D15 from a comprehensive curriculum on User eXperience (UX) currently under development at The Online User eXperience Institute (OUXI). This course is one of a track of courses aimed at small web business owners, students and developers/designers with little or no prior training in software/web usability. Before you attend this course, we recommend that you take the free, 30 minute course called “Introduction to Web and eCommerce User eXperience Design”. As well as providing a high level overview for this and other related courses from the same OUXI curriculum training track, it will explain how the small fees you invest in these courses could pay off in thousands of dollars in increased revenues from your ecommerce website. COURSE DESCRIPTION This course addresses one of three key aspects of the User eXperience of eCommerce and other websites: usability (other courses in the OUXI curriculum will address designing for persuasion and graphic design). The course is very concrete, a “how-to” course offering clear, actionable guidelines and hands-on exercises. These website usability guidelines are not based on subjective opinion - they have all been well established by rigorous, published research from disciplines such as cognitive science and computer-human interaction. Each guideline is fully explained and generously illustrated with many examples from real websites. The 34 design guidelines offered were selected from the full body of knowledge on web usability to be: universal (i.e, applicable to any and all websites), easy to explain, commonly violated, high impact, and easy to implement. They represent the “low-hanging fruit” in designing for web usability. With nothing beyond these 34 key guidelines, anyone should be able to realize major improvements in the usability of their website, which will contribute measurably to the success of the site in meeting its business goals. COURSE FORMAT The course format is a Powerpoint presentation accompanied by a studio-recorded video lecture, broken up into chapters and lectures. Downloadable course materials include the full Powerpoint presentation in two formats - full slides, and two slides per page - and an actionable, Excel-based guidelines checklist that can be used as you apply your new skills to real web projects. The course includes about 3 hours of lecture, and roughly 1.5 - 2 hours of hands-on exercises. Both quick (a couple of minutes) and more comprehensive (roughly 45 minutes) optional hands-on exercises, followed by sample exercise solutions, help reinforce your understanding of the guidelines. Your registration for this course entitles you to 30 minutes of “office hours” with the instructor via email. You can email questions to the instructor and receive personal responses. Send email to drdeb@ouxinstitute.com with “OUXI D15” in the subject line.
