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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Visual Elements of User Interface Design by California Institute of the Arts

4.7
stars
5,854 ratings

About the Course

This design-centric course examines the broad question of what an interface is and what role a designer plays in creating a user interface. Learning how to design and articulate meaning using color, type, and imagery is essential to making interfaces function clearly and seamlessly. Through a series of lectures and visual exercises, you will focus on the many individual elements and components that make up the skillset of an interface designer. By the end of this course, you will be able to describe the key formal elements of clear, consistent, and intuitive UI design, and apply your learned skills to the design of a static screen-based interface. This is the first course in the UI/UX Design Specialization, which brings a design-centric approach to user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design, and offers practical, skill-based instruction centered around a visual communications perspective, rather than on one focused on marketing or programming alone. These courses are ideal for anyone with some experience in graphic or visual design and who would like to build their skill set in UI or UX for app and web design. It would also be ideal for anyone with experience in front- or back-end web development or human-computer interaction and want to sharpen their visual design and analysis skills for UI or UX....

Top reviews

RS

Nov 20, 2018

I never thought this is possible. I am very grateful to Coursera and Calarts. This is a starting milestone to changing my career life for better. I am ready to pursue more and more with your support.

BB

Mar 31, 2020

This course is very useful for a beginner who is looking for the basics of UI/UX course.

This course will give you the basic idea of interface design which very important for its advanced studies.

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26 - 50 of 1,466 Reviews for Visual Elements of User Interface Design

By ogunyooye o

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Oct 17, 2019

its so interesting and i am full of hope to become a better citizen of my country and world at large...i am so happy that at the end of this course i will become a ui and ux designer.

By Pavankumar S

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Mar 15, 2019

Very useful course, Highly recommended for beginners who is going to kick start with UI/UX design. Very detailed content and explanation. Thanks for the such a wonderful course.

By Rajitha G

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Jun 13, 2019

This is a great kick starter course to understand the basics and really change your perspective of UI and UX. Explained in detail with great simplicity, I loved it- note taking is also made easy!

My feedback is on the assignments:The difficulty I faced was i did not know how to use Indesign (this should have been a pre-requisite)- so after my first week assignment i put in some extra hours to learn InD basics to do my second assignment- that changed the quality of my work. Second - Assignment 1 was creating mood board but the sample had full project, so I as well as couple of our batch folks (I reviewed) ended up creating whole project first week - Should have given clear instructions - That would helped us focus on Week1 work. From Week2 what do work on was very clear. Please fix this for next batch

By Charlotte B

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May 5, 2019

I have a degree in Graphic Design so I wanted to expand in UX & UI. This course was a great price, easy to do as quick or as slow passed as I needed.

By Pierre-Olivier S

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Aug 10, 2020

The content is good, not great. Some classes on Udemy have content that's just as good, while being presented in a much more attractive package. Think about it : This course on UI is entirely made up of slides in ARIAL. Yes, Arial. This says a lot about how little care was put into the slides themselves.

The reviewing process, as opposed to Udemy's one where the teacher actually takes a look at your submission, is broken and extremely unfair. And in the end, this class is not worth the money. No one from the school will ever look at your work. Only peers. So why are we paying 44 € a month, already ? At this price, Coursera should hire someone who rates students' work. That would only be fair. It takes ages to get feedback. So why are you pressured into submitting your work on time if, then, you don't get feedback for days, sometimes weeks ?

Overall, I'm sourly disappointed, coming from Udemy. Not only is the Coursera's interface clunkier (which is ironic when following a UX course) but the content of the classes seems to be an afterthought.

By Daria S

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Dec 9, 2022

This course is not at all what I expected. It only provides the basics of UI design that are discussed very briefly and broadly. The videos are nice, but I expected a lot more hands-on and practical lessons. However, this isn't what makes this whole experience bad. The peer review system is completely broken and discouraging. Every single time my submissions were reviewed very unfairly by some anonymous individuals who left incoherent feedback (literally "asodjlldkf" or "ok"), and I had to re-sumbit many times to receive fair assessment. When reviewing others' submissions, I encountered dozens of incredibly lazy works with broken English (again, can't judge something that's incomprehensible). This took away all of my motivation since I spent hours on my project and was looking forward to full and comprehensive feedback from other learners (especially considering that the assignments were quite interesting and strict). I don't think I will proceed to courses 2, 3 and 4 even though in the beginning I really wanted to.

By Fáelán L M

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Jun 14, 2020

The instruction is good but cover things more like an overview. The idea of using peers to grade assignments is awful. There are no constructive comments by the reviewer I had, I have no idea what my work is really worth. The submissions I was given to review were exact copies of the course examples. Not really worth my time and effort if I am interested in pursuing this as a profession.

By Tianyi L

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Jan 18, 2020

A good experience of learning UI. I got to create something of my own and got inspired by others' good work. As a designer who is already familiar with design applications and principles, it only took me one day to watch all the tutorials and 1.5 days to complete the assignments. After the course, I have something presentable I can include in my portfolio and have gained confidence in this field! Thank you for this great opportunity.

By Natasha B

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Dec 28, 2019

I took so many pages of notes! There is a WEALTH of information packed into this course and I am going to make it into a simple outline to use when designing. I think it will be helpful for me in the future as a reference guide in order to do my best work until I get comfortable in the process. Very knowledgeable, fun project, and other students were respectful. Turn in your work early!

