GOOGLE UX COURSE REVIEW BY A SENIOR DESIGNER

Credit: Mike (The Senior Designer)

Summary of This Article

• Structure of the Course
• Google UX Course  Quite Good for Beginners
• Point of  View (Professional or High-Level)
• The Bad Things of Course (According to Mee)
• Should you take it?
• This Is A Very Good Exercise & Some Problems

Hey friends. So I've been asked this question a lot. Mike, can you recommend a good UX course for beginners? And up until now, I could only say that not really. 

So naturally now, when Google made their own course on UX design, I decided to give it a try. Because well, it's Google, right? 

So it has to be pretty good quality. And I've been a designer for over 22 years now. So I didn't really learn a lot from the course. But my goal for this wasn't really to learn. My goal was to evaluate the course so I can let you guys know if it's worth it or not. 

But halfway through the fundamentals, I realized that my experience can actually give me a bit of a bias towards the course because I've been doing this for so long, and a lot of the concepts they're mentioning aren't really that new to me, so it can get pretty boring. 

So I spoke with two other people Miranda, and Dyer. And they are just learning they're just starting their journey to become a UX designer. 

So I think that their feedback combined with mine should give you more of a perspective if the course is even for you. And normally, people do this at the end of the blog, but if you wanted too long, don't watch the version here. 

QUITE GOOD FOR BEGINNERS

There's I believe that this course is actually quite good. It has some issues and those issues can actually influence your future work. 

So it's important to know about them and to actually take them into account when starting the course.

Point of  View (Professional or High-Level)

So let's start with something very high level here. Before starting the course you need to be aware that this is a course by Google, 

which means that this course is done in a very certain way that is going to be making future Google employees and if you don't want to work for Google, or if you're planning to work on either startup or building your own company, 

There are some things that are going to be done in a very Google way and you might have to relearn them or just get a different perspective on them. But that's something that was to be accepted from the start. 

So the knowledge here is really good. And you can adjust the things that you learned to another work scenario later. It will require a little bit of extra learning, but you'll have a solid foundation to build on.

 And here's an example of something like that, while going through different design roles. They mentioned something like this. 

There are also visual designers who focus on how a product or technology looks. They might be responsible for designing logos, illustrations, or icons. And this is a good example of how Google is trying to teach you their own ways because visual designers are mostly UI designers. 

And of course, there are also graphic designers and these are the people that are making the logos and illustrations while UI designers are actually the people who are working on how the product looks. 

So just this one thing is showing that if you're going to apply for a UI slash UX design role, there is really nothing about UI design mentioned in the fundamentals of the course. 

It is just called the visual designer. This is a little bit different than what's the rest of the industry is calling it. I like, however, that they are also mentioning a trend of simplification of UX roles that has been happening for a couple of years now.

And I've been mentioning this for over three years. And initially, I was faced with a lot of negative feedback. And now I see Google actually saying that I was right. So what they mentioned is that there is three main roles in the UX world.

Main Roles in The UX World

• UX researchers 
• UX designers 
• UX writers

So that basically means that if you're a designer, you're responsible for the actual design, so the trend of 2009 and a little bit lighter of designers who don't do any design, just talk is going to be a thing of the past and it's good that they acknowledge it.

Structure of the Google UX Course

• Videos
• Reading Material
• Quizzes
• Writing Assignments

The structure of the course is pretty simple. So you have videos, you have some reading material and you have quizzes and writing assignments. 

And the good thing about the videos are pretty short, so it's easy to actually digest everything in smaller chunks. And I really like the fact that you can play them and double the speed.

Most videos are also paused about halfway through with a quick one-question quiz. And this is a good way to actually memorize something that they said in the video, but in many cases is actually pretty weird because they're asking you for something that they just said like five seconds ago.

And all they also really liked is the instructors, especially Michael who's the lead on this course. he speaks in a very clear and fun to listen to way. 

And I think this is important because you'll be listening to him the most in the fundamentals. And if you're doing this course, as a beginner UX designer, chances are that you've already seen some of the UX means and Google understands that and they actually use some of them in the course. 

Well, this is not really a bad approach in general because it gives you some familiarity with the concepts that they're mentioning. 

Some of those examples aren't really that great because they use the very overused UX versus UI ketchup bottle example in which they say that the plastic bottle you can squeeze it so the ketchup is a lot easier to apply. 

And that is a better user experience compared to hitting the glass bottle on the bottom to get the ketchup out. 

And while this is technically true,  you're also eating microplastics, which is actually good for your health in the long run. So your long-term user experience might actually be better with a glass bottle. Okay,

The Bad Things of Course (According to Mee)

let's talk about the bad things about the course. I found a couple of them and one of them is actually very major and two are not as major but you should still be aware of them before taking the course.

So the first problem that I see here is that Google is using their own naming conventions for things and UX is a very weird industry in which a lot of the naming conventions actually differ from company to company. So sometimes a name for something to be mentioned. 

If you try searching for it, you will realize that it has a couple of different names and it can create a little bit of a mess and make it harder for you to find what you're looking for. And of course, it's just the processes have all the same steps. 

