EXSM 3923 - User Research Fundamentals

Understanding your user is key to building a successful experience. Learn how human-centred design can guide quantitative and qualitative methods, and generate 'the right' research questions and methods for your client. This course will include practical experience in brainstorming, planning and conducting user-centred research, as well as creating user personas and affinity diagrams. It will also touch upon legal and ethical concerns.

This course may be eligible for the Canada-Alberta Productivity Grant (CAPG), with final approval determined by CAPG administrators. Employers and applicants can review the CAPG guidelines and full details on the University of Alberta’s Continuing Education website.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• 🗸 Learn to develop, conduct, analyze, and report findings from a user research study.
• 🗸 Learn best practices for developing a research plan.
• 🗸 Synthesize, create, and plan surveys, interviews, and questionnaires, both online and in-person, using a variety of communication mediums.
• 🗸 Create user personas, contextual inquiry, and affinity diagrams.
• 🗸 Understand the advantages and disadvantages of different user research methods.
• 🗸 Analyze research data, report results, and make recommendations.
• 🗸 Learn different testing techniques to validate the design process.

• 🗸 EXSM 3923 User Research Fundamentals is 21 hours.