
Fall of 2016 was my first attempt at teaching User Experience at Southern New Hampshire University. I have to admit, I was a bit nervous. I wanted to make sure that students attending the class stayed engaged and excited about the topic. It’s one thing to apply UX at Schall Creative but coming up with exercises and projects that will resonate with college students is very different, and something I’m hoping will evolve and improve with time.
I’d like to give a quick shout out to Austin Knight, Senior UX Designer at HubSpot. He was incredibly gracious to spend time meeting with me and to provide suggestions on the UX course syllabus I put together.
Introducing Invision
The course begins with the students taking a bird’s eye view of their everyday tasks and discovering ways of making their life easier or cost effective. This discovery, or design solution, is then brought to life and becomes a mobile or web app prototype using the prototyping tool Invision. Students perfect their product by gathering feedback through a couple rounds of user testing research. Here are some highlights I noticed students enjoyed the most when using Invision.
They would apply transition effects between screens

Students were able to position overlay menus or pop up windows in specific locations in their prototype

They could share their project with friends and family

They were able to open their final mobile app directly from their smartphone and give it a test drive

The Process
Throughout the semester students went through phases of research, design and testing. Below are screenshots of Marissa Mahr’s final UX research process to complete her app she called Instorage.
- Introduction
- The Problem
- The Solution
- Brand Development
- Interview Insight
- Persona 1
- Persona 2
- Persona 3
- Competitor Analysis 1
- Competitor Analysis
- User Journey
- Sitemap
- Wireframe Part 1
- Wireframe Part 2
- High Fidelity Designs 1
- High Fidelity Designs 2
- High Fidelity Designs 3
- User Testing Outcome 1
- User Testing Outcome 2
- User Testing Outcome Part 3
- Final Prototype
The Outcome
I was really impressed of the different ideas the students came up with using Invision, and it was beautiful to watch how they progressed throughout the semester. As students began looking at their design as a solution rather than one more task, they gradually became researchers perfecting their work with a purpose. Here are a couple GIF animations displaying a quick walkthrough on final UX projects; Instorage and MyTube.
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