Design & User Experience Topics
User experience design, frontend architecture, and design systems. Includes UX principles, accessibility, and design documentation.
Design Thinking and the End-to-End Design Process
The full arc of solving a design problem: framing the problem, diverging on ideas, converging on a solution, and validating it. Covers design-thinking frameworks (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test), the double-diamond, and how a designer structures ambiguous work from brief to shipped experience. Emphasizes process rationale and how phases connect rather than any single artifact.
Frontend Fundamentals: HTML, CSS, and Responsive Styling
The core web-platform skills behind interfaces: semantic HTML, the CSS box model, cascade and specificity, layout systems (flexbox, grid), and responsive styling. Covers writing accessible, well-structured markup and building responsive layouts that hold up across viewports. The implementation foundation for UI work.
Personas, Journey Mapping, and User Empathy
Modeling users and their experience: personas, empathy maps, jobs-to-be-done, journey and experience maps, and behavioral-insight synthesis. Covers identifying user needs and pain points, mapping end-to-end journeys across touchpoints, and grounding design decisions in genuine user understanding rather than assumptions.
Design Strategy, Vision, and Leadership
Operating design above the artifact level: design vision, strategy, advocacy, and influence across an organization. Covers championing design (including speaking truth to power), scaling design practice and quality across teams, driving cross-product consistency, and reasoning about industry direction and the future of design. The leadership and org-level surface.
Content Design and UX Writing
Shaping the words and content structure of an experience: microcopy, UX writing, content hierarchy, progressive disclosure, and audience-first content design. Covers analyzing the audience, structuring information for comprehension, and writing interface and documentation content that guides users clearly. The language layer of UX.
Usability Evaluation: Principles, Heuristics, and Testing
Judging whether an interface is usable, both analytically and empirically. Covers the foundational rules of usable interfaces (Nielsen's heuristics, affordances, feedback and system-status visibility, error prevention, consistency, cognitive load) applied through heuristic evaluation, plus moderated and unmoderated usability tests, task-based protocols, and A/B and preference testing. Includes when to test, writing tasks that avoid leading users, interpreting findings, and validating a solution before and after launch. Distinct from generative research in that it measures an existing design against usability criteria.
Design Critique, Iteration, and Decision Rationale
Improving work through structured feedback and defensible reasoning: giving and receiving critique, running iteration loops, and articulating the rationale behind design decisions with evidence. Covers collaborating on design reviews, incorporating feedback without losing intent, and grounding choices in research and data rather than taste alone.
Rapid Design Exercises and Working Under Constraints
Producing strong design thinking quickly and under pressure: whiteboard and app-critique exercises, rapid problem definition, comfort with ambiguity, and pragmatic trade-offs between complexity, quality, and speed to market. Covers applying design fundamentals live and shipping quality solutions within real constraints. The design-exercise interview surface.
Design Handoff and Developer Collaboration
Getting a design built as intended: handoff specs, redlines, design tokens, and clear communication with engineers. Covers translating mockups into implementable guidance, resolving tension where design meets technical reality, and collaborating so the shipped product matches the intent. The seam between design and engineering.