It was time to put the newfound enthusiasm and expertise into practise after months of reading about UX and finishing a few courses on Coursera and IDF. The Google UX Certificate was developed as a way to study more deeply and produce a portfolio with three projects at the conclusion of seven classes because, while I learn totally on my own, the thought of just diving into a project without any boundaries felt too daunting.

This is a summary of the assignments I had to do for Course 2: Empathise, Define, and Ideate. I want to see how the activities go together so I can refer to them again in the upcoming classes. This document will aid in the development of the three portfolio projects that this certificate ultimately aims to produce.

The Ideate exercises and user personas were the most interesting thing I learned in this course. Creating a user persona really turned the data into a story that is relatable and helpful for empathizing with users. Creating a competitive audit felt the most challenging, but also incredibly helpful in learning practically how to begin doing research and understanding what users experience in their journeys in using competitors' apps. Which is very nice Love It.

This course was not only informative, but it was fun! I learned so much from the videos and readings. Having the opportunity to complete Activities and add them to my portfolio is invaluable. If you want to learn more about the UX design process and get a better understanding of empathizing, defining, and ideating, this course is what you're searching for!

I appreciate so much the course, everything is clear and professional, you should definitely try it! By the way, I have created a friendly community(around 940 peers now) to share our path, if you wanna join us, you are welcome :) Contact me on https://www.linkedin.com/in/lixia-divin/

All I can say really from my heart thank you, Emily! Although, this course is stuffed with a lot of information and there are some complicated items for me, Emily demonstrated and illustrated it in a very professional way and make it more enthusiastic.

I loved how this course took me step by step to understand and do research for my app. The templates, and examples you provide were great, and the instructor was AWESOME!!!

Amazing course, it was a challenge for those of us who are new to this whole UX process. But I loved every part of it.

Explained well, step by step, case-based and project based learning. It help me to create some great portfolios!

Very well designed with practical and theory. I recommend this course who want really learn real UX process.

This course was challenging and interesting for me.

very good

Good information, and the ideation exercises were so fun! However, the order and time-allotments for this course were not well thought out. For example: when conducting research, we're taught that recruiting interview participants happens first because coordinating with other people takes time, then we continue with other tasks and circle back to interviews once meetings have been arranged. Instead of mirroring the lessons we were taught in it, the course expected that we'd be able to conduct interviews almost instantly. That we were meant to be done with the whole process in a week is unrealistic. I felt that generally, as we were working towards aspects of our projects, the course failed to consider the amount of time it would take to actually complete these tasks. This makes it difficult for us to realistically plan a timeframe we can finish by. It also generates extra stress, because even though the course is meant to be taken at your own pace, the deadlines and deadline notifications make you feel like you're running behind and you'll be punished somehow if you fail to meet them. There were also two weeks in the middle of this course where I had to take a break for a family thing. If it were truly designed to be self-paced, this wouldn't feel like an issue, but I kept getting notifications and warnings. There was no way to say, "hey, I need a short break. I'll be back." So, are you going to let it be self-paced, or are you going to impose deadlines that threaten the loss of a passing grade if not met? I'm getting mixed messages.

Some part of course material was bit confusing, as the example situations were never consistent. So, I couldn't work on any specific case study till the end, except what I have selected from prompts.

But, overall course material was good. Was a great learning!

Since most of the works are theoretical+ practical which was bit dull in the beginning but it was a good journey. Thank you coursera and google for this wonderful course.

I'm quitting because I don't live in an urban area and can't find any people to interview that would participate in the type of company ideas we were given.

It was a great course with a great sense of learning stuffs with good practices to work with for developing the better User experience concepts.

There are a lot of ways to improve this course assignment.

This course was a bit difficult and time-consuming

The weekly challenge can take you a lot of hours.

The first course was good – I really liked the in-depth introduction to the many aspects of UX Design. I had no idea there was so much to it! And many different specialty branches there were. It was a lot, but I felt like the information was valuable.

The second course was a little harder for me, and it’s where I ran into my first problem with the overall structure of the course. This was where we had to submit our first peer review assignment on creating user personas, something I worked really hard on. However, I ended up getting a failing grade because the two people who reviewed my personas literally filled out the rubric wrong. We had to have 6 items for each of our personas: an image, demographic info, a quote, goals, frustrations, and a scenario. Both of my personas literally had all of these, but the two people who filled out the rubric marked that I was missing items when I CLEARLY WAS NOT. And their in-depth feedback comments consisted of “good” and “great.”

So, I “failed” and had to resubmit because I ended up with lazy peers who were just flat out wrong.

There was no instructor or moderator to report this to or dispute. When I tried to find answers in discussion forums, I was taken around in circles by Coursera that led nowhere, except “you’ll just have to resubmit.” And that was from someone’s comment from a forum, not Coursera.

So I updated my slides to literally number and title each of the items to PROVE I had all six items. I passed the second time but one of the comments was, “I don’t think you needed to number the sections.” Well, apparently I did.

There’s another downside to the peer reviews – because you are the “peers” and basically the ones in charge of the grading, you WILL be in a position to fail other students. And frankly for some, you’ll have to. Some of the work other students put in is great, but others…they either didn’t understand the assignment at all or they were just too lazy to do it right. It’s mostly the latter. Do you choose to just give the best grade even though they don’t deserve it? Or do you try to be actually helpful and fail them while giving them pointers to improve? I was in that position and boy, did I not like it.

This course is packed full of really useful information and I like that we’ll have the start of a portfolio at the end. But those peer review assignments are absolutely terrible because they are clearly not moderated by a professional. You’re literally at the mercy of either a dedicated student or a super lazy one – there is no in between.

I still recommend this certificate course due to the wealth of information and the portfolio practice, but just keep in mind that you will be your only advocate when it comes to assignments and many other students are quite lazy and put a damper on the experience all around.

Its a good course for theory, until you start getting into the meat of the researching and project work as you have no instructors or classmates to ask and bounce ideas off until its too late.

Lots of info here, which is good, but needed an extra week to complete the competitive audit because it is so detailed.

Good so far - but not much opportunity to give or get direct feedback on your work.

The second course isn't even close to the first one, in terms of explaining how to conduct the assignment. The "optional" coursera videos really help clarify some points, but they don't make thorough explanations. Moreover, I was waiting for many hours for other peers to review my peer-graded assignment, which was not the case earlier on. Lastly, at first they say that you must review two other peer assignments, but when it comes to doing it, they say you have to review three assignments.

I lost my progress because I missed the deadlines so I had to retake 50% of the course plus redo the final quizes and resubmit the assignment. I reported the issues but I haven't gotten any response from Coursera at all. This just makes me think that you want people to stay on the course longer so that they can pay more. Don't think that's a great experience by any means.