It's just some of the names are different between them. You want an example search for user-centered design in Google and then filter it by images. 

And as you'll see, the flow of this UX approach is practically the same in all of these, but the names of individual steps can differ depending on which company produces the infographic. So Google just use a swarm and never mentioned the possible other naming conventions. 

This Is A Very Good Exercise & Some Problems

The other thing that I noticed is that the initial part of the course is a little bit less polished than the rest of it, but it does pick up later. 

So if you're discouraged by the beginning, just stick to it and it's gonna get better. I did facepalm a couple of times during that very first initial state and one of those phase bonds is a very early exercise that they give you. 

They show you two apps to compare them and to figure out which one is better. This is a very good exercise, you know, just comparing two different approaches to things. 

But the problem I have with this is that the bad example or the bad rap that they chose it's so bad it's just comical in jest exaggerated to an extreme where it's not really easy to compare with any logical thinking or any good UX approach because one of them is like a pretty standard mobile app and the other one is like a chaotic mess. 

They just problem with this course. However, it's not really Google's, I think the biggest problem and the biggest issue that most people find about the Google UX course is the horrible UX of Coursera, which is the provider of the platform.

Here is an example. So here's an example of an iframe with two scroll bars. And once you start scrolling the forum at some point, you're going to see a progress bar. 

And at that point, you might stop scrolling, but then you'll realize that there is a button underneath that that you need to push to actually proceed. 

Because naturally at this stage, I would assume that I should just click on the mark is completed but no I need to scroll down and click Next. 

And once you get through the entire forum and you click on Done, there is another window with a done button that's inactive. 

So clicking on it doesn't do anything at all. Mark is complete doesn't do anything either except for maybe mark it as complete. And then you just have to click this low next link on the top right is barely visible. And I know it's not easy. 

I know it's not easy to create a platform from scratch or to reveal the platform that somebody else has made to have good UX. But if you google and if you're trying to teach people UX, 

I think you should do better. They certainly do have the resources to actually create learning platforms themselves just for their own course. 

And the main problem with this is that the value x of the platform, combined with the fact that this is Google can actually make a sort of false impression on those junior people to junior designers learning to be a UX designer, that this is good, or that this is good enough. 

And no, it's really not things like that should be avoided and things like that are very far from good UX. So looking at it from the perspective of my 20 years of experience in design. 

Google UX Course Is A Completely Different Experience

I can say that I really learned a lot from this course. But that's to be expected. I finished it in a little over a day, from my perspective is a little bit distorted by all that experience. 

So as a true UX person, I decided to actually do some research here.  And I spoke to Magda and Daniel who are just starting as designers and for them, this course is a completely different experience than it is for me.

INTERESTING PART OF THE GOOGLE UX  COURSE

So their feedback is actually more aligned with what the target audience of this course should be thinking about. So this is what manga said, I found the course to be quite interesting. 

They introduce new concepts one by one was an example there or something is good and sometimes not that great. I think for a beginner, the course is a good fit. It shows where UX is heading and what future problems will be solving like the next billion users and their problems. 

And I think that this course focuses a bit too much on creating global experiences because Google is global. And in reality, most designers work on creating products for specific markets, 

So pretty local. I like the course structure with videos, reading, and discussions with plenty of links to extra reading and diving deeper. And she also mentioned the UX of Coursera. 

So this is not just my thing, even junior designers are noticing it which basically means that this is something that should be fixed right away. And she also said some of the quizzes and some of the exercises were a little bit too easy and not challenging enough. 

Daniel actually explored UX as a hobby for some time now, so he didn't start from the very beginning. But for him, the outlook of this course wasn't really that he is going to become a UX designer because of finishing the course. 

It was more about structuring the mores that he has and filling the gaps. He also pragmatically understands that having this certificate and a nice portfolio is going to make it easier for recruiters to make an informed decision. 

So that's a win what he liked the most about the course there's a clear structure of it. So how videos and text and extra reading intersect and how they will complement each other to make a much fuller learning experience. 

He also said that it's really good that you can go at your own pace so you can go faster on some easier topics and slow down on some more difficult ones. 

The Price is Good!

He also believes that the price is pretty good for the scope and size of the curse because it's actually a lot cheaper than most UX courses out there right now. 

He also said that the Coursera interface is pretty bad, so nothing new here. And he also noted that this is a Google course. 

So it's kind of really skewed in the direction of working for Google in the long run. And it's not necessarily reflecting the entire UX world or UX community. 

And he said that the idea of interacting with other students in the forums is a pretty good one. But most of the discussions were just one-word answers that didn't really contribute too much. 

Should you take it? Google UX Course

If you're just starting you want to learn what UX is get the fundamentals and then be able to explore on your own. I think this course is for you. It's pretty good.

It's also relatively cheap. And if you're struggling financially, you can get grants or scholarships to actually help you pay for it. So the knowledge is there. 

It's pretty good. It's very well structured, and it's delivered in a very nice and friendly way. and I only finished the foundation which is the very first beginner chapter of the seven main courses that Google prepared. so thank you so much for your are coming here.