The core elements required to be hired in the UI/UX industry includes professional portfolio, and a LinkedIn profile. In this course, the students will create these core elements which will help them to acquire a career in UX/UI. The leaners will explore and apply the portfolio design process and components of a portfolio, write project stories, and create the artifacts to display on the portfolio. Different tools will be used to design a professional portfolio. The students will also learn to package and host an online portfolio. Potential UX careers and job search strategies will be also be explored.

In this course, the students will develop UX strategy and roadmap, aligning the business goals with the user goals. The students will also learn how to recruit, build, and develop a UX team and the stages of the team building. Integration of the UX process into the agile methodology, conflict resolution, performance reviews, communication, and stakeholder management strategies will be discussed. The students will be able to describe and run design sprints and workshops.

Digital design system is a key component of the product development life cycle and is vital for consistency, quality, and collaboration. A design system is a primary document which defines the guidelines, UI reusable components, colors, fonts, and branding. In this course, the students will create a design system for a digital product, describing the elements of a design system, process, and guidelines while ensuring the integration of the accessibility. The students will also examine other design systems from Google, Salesforce, IBM, and Apple.

In this course, the students will create responsive wireframes and interactive prototypes using Figma by applying the design thinking strategies. The students will explore the design thinking process focusing on ideation and prototyping stages. Figma plugins, libraries, and components will be learned along with the shapes, types, and colors. Different types of interactive prototypes will be generated including rapid and functional prototypes.

In this course, the students will describe and apply the usability testing process to obtain user’s feedback, behaviour, and pain points. The students will develop plan, hire participants, prepare task scenarios, orientation script, and consent forms. The learners will understand the lab and remote testing environments, execute the test sessions and prepare comprehensive report. The report will highlight patterns, findings, and recommendations to improve the user experience.

Digital Accessibility means that the websites and other digital products are accessible and usable to everyone including people with disabilities. Accessibility benefits everyone, people with or without disabilities. As a Web Designer, UX Designer or Usability Analyst, it is our responsibility to remove accessibility barriers and enable differently abled bodies to access the web, PDF, videos, and presentations, using the assistive technologies. This course has been designed to make the students aware of the importance of digital accessibility and how to develop accessible digital products. The students will learn how to evaluate websites against web content accessibility guidelines, ensuring the compliance with Canadian accessibility laws. The students will explore and apply different web accessibility tools and techniques and will study the accessibility laws specific to digital products.

Digital online presence is essential to any business for awareness, promotion, engagement, and success. HTML and CSS are the core languages to design & develop desktop and mobile applications. Bootstrap is the CSS framework to design responsive digital products. In this course the students will learn how to use HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap to build responsive websites and applications to meet the needs of both mobile and desktop users. The students will be working on responsive digital projects by applying UX/UI design principles. This course also covers the deployment of the website and optimizing it for the search engines (SEO).

In this course, the students will be using Adobe Illustrator to design visual mockups for the mobile and web apps. The learners will create logos and icons for the apps. They will learn how to create new documents and artboards and to save the workspaces. Images, shapes, and pen tool will be used to design the brochure and icons. The students will learn about color modes, file formats, and symbols. At the end, the students will prepare the files for the web, print and PDF, and learn different settings to export for web, print and PDF formats.

To make a website or application esthetically appealing, it is very essential to learn how to design stunning graphics interfaces and visual assets including buttons, navigation, forms, banners, and images. A website should be usable and visually attractive. In this course, the students will get hands on experience in Adobe Photoshop. The emphasis of this course is to design graphic mockups and visual assets for the website or application to work on both desktop and mobile devices. The students will explore shapes, selection, pen, type, and other graphic design tools as well as layer masking, colors, smart objects, and layer groups. Finally, the students will use slice tool to optimize and export images for the digital delivery.

Every website or application should have usable, findable, and accessible navigation and content structure to enable the users to navigate the website, find and complete the desired task efficiently and easily. Information architecture is the combination of organization, labeling, search, and navigation systems. This course will train the students on how to understand target audience, user needs, evaluation of current product’s navigation and content system and how to produce information architecture deliverables including site maps, user flows and wireframes. Additionally, the students will also learn how to run content audit, and prepare the content inventory, navigation, and content organization systems.

In order to provide pleasant, usable, accessible, and satisfactory user experience, it is vital to understand the user needs, pain points, expectations, behaviours, and mental models. Understanding and applying UX research methods will help to empathize with the users and understand their needs and pain points. In this course, the students will learn various qualitative and quantitative research methods including interviews, surveys, focus groups, competitor analysis, and cognitive walkthrough. Students will analyze the research results and prepare scenarios, customer journey maps, and affinity maps. Later the students will define the requirements and develop the wireframes and prototypes of a digital product.

User Experience Design is a process to enhance customer satisfaction by knowing their needs, converting needs and feedback into the usable and accessible products. UX Design is iterative, collaborative, experimental and creative process to achieve user and business goals. In this course, the students will learn about UX and UI design and research and how to apply user-centered design process to create usable and accessible digital products. The students will work on a UX design project by empathizing with the users, analyzing user needs and pain points, ideation, prototyping and preparing a usability testing report. In addition, the students will be introduced to the design systems and digital accessibility.

This course builds on the skills learned in the Student Success Strategies course or its equivalent. It provides information on how to use the communication skills learned in order to make a successful presentation to a prospective employer. Students also learn how to uncover the hidden job market and identifyemployment opportunities. Self-assessment during this course allows students to identify their personal skills that are transferable to the work place and to describe these skills to a prospective employer. Students may be videotaped during a mock interview and will participate in the analysis of their performance in the “interview”.

Students will gain a better understanding of themselves through an exploration of their personal attributes, transferable skills and learning styles. This course will introduce techniques for time, conflict, and stress management and develop interpersonal communication skills. Fundamental study and motivation skills will be covered, preparing students to excel in their program of choice. Students will also prepare a professional resume and learn how to write effective cover letters.