Top 10 Pluralsight Courses for Every UX Designer
Pluralsight is a USA-based company that specializes in providing different online courses to people from all around the world. The e-learning platform has been around since 2004. The fact that the company has been able to maintain its business for this long while remaining relevant to this very day says a lot about its vision and work etiquette. Pluralsight courses focus mostly on IT and software development.
However, increasingly the platform has started to offer industry-grade courses for aspiring as well as professional UX designers. The UX Design courses offered by Pluralsight bring a design-centric approach to user interface and user experience design and offer practical, skill-based instruction centered around a visual communications perspective, rather than one focused on marketing or programming alone.
Top 10 UX courses on Pluralsight
If you are looking to master UX skills, Pluralsight has a great collection of UX courses. Here is a list of the top 10 UX courses on Pluralsight –
1. UX Fundamentals
If you are a beginner and want to learn the fundamentals of UX, this Pluralsight course is the right start. This beginner Pluralsight course will give you a systematic framework to design great experiences for any product or service on any channel. This course explores the elements of UX and its place within the development cycle. The course does not require any prerequisite knowledge and requires only an hour's commitment from the learners. Even though the course is short, by the end of the course you would have created a paper prototype, and understand how to plan, script, and conduct usability sessions. The course curator, Krispian Emert is a popular name in the field of UX strategy and design thinking.
2. User Experience – The Big Picture
This course teaches you the basics of user experience, including the terminology, processes, and tools needed to build software in a user-centric way. The course is more inclined towards UX design and development of software products and is ideal for learners looking to design UX for digital products. The course details how you can design, build, test, and quantify an experience for your users. Upon completion of this Pluralsight course, learners will have a foundational understanding of what UX is and how to incorporate user-first practices into their projects.
3. Prototyping Techniques for UX Design
Prototyping is a must-have skill for UX designers. Prototyping is one of the fastest, easiest methods to test your ideas, validate assumptions and avoid taking a financial loss. In this Pluralsight course, learners get to dive deep into the benefits of prototyping, and a step-by-step prototype creation process. The course also details different testing methods and effective prototype techniques. Learners who have opted for this course mention that by the end of the course they have the knowledge to produce prototypes to take projects to live with less risk. The course has been authored by Kurt Krumme, who is an award-winning designer living and working in Toronto.
4. Interaction Design Fundamentals
This advanced course is for designers and developers who want to gain a greater, understanding of what interaction design entails, fundamental principles of interaction design, and how they can be used to make meaningful user experiences. This Pluralsight course is extremely well designed and also focuses on hands-on learning on Adobe XD. When you're finished with this course, you will have the Interaction Design skills and knowledge needed to craft quality user experiences. The course instructor Anthony Alampi is an interactive designer and developer. He is a former professional video game developer and current web design company owner with over 15 years of programming experience and over 7 years of design experience. His credentials and experience definitely shine during the entire course.
5. Psychology of Interaction Design
At the core of interaction design is a thorough knowledge of psychology and the ability to anticipate and build around users' needs. This intermediate UX course, Psychology of Interaction Design, helps learners learn many of the psychological principles used today to create engaging and intuitive applications. This course covers many of the major topics that will help you understand and integrate psychological interaction principles into your applications. Dedicated developers and seasoned designers alike will benefit from the lessons learned here. When you're finished with this course, you will have the skills and knowledge to create more intuitive and engaging applications and websites.
6. UX User Testing
When making design decisions, the most efficient way to work is building in cycles of user testing. Don't spend engineering resources to test out new designs, start with user testing and streamline your application's UX before writing a single line of code. This Pluralsight course stems from exactly this philosophy. In this course, UX User Testing, you will learn foundational knowledge of conducting user testing sessions. First, you will learn how to develop a plan for your user test. Next, you will discover the difference between moderated and unmoderated user testing. Finally, you will explore how to run a focus group. When you are finished with this course, you will have the skills and knowledge of UX User Testing needed to analyze the data to make informed business and design decisions.
7. UX Design for Graphic Designers
If you are a Graphic Designer looking to break into UX, then this is the course for you. You will be learning what UX Designers do, how to sell designs to stakeholders, and a general walkthrough of a typical project at a digital agency. You will also discover the basics of incorporating research into your work. This includes speaking to key stakeholders, talking to people that use the website or app, and many more research methods. Most UX designers have to learn how to work with developers for building the app or website. Thankfully, this course also covers this aspect of a UX designer's responsibility. The course instructor has rich UX experience and has worked with organizations like Nutanix, Surfrider, VOA, and The YMCA.
8. UX Strategy Fundamentals
UX Strategy is key to the success of a product. In this course, learners can learn how to leverage unmet consumer needs in an agile culture to design a Minimum Awesome Product (MAP). The course focuses on how the user experience design can shape the customers' experience. First, you will discover the building blocks of a UX strategy definition. Next, you will explore the skill sets necessary to develop a UX strategy. Finally, workshops will expose you to different methods to develop a Minimum Awesome Product (MAP). By the end of this course, you will know the best way to deliver a UX strategy for a successful project. The course instructor has delivered UX strategy projects for NASA and Scholastic which make the course worth a try.
9. Creating a UI/UX Motion Study in After Effects
This is a highly advanced UX course offered on Pluralsight. The course dives into some of the techniques that can be used within After Effects in order to create motion studies for UI and UX designs. The 2-hour tutorial details the versatility of shape layers uses sliders and expressions to gain more control over our compositions and reduce clutter, and, by the end, learners learn how to take static comps and bring them to life. You will also discover how motion studies can be a valuable alternative to prototypes. This is a tool heavy course and requires learners to grasp tools like After Effects CC 2014, Photoshop CC 2014, Illustrator CC 2014, Sketch 3.
10. Becoming a More Valuable UX Professional
Once you have grasped a good hold on UX principles, it is time to focus on your career as a UX professional. There is a Pluralsight course to address this aspect as well. In this course, you'll learn how to efficiently increase your value as a UX designer and professional. You'll specifically cover speaking the languages of business in order for your ideas to gain more credibility to stakeholders. This is the second course on Pluralsight by Krispian Emert and is a quick 30-minute career guide for UX professionals.
Conclusion
Indeed, Pluralsight is a great resource for budding UX professionals. Learners can also opt for a Pluralsight certificate and add these credentials to their profile. As more and more UX teams shift to a remote working model, it is extremely important for every UX professional to constantly stay in touch with trending skills to stay relevant in the market. Pluralsight is enabling learners to do exactly that. So, go ahead and start sharpening your UX skills. Happy learning!