By Samuel R

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May 13, 2020

Great course, I have a degree in graphic design and have taken UX courses before. This was a good refresher on UI principles and I'm looking forward to the next course in this specialization.

By Utkarsh R

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May 11, 2020

It is a good course for those who are starting their career in graphics design ( UI & UX ).

I found this course good, but it is elementary. I thought that it would be much better if the instructor taught us some topics in much more detail or in-depth like in color part if we taught which color is best suited for which thing, In adding shadow what is the value of the blur should be added and of which color, etc.

Anyway, it is a good course for beginners.

By Michael M

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Jan 10, 2020

The teachers were not very charismatic, and spoke in a monotone the entire time as they read their lectures off a teleprompter. The peer-reviewed assignments also took days, and in some cases, weeks, before being reviewed. Otherwise, this course was decent, but if you already know basic UI design, then this course is probably too easy for you. You would be better off reading the Google Material Design guidelines or the Apple design guidelines.

By Miroslav G

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Apr 14, 2020

I think the course is good for beginners. For me it wasn't challenging enough (I did the whole Graphic Design Specialisation and worked for many years as a designer) and still I had to resubmit all of my assignments multiple times just because my peers have graded me poorly and way too subjectively. If you are letting unqualified beginners grading, then at least make them more then two per assignment. Having only two peers grading an assignment is not objective at all. There should be at least three!

By FullElven

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Oct 19, 2022

I'm a UX Researcher and with a strong Design background and have completed other UX courses before. My degree is in Web & Interactive Media Design, so all of this class came SUPER easy to me, but also had a lot of great insight and nuances that I hadn't expected to see. It was great for giving me some structure to get me reconnected with my roots in UI design. I love that it is very clear that UI design is NOT UX design, though employers will often mix the two. It was frustrating to see only a couple students taking the class seriously in their submissions where others uploaded empty assignments or clear crops of existing apps, doing bare minimum to get through. I did my best to leave clear and valid feedback, but often only received a period or a keyboard smash as feedback in turn.

By Bruno R

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Feb 12, 2020

Escreverei em português, que é minha língua materna, especialmente para brasileiros e portugueses. Esse curso é realmente um ótimo curso introdutório. Eu não sabia bem como funcionava este sistema de educação à distância, mas posso dizer que realmente não perde em nada para cursos presenciais. É bastante prático e orientado para a prática profissional. Vale a pena!

By Kateřina H

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Mar 25, 2020

It was my first UI/UX experience and it was amazing. I had so much fun and learnt so many things. I wish it could be longer. I'm kind of missing uni times :P Thank you so much for it!

By Ariadne R B

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Oct 3, 2019

I really enjoyed this course. I love the way Michael Worthington explains everything and I love the fact that we have more videos than reading, to me it's easier to understand.

By Jason H

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Feb 6, 2023

It's simple and easy to follow. I personally don't know if the information is relevant, but it is straight to the point and easy to understand.

By Julija S

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Jul 4, 2020

PRO: I love the interface of the course and fact that the course members get tasks - they have a huge learning impact.

CONTRA: Some course members have very poor design skills. It's not fun to review assignments with pixelated and stretched icons and buttons retrieved from foreign online sources, while others put more effort into their work and have way higher design skills. Unfair peer ratings create a watering down performance and the illusion of similar skills, while this is not the case. A compliance of quality standards would be good.

By AR

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Jun 8, 2020

The Course is pretty good. Very basic info is covered. There is currently a major issue with "peer grading" system. People are grade bombing submission which requires multiple re submissions ...this issue needs resolved.

By Kelly M

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May 15, 2019

Great introduction to UI design without complicating elements with UX.

By Sherri H

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Mar 29, 2022

Good info, but do not like that the only one grading me, are students, this is only detrimental when those students either don't understand the instructions, or are not taking the time to read them. I have one question that asked if I used two typefaces, I did , the reviewer said no....really. I like the fact that I can do it on my own schedule, but there should not be this kind of grading system, I do not like that at all. Almost every student I reviewed, did not either understand the instructions or did not read them. Only 1 or 2 did the task as instructed. What worries me, thinking on the employers side as well, people can be getting their certificates and not even know what they are doing, or if they did it correctly or not....there has got to be a better way.

By Ana A

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Feb 7, 2022

The whole course is centered around doing four assignments and buling your own project which is great. However, assignments are not reviewed by the stuff, but by two random peers. The peers can be really competent and put an effort into reviewing your assignment, but they also can be really non competent (to the point they didn't even remotley understand what the assignment was) or too lazy to write down the answers. One peer copied random song lyrics to the blank spaces where he was supposed to comment my last assignment!

Other than that, course is well structured and begginer friendly. It's focused on things like colors, shapes and grid. There's nothing about working with softwares like Figma or Photoshop (in case you are interested in that).

By vanessa a

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Aug 21, 2020

Only made it to the end of the second week so my opinion is strictly based off of only the first 2 weeks of the program.

I decided to stop because it was not at all engaging content. If you want to know every single aspect of the definition of UI/UX then this is the class to take. But if you are like me and want to actually get your hands dirty and learn the design process in Photoshop, illustrator and InDesign then you will be let down. I personally need hands on learning and less explanation.

By Saad K

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Dec 5, 2018

The only thing I wish this course had more of was the practical side of UI/UX design. Where they show you how and what goes behind making designs, instead of only taking over theory. The theory seemed like something you would already know but I feel like they should have given more incentive to learning about key graphic design and UI/UX concepts that could be used practically.