Corporate training
We organize both standard and customized courses. Customized courses include examples and exercises from the customer’s own products and systems, whereupon the content of the training is applicable to the participants’ work as directly as possible. The language of instruction can be either Finnish or English.
User Interface Design (1-2 days)
The course introduces a systematic design method (Goal-Derived Design, GDD) for creating effective and easy-to-use user interfaces. The participants learn to base their designs on realistic use scenarios (goal-based use cases), and to evaluate their designs with usage simulations. The designs are created as quick paper prototypes. The course includes a set of design principles with a lot of concrete examples and hands-on exercises. The instructor also gives personal feedback as much as the number of participants allows.
Web Design (1-2 days)
The participants practise designing user interfaces of web applications by catering for the target users and situations that occur frequently in daily use. The course contains design principles for web applications, such as organizing the contents according to the use situations, minimizing unnecessary navigation, designing the front page and the follow-up services, editing in place, searches and shopping baskets, web visualizations and error handling. Participants learn to create paper prototypes of their designs, which are tested during the design process by simulating the usage. The course includes many concrete examples and exercises, for which the instructor gives some personal feedback depending on the number of participants.
Usability Evaluation Methods (1 day)
The course covers different usability testing methods and provides hands-on exercises on using them. The participants learn the basic skills for organizing usability tests and a clear understanding of how user interfaces are tested by usability walkthroughs. The course also explains what expert reviews of user interfaces are and how they are conducted. To be able to define suitable test cases for the different evaluation methods, the participants practise the use of interviews and user observations to find out concrete use situations. Most of the course consists of practical exercises. The course is suitable for both those who arrange tests themselves and those who intend to contract out usability evaluations.
User interface design and usability evaluation in a software project (half a day)
The course introduces the GUIDe software process model, which is based on finding out the use situations and then deriving the user interface design from them in the beginning of the project. The design and testing methods are placed into different process models (waterfall model, incremental development, or Extreme Programming, for example). This is a suitable follow-up course for the User Interface Design and Usability Evaluation Methods courses.
Cognitive Psychology in User Interface Design (1 day)
The course introduces a set of useful concepts of cognitive psychology and gives examples of the consequences that they have on user interface design. The course is divided roughly in two parts: the first part focuses on human cognition and information processing, and the second part discusses issues related to human vision and its effects on visualization.
User Interface Design Patterns (1-2 days)
An in-depth course on recurring design problems in graphical user interfaces and effective designs for them.
Demonstration Technique (half a day)
A good demonstration of a piece of software is based on showing how to carry out a realistic use scenario. The participants are trained to demonstrate both paper prototypes and fully functional applications to customers and colleagues.