Learning EP1 – How to get Google UX Design Certification from Coursera in 2 weeks?

Why UX Design

What’s Google UX Design Certification? Why did I want to learn UX Design (User Experience Design) in the first place?

Firstly, I have a dream, a dream that is a bit far from my experience (let me reveal later if you’re still interested).

Secondly, learning UX Design sounds justified as every industry needs to pay more attention to customer experience and digitalization in this post-COVID era!

Google UX Design is the 3rd course I took on Coursera. You can also check out my course projects posted earlier.

Check out the below statements; if it sounds like you, this article may be just what you are looking for!

1. You’re curious about UX Design or want to know what role design thinking plays in the customer journey.
2. You heard about Google UX Design Certification, but not sure whether it’s worth the time and money.
3. People recommend Coursera all the time, and you wonder if it’s right for you.
4. You’re considering changing jobs, or you want to get some licenses to improve your chances.
5. You suddenly have much time to spend due to work from home or self-quarantining. You want to do something other than watch Netflix

In this article, you will learn: how much time is needed to finish the course, how difficult it is, whether it is worth it in terms of time and money, and what you can get out of it.

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Course Background

Coursera and Google kicked off a Grow with Google project in 2018. Starting from the most sought-after IT profession, they launched the Google IT Support Professional Certificate. So far, it’s the most popular course, with over 1 million students enrolled by Sep 2021. Other courses from this project include Data Analytics, Project Management, IT Automation with Python, and our topic of the day, Google UX Design.

The Google UX Design Specialization (full name: Google UX Design Specialization) has fewer enrollments at the moment; there are only 220,000 students as of Sep 2021. The main reason is that it’s only available in English (the other two popular IT courses offer 10 languages for choosing, guess Google IT talents are really in high demand?). 

Like other Google courses, this Google UX Design class claims that you don’t need any prior experience to complete it in 6 months (given that you can study 10 hours a week). Let’s see if you can beat that record after reading my article!

I will teach you how to finish the course as fast as I did. Subscribe to my newsletter so you won’t miss it when I release the article!

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Course Content

The entire Google UX Design Specialization includes 7 single courses. Each course contains 3~6 weeks of content, and it may take 20~31 hours to complete and receive the certificate of one course. The specialization certificate itself is only available after you complete all 7 courses. I know; it sounds a bit tough, right?

Don’t be discouraged just now! Let me briefly introduce what you can learn from each class. Choose a few videos from the subjects that interest you, see if that’s what you like, then decide whether to pay to register and get the certificate (no need to be shy, I assume you are just like most other students, who want to get a certificate from Google).

A note for readers who are not familiar with Coursera’s teaching style: 

All the contents on Coursera are self-taught. It’s a MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) framework like another learning platform Udemy. Each class contains pre-recorded videos, exams, readings materials, discussion forums, assignments, self-evaluation, and most importantly, peer review.

Shall we start?

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Course 1: Foundations of User Experience (UX) Design

The 1st course is separated into 4 weeks, 21 hours of content, without any Peer Review.

It’s mainly an introduction of the basic UX Designconcepts, including:

• UX Design process, framework, and principles: Google emphasizes the importance of incorporating accessibility in your design and explains why you should target Next Billion Users in the emerging markets.
• UX Designer’s job scope: are you aware that “UX Researcher” is also part of the UX Designer family?
• First-hand sharing from Google UX Designers: Want to know who can work for Google? UX Designers of different backgrounds walk you through their jobs and teach you how to land a UX design offer.

As a UX Design newbie, I was genuinely surprised to learn that market research, which is common in product and segment analysis, is also part of the UX design domain.

I also suspect that these courses offered by Google are a try-out to compete with Microsoft-owned LinkedIn in the professional education business (after all, UX Design classes also pop out in LinkedIn’s learning platform under its Premium membership).

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Course 2: Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate

The 2nd course is separated into 5 weeks, 31 hours of content, with 3 Peer Reviewassignments.

You will enter the Ideation stage, which is the first step in the UX Design process:

• Get your assignment topic from a lucky draw: you need to complete 3 UX design assignments throughout the 7 courses. Sharpen, a website established by ex-Google-designer in 2017, will randomly assign an assignment topic. You can rerun the lucky draw if you don’t like the topic. 

