As stated before, our goal here is to give you the best possible grounding in design fundamentals without getting too deep. We'll focus on what matters to you as a developer.

To teach you, we'll use a combination of text and demo videos with links to external websites (since there's no point in reinventing the wheel). As with the previous mini-course on Web Development Basics, there will be assignments to let you practice what you've learned and we'll finish the mini-course with a project to help you tie it all together.

We'll start by covering User Experience and how you should think user-first to build an effective site or feature. We'll look at how existing websites have succeeded and failed to implement good user experience and you'll learn how to think in terms of user goals and flows.

In the Design section, we have two goals. First, we'll help you to open your eyes to design on the web and really see it. We'll accomplish this in a similar fashion as with UX -- by walking you through the successes and failures of existing sites and giving you a chance to tackle some on your own. Second, we'll give you the tools to implement good design yourself through effective use of layout, typography and color.

Finally, we'll introduce you to the concept of mockups and how they will be used in our design and development workflow. You'll learn the Balsamiq Mockups tool through videos and demos and you will actually use it to produce several page layouts of your own.

Refresher: The Road Beyond

Your learning journey certainly doesn't stop after this mini-course! Here's a reminder of how everything is structured:

1. Basic Prep: The mini-courses in the Basic Prep are just the beginning. They are designed to give you critical context before you get your hands dirty with code.
2. Advanced Prep: Our Advanced Prep courses provide hundreds of hours of material which will take you deep into the fundamentals of programming, whether that's markup using HTML, CSS, SASS and Bootstrap or the Ruby language or JavaScript. These are only available in our free student portal.
3. Core Programs: Once you've completed the Advanced Prep, our Core Curriculum bridges the long gap between "pretty good at the basics" and "getting paid to code". Our Immersive Program takes the most efficient path, putting you into an intense multi-month bootcamp where you pair program virtually with other students every day. For those who are located internationally or can't quit the day job, our Flex Program allows you to take the same curriculum on your own time and with exactly the level of support you want.

Let's Get Started!

Upon finishing this mini-course you may not be a designer but you should be much more comfortable working with the key elements of design to build better products and websites.

A little knowledge goes a long way and this will make you a more effective developer... let's get started!

There are no additional resources for this lesson just yet!

Sorry, comments aren't active just yet!