Training
Our training courses bring your team up to speed on user-centred design ideas and techniques, so you can bring the benefits of UCD in-house.
We've delivered training for companies including BT, Vodafone, the BBC, First Choice, SITA, AOL and Yell, covering web, mobile and customer experience design.
We have three standard training courses, but we usually modify these to suit our clients' needs.
Course 1: Interaction design patterns and principles
A one-day training course with exercises, to help project teams to:
- Increase their awareness of user-centred design, why it makes better interactive products and how to apply it.
- Understand the motivations, attitudes and skill levels of the people who use their products.
- Become familiar with established user-interface design patterns.
- Come up to speed with some of the latest ideas in the world of interactive product and services
- Find out where to learn more about user-centred design.
Course 2: Hands-on user-centred design
A two-day training course designed to help teams gain practical experience of the user-centred design process so they can bring it to their own projects.
Participants work in groups on a series of exercises to develop an imaginary interactive product. They go through all the major stages of a UCD process and get to try out each key technique.
It helps project teams to:
- Gain a solid understanding of user-centred design, why it makes better websites and how to apply it.
- Gain first-hand experience of key user-centred design techniques such as usability testing, personas, affinity sorting and paper prototypes.
- Become familiar with some established user interface design patterns.
- Find out where to learn more about user-centred design.
Course 3: Designing a building accessible websites
Our accessibility training course lasts up to 1 day and involves video clips, games and exercises.
We work with your website team, including developers, designers and copy writers, to help them understand disabled users' needs and how to build and run an accessible site.
It helps project teams to:
- Understand business, legal and social drivers for creating accessible websites
- Appreciate how context of use impacts accessibility and understand the concepts behind inclusive design
- Learn how to create an accessibility policy
- Learn when and how to use WAI-WCAG guidelines to check accessibility
- Grasp the importance of standards-compliant HTML and learn tips for creating it
- Be aware of the accessibility issues when designing rich interaction with Flash and AJAX
Courses can take place at Flow's offices, in third party facilities or in your own meeting or training rooms.
We can also provide ad-hoc training and mentoring as part of a UCD project. Flow consultants brief your team, then encourage direct involvement in user research and interaction design activities.
