Why take UX classes
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Why take UX classes

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by Jennifer Smith
Why take UX classes

Many application developers and web designers take UX for granted, and don’t consider participating in UX training or attending UX courses until they have a complex project that is beyond their abilities, or until after they start to hear negative feedback about an existing user experience on an app or website. A well-developed UX avoids these issues, saving time on both initial development and the need to iterate to correct problems. While many designers, programmers and project managers all have some sort of basic skills and general familiarity with aspects of the user experience process, few take the time to understand UX holistically.

Those that are self-taught and have never participated in UX training often put together an adequate design and user-flow, but today’s user demand more than adequate. They vote with their fingers and mouse as they tap, swipe, and click away from user experiences that don’t meet their needs or aren’t delightful. A professional UX workshop helps create better user experiences, and allows you to work more efficiently. Participating in a formal UX workshop, such as the UX classes at American Graphics Institute, provides you with an opportunity to work with other UX professionals to learn best practices, design principles, and efficient workflows. You become more productive while creating a better UX on all your projects.

You can take a user experience course that covers the fundamental principles of UX design, or a rapid prototyping course to help you work more efficiently. You can even participate in UX training programs that cover specific tools, such as Balsamiq, Photoshop, and Illustrator. These can occur in the classroom, or via an online UX course.

UX classes also cover how vital it is that successful projects are planned from the beginning to make sure UX goes all the way through a design, and is not considered as an afterthought at the end of a project. For instance, a UX strategy can include what pages exist, the order in which they will be visited, and then user interface elements such as making sure that pages that are easy to use and navigate, along with fonts and colors that are easy to see.

The UX courses can be as simple as the two-day UX workshop, or may include a long-term multi-week UX certification program. Regardless of which path you take, participating in UX courses or UX certificate programs helps you stand-out in the eyes of clients and employers as well.

About the author

 is a user experience designer, educator and author based in Boston. She has worked in the field of user experience design for more than 15 years. She has designed websites, ecommerce sites, apps, and embedded systems. Jennifer designs solutions for mobile, desktop, and iOT devices. Jennifer holds a Master of Science (MS) degree in Human Factors in Information Design, a Bachelors degree with a concentration in Commercial Art. When not teaching at American Graphics Institute, Jennifer Smith is an adjunct professor at Boston University.

Jennifer delivers UX training and UX consulting for large Fortune 100 companies, small start-ups, and independent software vendors.She has served as a Designer in Residence at Microsoft, assisting third-party app developers to improve their design solutions and create successful user experiences. She has been hired by Adobe and Microsoft to deliver training workshops to their staff, and has traveled to Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East, and across the U.S. to deliver courses and assist on UX design projects. She has extensive knowledge of modern UX Design, and worked closely with major tech companies to create educational material and deliver UX workshops to key partners globally. Jennifer works with a wide range of prototyping tools including XD, Sketch, Balsamiq, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blend for Visual Studio. She also works extensively in the fields of presentation design and visual design.

Jennifer is also an expert on Photoshop, digital image editing, and photo manipulation. Having written 10 books on Photoshop, and having consulted and provided training to major media companies and businesses around the globe.

Jennifer is the author of more than 20 books on design tools and processes, including Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies, Adobe Creative Cloud Digital Classroom, and Photoshop Digital Classroom. She has been awarded a Microsoft MVP three times for her work with user experience design in creating apps for touch, desktop, and mobile devices. Jennifer holds the CPUX-F certification from the User Experience Qualification Board and assists others in attaining this designation in leading a UX certification course at American Graphics Institute.