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University System of Maryland

Product Design, Prototyping, and Testing

University System of Maryland and University of Maryland, College Park via edX

Overview

Designing the customer and user experience is essential to creating great products today. Gone is the old paradigm of “form follows function” model of design. The process must be iterative and follow the best product design and development processes. While designing a great user experience can be a lengthy and expensive process, there are approaches to doing it faster and smarter, without compromising results.

This essential product management course explains key design thinking principles around personas, story mapping, and prototyping. Product managers need to know and appreciate product designer tools and processes. By combining these principles with good scrum processes, you’ll learn to create great products that don’t sacrifice design for functionality or feasibility.

This course enables students to transition from ideas to prototyping and concept testing of their products and services. Students learn how best to effectively translate ideas into marketable offerings so that the best product and service ideas are harnessed and create real value for customers and the organization. Emphasis is placed on an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to engineering design, concurrent engineering, design for manufacturing, industrial design, and the business of new product development. Topics include design methods, modeling and simulation, material and manufacturing process selection, platform and modular design, mass customization, planning and scheduling.

Syllabus

Module 1: Development Processes and Organizations

Module 2: Concept Generation and Selection

Module 3: Product Design and Architecture

Module 4: Principles of Prototyping and User Experience

Module 5: Wireframing and Prototyping Models

Module 6: Robust Design Considerations

Module 7: Testing and Troubleshooting

Module 8: Project Management

Taught by

Cait von Schnetlage

Reviews

2.8 rating, based on 34 Class Central reviews

Start your review of Product Design, Prototyping, and Testing

  • Anonymous
    I am honestly shocked by the quality of this course. I've taken a number of online courses, including the first two in this series and this was incredibly disappointing. I'm going to bucket the feedback but suffice it to say that if you want to learn...
  • Anonymous
    I want to recommend this course but I have strong reservations. This was more of a business course than a design course. The instructor spoke almost exclusively as a business owner (which she is) rather than an expert on design, prototyping, or testing. She...
  • Anonymous
    The content of the course is necessary and would be interesting if it were not for the amateurish and unfocused presentation. I feel that my money and especially my time would have been better spent just looking at the slides and completing the quizzes...
  • Anonymous
    This course needs to be revised. I did not learn anything from this course. The lectures are unstructured and do not make sense. There are no relevant examples to modern / digital product management. Please do not take this course. The rest of the courses in the Product Management Certificate programs are worth taking but this course should be skipped. There are a lot of potential for this course especially with this loaded title. You can make it really fun and engaging but is a miss in my book.
  • Anonymous
    I did not find this course professional. The instructor was out of words most of the time while she was giving examples. It shows that she was not prepared enough. Some of the examples that she gave was related to my domain and I knew the moments that she was bluffing. There were time that I enjoyed this course but in overall, I think that this course needs to be redesigned.
  • Anonymous
    The total length of the course could have been half of what it is. The explanations are repeating itself over and over again, and the content of the videos are most of the time irrelevant.

    The lecturer gives a lot of personal comments which are not in scope and not of our interest.

    The concepts in the slides are most of the time not explained, but just given an example (which often also repeats itself).

    The content of the course is not really matching the scope or the syllabus. It was very repetitive and also not matching the level or continuing the lessons in the previous courses of the certificate program.

    I cannot recommend this course.
  • Anonymous
    The instructor didn't seem well prepared; her communication was incoherent and she kept repeating the same thing over and over again.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    The videos are too long, bordering on rambling, trying to cover too much material in one course. It's supposed to be about designer user experience, but veers into very short overviews of project management, manufacturing, sustainability, and software...
  • Profile image for BEIER LU
    BEIER LU
    许多视频看起来不专业,应该重新编辑。

    该课程并没有像我预期的那样让我对 UX 有太多的了解。

    老师 80% 的时间只是展示幻灯片,阅读并继续。没有给出额外的信息或预期的描述。

    老师很多时候会参考教科书——但是,在我个人看来,这是一门在线课程,她不应该指望教科书。

    由于太无聊,我花了很长时间才完成课程。
  • Anonymous
    It is very disappointing. Before writing this review, I checked other low rating ones. They all explained the terrible experience that I had. If you want a user (student) feedback, just remove this course, or redo it.
  • Anonymous
    The content of the course is quite redundant and the quality of the information is disappointingly poor. This course should be reduced by half and spend more time explaining key ideas and critical activities around UX and prototyping. I am not sure what I have learned unlike other courses in the series.
  • Anonymous
    The teacher may be knowledgeable, but her presentation is extremely slow, inconsistent in quality, and bordering on rambling. It would be much better to craft a tight script and deliver that directly, rather the presenting on the fly. Lessons could be much shorter and more concise.
  • Anonymous
    The course content is huge and was too long per one video because of some additive from the presenter which sometimes off the topic. Some videos need to be polished before upload. Some slides are not relevant to the presenter script and made me confused. The presenter said those were her fun stuff but maybe it is not mine.
  • Anonymous
    The courses uses 30 year old references, a lot of information seems outdated. Complicated slides are skipped without explanation. Real life examples with details are missing. The summaries presented are simply the headlines of the previous slides.
    Useful concepts which can be applied to real life cases are missing.
  • Profile image for Ellissa Verseput
    Ellissa Verseput
    This course was a real disappointment to be honest. Especially compared to the other courses in the 5-course product management program, the course materials are of very poor quality.
  • Anonymous
    I have learned usefull informations eith this course. Now I am Ph.D. student at Business Administration and I interest marketing practices at my studies. I advice all of Business Adm. student, managers and marketing professionals to take this course.
  • Anonymous
    This course provided a lot of key information for entrepreneurs gaining some insight as to how to bring together UX and engineering. The instructor had a great sense of humor as well! Really enjoyed her teaching style
  • Anonymous
    Disappointing quality of material, terrible audio and editing (in some videos). It seems like instructor's speech content is poorly prepared and some times out of sync with slides.
  • Anonymous
    Many of the videos seem not professional and should be re-edited.

    The course did not give me much understanding of UX as I expected.

    The teacher on 80% of the time just shows a slide, reads it and moves on. No extra information or expected description was given.

    Many times the teacher refers to the textbooks - however as it is an online course she should not count on textbooks, in my personal opinion.

    Took me too long to finish the course due to it being too boring.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    There are 3 or more videos that need to be edited, at the beginning it shows parts that wanted to be redone and they were left as part of the video.

    Good content for high level but the quality of the video doesn't look very professional. Also the instructor looks very experienced but not very professional sometimes.

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