Welcome to Evaluating Designs With Users!

I am excited to be offering this course and am delighted that you will be joining in. This course focuses on user testing as a way to gain insights into where a design works well and where it needs work.

In this course you will learn:

• Different approaches to usability testing and their appropriate use
• How to design an effective usability test
• How to to run an effective usability test to get the most information possible out of each encounter
• Analyze and report on usability testing
• Each week, in addition to video materials and assignments, you will be assigned a discussion prompt. This is to help facilitate conversations with other learners in the class and help us (the course team) to get to know you better. In addition to completing the discussion prompts, I encourage you to participate in the Discussion whenever you have a question or observation that you think might be interesting to others in the course, and be sure to check back often to see what others are talking about!

Welcome aboard!

Mark W. Newman, Associate Professor

School of Information, University of Michigan

Would you like to take part in an optional learner background survey to improve the online educational offerings at the University of Michigan?

The University of Michigan is carrying out learner background survey research.

We’d like to invite all Learners on this course to take part in this optional pre-course survey. By taking part in this survey, you’ll support the University’s efforts to provide a quality online learning experience to a diverse population of participants. We may use the findings to evaluate the efficacy and impact of this educational content, as well as to identify opportunities to create new content.

The University of Michigan may share anonymous data collected during the survey with its platform partners, including Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn, with the goal of improving learning experiences and outcomes.

To take part in the learner background survey, please click the link below. If you choose to participate, you will be asked to provide personal information, including information about your gender, race, location country, employment status, and educational attainment. Your responses will be kept confidential, and the results from this survey will only be presented in aggregate form. It should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete.

Take part in the pre-course learner background survey.

Your responses will be linked to your course activity, but you will not be identifiable in any data that we publish or share. Summarised findings may be published in online and print publications and in University of Michigan promotional materials and may be included in presentations at professional development events, academic and professional conferences, and in various private settings. All the information collected during this survey, will be stored and handled according to the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan’s privacy policy.

The survey link will open in this same window for the purposes of making it accessible to screen readers and other assistive devices. You may need to manually navigate back to the course afterwards.

Thank you for helping to make the University of Michigan online courses better!

Please note that this is an independent research survey carried out by the University of Michigan and your participation is subject to the University’s own policies and terms. FutureLearn takes no responsibility for the contents or the consequences of your participation in this study. Your participation in the research has no effect on your course progress, marks or FutureLearn profile.