would need to seek information and experience from else where. Also with no qualified UX professional marking the assignments you submit you are reliant on other course participants who are not experienced in UX to understand your work and mark it!

By Tho L

Sep 20, 2021

In my opinion, this is the hardest course in the series, due to this course provides a lot of knowledge on how to build a user research plan (UX Research), how to collect and process data, how to analyze data, write Insights and presentation of research results. If the learner has never heard of “Marketing Research” or has no experience working on these issues in practice, it will be relatively difficult to follow. However, do not worry too much because the course provides many examples and templates with detailed step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

By Emmanuel A

Feb 7, 2022

The course gives you best practices while doing UX research. With the usability study templates, you are able to summarise all of the participants' key insights and recommendations.

By Brandon M

May 1, 2022

First of all, do not trust the estimated time of completion of these courses. Just make sure you have plenty of time to complete the tasks as some will say 20 minutes and take you less than a couple of minutes to complete, and others will say 20 minutes and may take upwards of a couple of hours. Most of this portion of the course is focused on public speaking and building your resume. I took public speaking at University because I grew up as a performer and loved being in the spotlight. Luckily I don't get nervous. I also really appreciated the fact that we are building our portfolios in this part of the Google UX class. This is something that will directly impact your future in the field. While much of this course is boring and difficult to push yourself through, keep in mind that it will get more fun in the next section and you will simply have to do it to progress. My only big complaint in these Google courses is Google's bizarre and unwarranted obsession with non-binary people being used in almost every single example given to us students. I am a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community, AND I minored in english and creative writing while at University. Non-binary people are just as awesome as the rest of us, HOWEVER, my complaint is that the people in these scenarios are made-up and there is no reason to use They/Them in every quiz question. These pronouns are a real part of the LGBTQIA+ community, BUT when someone is learning something new the examples, quiz questions, and answers presented should be straight forward, and simple to understand. There are moments where the literature will state three peoples names and then pose a question about one of the people referring to that one person as They or Them. AGAIN, this is fine in real life, but when you have to power to formulate your quiz questions you have to be mindful of the USER'S EXPERIENCE (go figure) and use proper english. They and Them mostly refer to groups or are pluralisations of some kind. I am new to what is being discussed and I did NOT appreciate having to guess about what was being asked of me to answer or what was being said about someone in the text. Join the rest of us in the real world and start using language as it's intended. AGAIN, I am in that community, I get it when someone doesn't want to identify, but that is a rare instance and does NOT need to be the formula for EVERY scenario presented to the students when the students are attempting to learn something new.

By Alice Y

Mar 10, 2021

I recommend this course to not only beginners, but also UX folks like me! This course helps you understand the importance of UX research studies. And even helps you understand why it's important to involve research early on. This helps you learn how to conduct research or collaborate with a research counterpart.

By Paragahakotuwe M C N K

May 14, 2021

Explenations,resources on to the point.Such a great learning through the course.Also the instructor explaining why we do something and why do not.Again,Great explanations!Thank you.

By Dacian L

Apr 21, 2021

Super nice flow to the whole course. Presenting it sensibly and clearly. Super nice trainer too. Loved it. Shows general research insight. This was one of the easiest to go through.

By praveen p

Dec 29, 2021

this rating is not for the instructor or the subject, only for coursera team i hate the response from coursera could not help me in the fake palgorsim case i have tried many times to contact still no reply. some one wantedely flagged my assignment even tough i have orginal assignment i could not get the certificates. there is no response when ask support team to compare my assignment and verify before overriding my account

By Ravi S

Mar 24, 2021

A highly details course on UX research and testing. The information you receive from testing in the course really opens your eyes up to the value of user feedback.

By Sandra C

Dec 3, 2021

I really enjoyed this course! Testing out our lo-fi prototypes and getting feedback from our participants was my favorite part because it showed us first hand what it meant when a user experiences a pain point. The only part I was confused about was when some random person failed me for an assignment but gave no insight as to why, while another student gave me a passing grade. I hope Google would add a feature that if someone tries to fail you, without justification, that they have to put a reason somewhere, such as this student is missing multiple factors and I had to fail them. Maybe that way someone can't be spammed with failing? I just didn't want what happened to me to happen to someone else. Other than that good luck everyone! :D

By Lisa D L

Mar 24, 2021

As a person with a background in UX writing, I have participated in many usability studies, but never really put all of the pieces together, or understood the principles and the "why" behind user research. After this course, I feel confident that I can not only participate in user research, but I could also move into the field of user research and apply for jobs. My understanding of qualitative and quantitative research, how to conduct it, and report the findings has grown so much. Can't recommend enough!

By Jackson B

Mar 24, 2021

Testing is actually really fun. Getting feedback from actual humans felt kinda scary because I'm not great with criticism, but I realized the design shapes itself if you listen to your users. I appreciate how the course explained that, and guided me through the process. I 'm starting to feel really comfortable.

By Pranami

Aug 17, 2022

Designed in a very comprehensive manner and thoroughly enjoyed every lesson under this course. Looking forward to the next course under this certificartion an improving my skills in UX design!

By Ashphiar R R

Aug 20, 2021

Good course but the number of assignment are many.

By Emily R

Dec 4, 2022

I enjoyed this course more than I thought I would, to be honest! Doing the research didn't sound that appealing to me but looking back at all the work I've done is very satisfying to see how it all came together for the benefit of the user experience.

The most challenging part of the course was navigating assignments that were vague. When I was completing the peer reviews, I am not convinced that myself or anyone else completed the assignment how Google wanted us to.

Sometimes it feels a little ironic that we're taking a course on User Experience but Google themselves haven't thoroughly researched the usability of this course. 🤷🏻

By Tricia B

Sep 17, 2021

This course was probably my least favorite so far. The material is generally pretty good, but like someone else's review said, it repeats content quite a bit. They've also been rearranging and adding material recently, but haven't removed some of the old content that's the exact same, so that added to the repeatability. I also think that if you don't get started on Week 2 basically when you start Week 1, you'll be behind since you have to accommodate people's schedules for interviews, which is not ideal for a course based on a monthly subscription service.

By Amanda G

Aug 23, 2021

While I feel like I did learn very good concepts in this course, I struggled with peer reviewing because so many other students did not read the assignment properly so their work was not comparable to the exemplar. Often times they did not set the permissions correctly so I could not even get to their work to see and review it. However, in Coursera there is no easy way to tell them this and move on to a new peer to review. I left notes saying their work was not accurate according to the assigment but I was never sure if they actually saw those notes.