• Design the Persona: you will learn how to draw the profile of a potential user, then write down his or her Problem Statement, Pain Points, and User Story.

• You will also learn about User Journey Map, UX research methodologies, Do’s and Dont’s during user interviews, and Competitive Audit.

After finishing this course, I finally realized how to create a Persona properly. But it was a bit late, as I already submitted one for an earlier interview.

Also, I noticed a big gap between my design target, Taiwan’s National Palace Museum, and other international museums. Highly recommend you to check out the website and app of Rijksmuseum museum from Holland; it has rich content, stylish design and is customer-centric when you switch pages.

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Course 3: Build Wireframes and Low-Fidelity Prototypes

The 3rd courseis separated into 3 weeks, 20 hours of content, with 3 Peer Review assignments.

It’s time for some drawings! You will start by creating a Storyboard → draw Paper Wireframe → learn about Information architecture → then finally use Figma to create a Low Fidelity Prototype. Google lecturers will tell you what elements to include and remind you to follow some Ethics in UX Design.

Here you will find my Figma prototype. It’s so satisfying to build a clickable app for the first time!

When reading Google’s version of Ethics in Design, I suddenly realized that so many e-commerce websites are playing mind games with customers. Also, some online tutorials about increasing your conversion rate are problematic in terms of ethical design.

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Course 4: Conduct UX Research and Test Early Concepts

The 4th course is separated into 4 weeks, 22 hours of content, with 4 Peer Review assignments.

This time you will be a UX Researcher. You will conduct complete Usability Testing, starting from research planning, interview type choosing, data collection, and insight generation.

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Course 5: Create High-Fidelity Designs and Prototypes in Figma

The 5th course is separated into 6 weeks, 33 hours of content, with 4 Peer Review assignments.

In this course, you will encounter the first “Boss” because you need to:

• Add colors to your wireframes, act as a visual designer and finish the Mockup. Here you may also learn a bit about UI (User Interface) design.
• Go through numerous design critics, iteration design, then finally produce an interactional High Fidelity Prototype. 
• And that’s not all. During the design process, you need to submit a comprehensive case study report and explain your designs with all the artifacts (e.x. wireframe and prototype).

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Course 6: Responsive Web Design in Adobe XD

The 6th course is separated into 6 weeks, 40 hours of content, with 5 Peer Review assignments.

All design concepts from the previous 1~5 courses will reappear. The only difference is that you will be using Adobe XD to produce a Responsive Web Design. You need to do both app and website design this time, so you may want to draw a sitemap and confirm your information structure before starting a wireframe.

There’re also tips on building your UX Design Portfolio and UX Design Resume for job hunting.

You can find my 2nd “Boss” assignment here.

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Course 7: Design a User Experience for Social Good & Prepare for Jobs

The 7th course is separated into 5 weeks, 47 hours of content, with 3 Peer Review assignments.

Once again, you will review all the UX design flows and critical elements from previous courses. Then you need to make a cross-platform design in the name of social good.

You can complete the assignment in either Figma or Adobe XD. I did a free skill exchange platform called SkillEX. You can check out the demo here.

In the last week, Google lecturers share all their secrets of UX Designer interviews. Younger students can gain many tips regarding career paths, mock interviews, and presentation skills.

Finally, the last “Boss” is not only requesting you to design a webpage or app, but you also have to upload all 3 assignments of the specialization to the internet and make your own UX Design Portfolio!

For this assignment, I had to create another Portfolio page on this WordPress site.

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Pros and Cons

Pros

• Flexible time

Upon course registration, the system will set a target completion time for you. You can reset any time and learn at your own pace.

• Flexible location

Coursera provides online resources on multiple devices. All the content is available on PC, tablets, and mobile phones. Except for a few tasks, you can access all the content on the device you like. The system will synchronize your learning progress automatically even when you change devices, with no time gap.

• Suitable for all students

Even if you are a newbie with no design experience like me, you can quickly learn the skill and design a simple app or webpage. Meanwhile, as UX Design is a domain that newbies may also learn from work, this course is suitable for non-design-major students who want to learn systematically.

