courses – The Team W Blog

June 17, 2017

Updated User Testing Course

At The Team W we’ve updated our User Testing online video course. This latest version of the course has been filmed in our new studio. We’ve expanded and updated the content. The video clip below will give you an idea of what’s in the course.

You can get details on the course, preview some lessons, and/or register for the course at the User Testing online video course page. The User Testing course is also included in our User Experience Certificate curriculum.

To see the catalog of all of our online video courses, go to the main course catalog page.

November 12, 2015

New Online Video Course: Be Your Own Boss

Starting when my son, Guthrie, was about 8 years old I would talk to him about my consulting, teaching, and speaking business. He’d help me strategize about products and services, pricing, marketing, and sales. He was a great sounding board, and I was surprised that someone so young was actually full of good ideas.

Little did I know at the time that after a degree in Economics, another in International Studies, and then a Law degree, after working for BP, and a logistics firm and a law firm, and coaching people on starting small businesses, that he would pitch to me to come onboard my business as a part-owner. But he did, and I said yes. Guthrie started full time on September 1 of this year as my Chief Operating Officer. And now we have a new online video course. that we are co-instructors on.

It’s different than the other courses I’ve done before, so it may not be appropriate for everyone who reads the blog. It’s called “Be Your Own Boss: Start and grow your own small business.” It’s all about how to turn your passion into a small business and how to make sure it is profitable. The course fee is $145, but we are offering the course through November at a special price of $9.

Here is the coupon code: https://www.udemy.com/beyourownboss/?couponCode=SmartBus

which will take you to the course on Udemy.com

In the course I handle the psychology/behavioral science/how to decide what you want to do part, as well as marketing and sales. Guthrie handles practical topics such as pricing, profitability, business management, and legal issues.

The course has over 5 hours of video, with quizzes throughout and exercises that you can send to us for feedback.

So if you, or someone you know, wants to turn their passion into profit, or has a small business and wants it to really take off, check out the course. You can start by watching some of the free preview videos.

Let me know if you have questions!

Susan

July 17, 2014July 20, 2014

How Do You Design Something So It Is Engaging?

We’re bringing our Design For Engagement class to San Francisco on July 30, 2014, and to Chicago on October 22, 2014. If you’re not sure what Design For Engagement is all about, here’s a short video that explains what it means to design for engagement, why care about engagement, and gives you a sneak peek at the course.

Bring your whole team! Some seats are still available.

July 17, 2014July 17, 2014

User Testing In The Spotlight

With Lean UX all the rage (deservedly in my opinion — see my recent slideshare on Lean UX), user testing (an important part of the Lean UX process) is getting even more popular. If you need to convince someone(s) in your organization that user testing is important — well, not just important but CRITICAL — try this video below. It’s an introduction video to my User Testing course. And if you are interested in the course I’ll be teaching it in San Francisco on July 31, 2014. Bring the whole team! If you are already convinced about how important usability testing is, then stay tuned for an upcoming blog post on Bad Usability Testing Habits To Avoid.

April 23, 2014

Why I’m Still In Love With User Testing

I’ve been doing user testing for (I’m afraid to admit) decades. And I still love it. It’s a great way to get feedback from people about how effective your design, your product, your assumptions are.

In these days of Lean everything you can’t beat user testing as one of the best Lean UX techniques to test your assumptions.

Here’s a short video on Why You Need To Do User Testing. It’s the first lesson in our newest online video course on User Testing.

Do you know someone who needs to see this video?!

March 5, 2014March 5, 2014

The Brain Science Of Why Stepping Away Increases Creativity

Drawing of the brain

We’ve all had the experience: You’re trying to solve a problem or come up with a new idea. You’ve been sitting at your desk, or discussing it in meetings, but you haven’t come up with a solution or the right idea. Then you step away — go for a walk, go to lunch, weed the garden, wash the dishes, or go to sleep. And then, suddenly you get an “a ha” moment and the answer or new idea comes to you in a flash. Why does that happen?

