Interaction Design: 10X Faster, 10X Better

Many designers jump to sketching and prototyping before they understand and define the application at a conceptual level (known as the grammar layer in Semantic IxD). The result is incoherent, overly complex applications with an order of magnitude more screens than necessary. The goal of UX Magic is to teach the Semantic IxD Method to enable UX practitioners achieve their objective with the minimum number of screens and the shortest task flows  before the first UX sketches are even produced.

What you’ll learn

• How to define the Grammar level (aka the conceptual model)
• How to determine the optimal design pattern selection once the model is defined.
•  The science and method to selecting the optimal UX design patterns to visualize the grammar, once again continuing to minimize cognitive load as the design process progresses.
• How grammar actions guide the user from one design pattern to another to complete their tasks.
• How to execute a precise and consistent articulation of the grammar within the flow design based on the fewest number of conceptual objects to insure the shortest flows with the fewest screens.

Who should attend

This course is intended for software designers and developers of all levels of experience, as well as usability testers, development managers, and product managers who are responsible for digital products or services.

Agenda

Session 1a: Introduction, Overview & Grammar design layer (1.5 hours)

• Intros and overview of the workshop structure
• Intro to The 4 layers of Semantic IxD 
• Short break 

Session 1b: Layer 1 – Semantic Grammar Design (2 hours)

• What conceptual models are, and how they can improve the UI design process,
• Benefits of conceptual analysis: object taxonomy, lexicon, task scenarios, object-model
• Object/operations analysis technique (a major part of designing a conceptual model)
• How to refine, prioritize, and optimize the CM to minimize users’ cognitive load and meet business objectives
• Review examples conceptual model for a few applications I have designed
• Hands-on exercise designing a conceptual model grammar for a simple app 
• Review exercise results in class 
• Wrap up and review of the session learnings
• Set expectations for next session with a mini preview

Session 2: Layer 2 – Semantic UX Visualization Design (3.5 hours)

• The anatomy of actions (local versus global action allocation in time and space on screens
• Mapping the IxD grammar to the page/screen layout grid
• Short break
• Design pattern visualization levels
• Selecting the optimal design patterns to articulate your IxD grammar
• Short break
• Hands on exercise to identify and select design pattern
• Review exercise results in class
• Wrap up and review of the session
• Set expectations for next session with a mini preview

Session 3a: Layer 3 – Semantic UX Flow Design (1.5 hours)

• Optimizing your UX flow design to grammar articulation perspective
• Hands on flow design exercise
• Review exercise results in class
• Wrap up and review of the session
• Short break

Session 3b: Semantic Design versus Business decisions in UI style guides (1.5 hours)

• Usability and business tradeoffs when integrating semantics into UI styles guides
• When to follow, ignore or augment industry UI style guides
• Wrap up and review of the session
• Final Q&A

About the instructor

Daniel Rosenberg is a well-known UX designer, author and educator, whose design career has spanned over 4 decades. He is currently a professor at San Jose State in the Human Factors Engineering program where he specializes in teaching IxD. In 2019 Dan received the ACM SigCHI Lifetime Practice award for his numerous educational, technical and leadership contributions to the HCI field. He is credited with inventing many of the common design patterns used in GUI’s today. In 1990 he published Human Factors in Product Design, the first textbook to bring Human Factors Engineering to the consumer market. He is also the author of UX Magic, which extends the practice of conceptual models into the visualization, flow, game theory and graphic design dimensions of IxD practice. In addition, for over 18 years Dan was the global UX “design executive” at two of the world’s largest software companies, Oracle and SAP so he has a great deal of experience applying different design techniques in the real world.  More info can be found at rcdoux.com .