• Rich and practical content

This specialization involves a variety of peer review assignments. Students must go through the UX Design process, from UX research to design testing. Besides using Figma and Adobe XD to finish your design, you also have to consider customer-centric and accessibility.

There’s a bonus for you. After passing the first course, you will receive an email offering a free 9-month, single-platform Adobe XD subscription (under typical cases, the free trial only lasts for 7 days)

• Hand-on job-searching tips

Google arranges designers of different majors and backgrounds to discuss their job search experience and career path. It’s easy to find a story that you feel related to, inspiring students who want to enter the UX Design field. Job hunting and interview tips targeting different UX Designer positions are also helpful for younger students.

More importantly, after obtaining the specialization certificate, you can join job-searching platforms such as Credly, Coursera Job Platform, and Big Interview. I found some of their services quite powerful. Hopefully, I will find time to write about them.

Cons

• Easy peasy curriculum

You may ask, how can it be a con? Well, I did learn a lot as a beginner. Still, these comments from the industry disagree, saying the expectation that you can join Google as a UX Designer simply by completing the course is unrealistic.

Suppose you want to join the UX Design field. In that case, you should at least advance your skill and knowledge with those reading materials and online resources recommended by Google.

• Uneven progress

Here, I refer to those “Boss” assignments. In the 6th course, everyone has to complete a webpage design; and in the 7th course, not only do you have to build a webpage, but you also have to set up a webpage to upload all your works. As far as the psychological burden is concerned, I think it’s too challenging.

Personally speaking, after finishing the 5th course, I thought it was coming to an end. I didn’t expect that there would be so much more to do! I even considered giving up (at last, I convinced myself to design different user flows as a self-challenge).

Since the number of students’ ratings drops dramatically in later courses, relatively few students could complete all the assignments and obtain the certificate. I believe Google can significantly improve its course completion rate if they make some adjustments. 

• Mixed-feeling Peer Review

The design of peer review is that after submitting your assignment, you have to review and rate 2 other projects from others. Your design also has to pass the evaluations of 2 classmates. It is a mechanism with good intention to ensure that students will do the design instead of memorizing those UX Design terms. However, it also caused some students to exploit the loopholes to get a pass.

What’s more, there is likely no classmate to grade your assignment days after your submission, or you may find no assignment to review on the system.

Loophole exploiting examples:

I once saw students submit demo assignment and treat it as their own, or students who share others’ works (when I first encountered the situation, I thought I was hallucinating, how come I rate the identical assignment twice). Some students upload totally-non-related files or links.

When most people’s goals are to pass the Peer Review, I believe there must be times when students don’t take a good look at those problematic assignments and let them pass.

I always played by the book and did every assignment myself; that’s why I received genuine compliments several times. I also had no hesitation when giving a zero rating for the cases above. If you have read this far, I trust you not to become one of them!

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Final Thoughts

Since you have read so far, would you like to sign up for Google UX Design courses now?

The reason why I took this class in the first place was that I love to travel. During my last trip before COVID, I found that the app I needed was not available on the market. After checking with some friends for feedback, I wanted to know whether building an all-in-one travel app is doable. Then I saw this Google UX Design Specialization on Coursera and decided to give it a try.

Speaking from the result, now I can design a simple app by myself, and I have learned a thing or two about design. I would say it’s a mission accomplished.

During the 7 courses, I could see Google’s hard work considering the content design and target audience. I had a good time drawing those wireframes and designing with Figma and Adobe XD. It’s a satisfying journey even as a beginner, something I didn’t expect when I started. What’s more, apart from UX, I seem to have learned some UI elements as well!

Most importantly, you can add a Google UX Design Certification on your resume or Linkedin after completing the course to increase your visibility in the job market. This course is worth it and highly recommended for all of you!

If you are in a gap year like me, it is possible to complete this specialization in 2 weeks. Of course, I have some tips about finishing it faster, such as which items you can skip first or which videos you should put more time and energy. I’ll share all about them in a new article. Stay tuned for now.

Hope you like my first Coursera specialization article. If you also finish the course and want to exchange ideas, or have some questions, feel free to leave a comment below. Otherwise, you’re welcome to reach me via email. 

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