It has to do with how your brain works. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is in the front of your head (think forehead). The role of the PFC (among many things) is to concentrate on the task at hand, as well as to go searching for existing information you have stored in memory, and combine it with other existing information you have stored. It is this searching and combining of the PFC that allows you to solve problems and come up with new and novel ideas. Here’s the rub — If you keep your PFC too focused on the “task at hand” then it can’t go searching for interesting combinations of information you have stored in memory. When you take a break (the walk, the garden, the shower, the dishes) then your PFC is freed up to go searching and combining. So if you need to solve a problem or want a new idea, let your PFC know what you want to solve and then take a step away and take a break!

What do you think? Have you experienced the power of stepping away?

Want more information like this? Then check out our two Creativity courses. One is an online video course and the other is an in-person workshop on April 9 in Chicago IL.

September 19, 2013September 19, 2013

New In-Person Courses

There is something about September that makes us all want to sharpen our pencils and learn something new. And so we are very excited to announce the launch of 4 brand new in-person classes that we are offering in Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, Edgar WI, and Washington DC. I’m teaching some of them, but we also have some of the BEST and most experienced instructors teaching some as well.

One-day courses:

Don’t Guess: Test! The Why, What, and How of User Testing (Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, Washington DC)
How to Design Intuitive and Usable Products Through User Research (St. Louis, San Francisco, Washington DC)
The Science of Persuasive and Engaging Design (Chicago and San Francisco) (

3-day Workshop: Weinschenk Behavioral Science Workshop (Edgar, WI)

You can see a list of all the courses, dates, instructors, and locations at the Weinschenk Institute website, and link to detailed outlines.

To celebrate the course launch I’m writing a series of blog posts to highlight each course.

So here are 3 reasons why I’m excited about the Don’t Guess: Test! The Why, What, and How of User Testing course:

1) We’re partnering with UserTesting.com and they are going to provide us with FREE tests to use in the class, as well as giving every participant 3 FREE User Test Coupons to use after the class when you go back to your office to apply what you’ve learned.

2) With the free in-class test, you will conduct an actual user test during the course. You will decide what to test, who to test, write the test scenario and tasks, conduct the test, and watch the video.

3) Always wondered what to test? In this course you will learn how to write a usability specification and use that to guide you in deciding who to test, what to test, and what the success criteria should be. And you can use these usability specifications not only in user testing, but also in design.

The “Don’t Guess: Test!” course is intensive, hands-on interactive, and fun.

Text me at 847-909-5946 or send me an email at susan@theteamw.com by September 30, 2013, and I will give you a code to use during registration that will get you 25% off the course fee.

In the next post I’ll talk about the How to Design Intuitive and Usable Products Through User Research course.

June 4, 2013

What’s The Best Way To Train User Experience Professionals?

Woman standing in front of a blackboard with question marks

What’s the best way to get knowledge and skills to be a user experience professional? Can you learn it all on the job? Is there a role for education and classes? If there is, what kind of classes?

Should you try and get a college degree? (There are very few undergraduate schools, that actually have a degree in user experience. Some have some classes, and maybe a concentration, but few have a degree. Should you get an undergraduate degree in something else — anything related — and then get a master’s in HCI (Human-Computer Interaction).

What about short courses? Should you take a week or two of training from a vendor? Or take some online training classes?

I’ve been thinking about this question for many years. I’ve offered “industry training” (i.e., a week-long class), and I’ve offered mentoring programs. I recently taught a semester long class as an Adjunct Professor at University of Wisconsin. And the Weinschenk Institute has online video courses you can take to learn about user experience and user-centered-design topics.

So when my colleague Jim Jacoby (founder of Manifest Digital in Chicago) told me the other day that his new venture was The School for Digital Craftsmanship, I asked him to tell me more. And then after he told me about the user experience/user-centered design “school” he has started, I suggested we do a podcast interview about it.

