A Design Odyssey: Interaction Design Foundation Review

Four years ago, I met my new boss in a coffee shop. Up until then my career was just a means to an end. I didn’t find much joy in my work. And then there was magic. I felt the same way Harry Potter did when his wand chose him at Ollivander’s. The roof of the coffee shop opened momentarily and sunlight bathed me, along with some pigeon droppings.

I was about to embark on a new career path that would introduce me to the world of design. My prior work included working with databases and data warehouses. I was just starting out as a data visualization designer. To me, dashboards were boring reports with lots of tables and numbers. After a brief discussion with my new boss, I recognized the potential to integrate good design with data visualization.

I learned the basics of design by reading books, attending seminars, observing experts, and learning by trial and error. I took a break from work last year and decided to travel the world for a while.

Fresh from my yearlong break, I decided to switch tracks and focus on UI and UX design. I started looking for UI and UX design courses. I had read about Interaction Design Foundation (IDF) on some online forums and a lot of people recommended signing up for the UI and UX design courses.

I chose the UI designer career path on IDF and I was provided with a structured list of 10 courses with 4 levels. I signed up for ‘Design Thinking: The Beginner’s guide’, and ‘User Experience: The Beginner’s guide’.

I’ve completed two courses on IDF and I’m in the process of completing three more. The courses on IDF are of high quality. The instructors are engaging and the courses are appropriately designed. The lessons are divided in a way that keeps the learner focused. The points that you get for answering questions and progressing through courses is added motivation to stay on track.

I’ve learned a lot of new concepts and I’m working on implementing the things I’ve learned. Design thinking has been particularly helpful to me. The fact that the five stages in Design thinking can be applied to almost any project is amazing.

Like all things learned, practical work is the best way to cement your learning. The discussion forums are a great place to talk about your ideas and get feedback. You can also find some creative solutions to everyday problems from other IDF members. I feel like learners might benefit more if IDF could include some more practical tasks in the courses.

I signed up for the DailyUI challenge 3 months ago to practice designing UI components. The DailyUI challenge gives you one topic every day related to UI design (Flight search, Hotel booking..). I had a lot of fun with the challenge and it helped me improve my design sense.

While I’m far from being an accomplished UI designer, I would suggest learning the concepts of UI and UX design from Interaction Design Foundation and practice using tools and challenges available online. UI and UX design can be a lot of fun and the opportunities to apply these concepts are endless.

A sample of my UI design: Hotel booking portal-