Interaction Design course at Cooper

I had a very good experience at the Cooper Interaction Design course.  In the 4-day (or 5-day, I forget) course they go through the whole Cooper process, from planning to interviews/research to design with a design communicator and an interaction designer.  I felt like it was a great workshop with a good hands-on component and lots of take-home materials.

However, it was specifically geared towards the Cooper method.  While that is definitely one way to do UCD, I imagine that a lot of people would go home to their companies and be frustrated that they don't have the leisure to run 20-odd foundational interviews, develop personas at that level, work on a single project with a collaborator, etc.  But it certainly is a good foundation in an idealized UCD method, and many of the techniques are generalizable.  I felt that as a learning experience, it was a lot more specific than a conference; by the same token, it was less varied, so you might learn more about fewer things (but also run less risk of attending sessions that are completely not useful or relevant to you).

The Usability Week material is for an absolute beginner who wants to run usability testing but doesn't know how.  If you've run testing before and are comfortable with it, this will probably not be very interesting to you as it is quite basic.  It also doesn't include a design component; it is more strictly about testing rather than persona development, design, etc.  Additionally, the Cooper course is with a small group (15-20 people) whereas the NNg conference is huge (hundreds of people).  So it really depends on what you want. 

Let me know if you have additional questions, since I've been to both, albeit several years ago.

Good luck!

Hilary
 

Hilary User Experience
                   Hilary Bienstock, Principal

hilary@hilaryue.com 

From: RedDesigner <g.gabriel.designer@gmail.com>
To: hilary@hilaryue.com
Sent: Sat, August 7, 2010 11:57:32 PM
Subject: [IxDA] Interaction Design course at Cooper

Hello,

Has anyone taken the Interaction Design course at Cooper? Any thoughts to share?

I'm a visual designer with minimal experience with UX/ID/IA, and wanted to attend a few strong courses to lay a foundation.

If you can recommend other courses, please go ahead.

I'm also considering Usability Week 2010 by Nielsen Norman Group. Any thoughts on that conference?

 

Thanks.