Below you will find the 23 minute podcast interview.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking on this link

Here are some of the topics we cover:

How a shortage of user experience/user-centered design professionals in his agency led him to start the School for Digital Craftsmanship
The idea of a “trade” school education for the field, that combines classroom study with practical experience
The first flagship courses that start this July (2013). They are 10 weeks long and meet a few nights a week, starting in Chicago and St. Louis.
What the application process is like, and what the experience will be like to attend.

As of this writing there are 12 spots still open for the classes starting in July, so if you are interested go to the School’s website: admci.org for more information.

What do you think? What’s the best way for people to get the education they need to do UX/UCD work?

May 21, 2013May 22, 2013

Should Technology Follow Human-To-Human Communication Rules?

What do we expect when we communicate with technology? Do we expect that the technology will communicate with us following the same rules as when we communicate with other people? The answer is yes, and I explain the implication of this in this video excerpt from my Design For Engagement online video course.

Below the video is a summary of what I discuss in the video.

When people interact with each other they follow rules and guidelines for social interaction. Here’s an example: You are sitting in a café and your friend Mark comes into the café and sees you sitting by the window. Mark comes over to you and says, “Hi, how are you doing today?” Mark expects you to interact with him, and he expects that interaction to follow a certain protocol. He expect you to look at him, in fact to look him in the eye. If your previous interactions have been positive, then he expects you to smile a little bit. Next, you are supposed to respond to him by saying something like, “I’m fine. I’m sitting outside here to enjoy the beautiful weather.” Where the conversation goes next depends on how well you know each other. If you are just casual acquaintances, he might wind down the conversation, “Well, enjoy it while you can, bye!” If you are close friends, then he might pull up a chair and engage in a longer conversation.

You both have expectations of how the interaction will go, and if either of you violates the expectations, then you will get uncomfortable. For example, what if Mark starts the conversation as above, with “Hi,how are you doing today?” but you don’t respond. What if you ignore him? Or what if you won’t look at him? What if you say back, “My sister never liked the color blue”, and stare into space. Or perhaps you give him more personal information than your relationship warrants. Any of these scenarios would make him uncomfortable. He would probably try to end the conversation as soon as possible, and likely avoid interacting with you next time the opportunity arises.

Online Interactions Have the Same Rules — The same is true of online interactions. When you go to a website or use an online application, you have assumptions about how the website will respond to you and what the interaction will be like. And many of these expectations mirror the expectations that you have for person-to-person interactions. If the website is not responsive or takes too long to load, it is like the person you are speaking to not looking at you, or ignoring you. If the website asks for personal information too soon in the flow of the interaction, that is like the other person getting too personal. If the website does not save your information from session to session, that is like the other person not recognizing you or remembering that you know each other.

Designers tend to spend a lot of time on “macro” design — layout, color, grids, navigation, as well they should, since those are important. But it is often the “micro” interactions that determine whether or not a product or website is easy to use. Can you fill in the form quickly? Does the label make sense? Is the button in the right place? Did you just get an error message that is undecipherable? Sometimes the micro interaction design doesn’t get as much time or attention, and it is very possibly the micro interactions that are defining the user experience of the product or service.

May 1, 2013

Give Me Your Opinion — What Should Be My Next Online Video Course?

In April 50 people signed up to take one of my online video courses that I offer through Udemy.com. A big thank you to those who have signed up for a course. I have enjoyed putting these together, and the feedback I’m getting is that they are helpful and that people are learning a lot by taking them.

Now I need YOUR feedback on what the next courses should be that I develop.

Currently I have these four courses:

I’m working right now on this course:

which will be ready in a few weeks.

Now the question is, what’s next?

I have a lot of ideas (in fact I have a whole list of courses in the queue, but I haven’t started them). Give me your opinion. What online video courses are you interested in taking that I should consider developing?

Write your ideas in the comments area, or send an email to susan@theteamw.com

Thanks in advance for your feedback!