Attending this course and passing the exam earns 1 UX Certification credit, which also counts towards the optional Interaction Design Specialty.
Learn more about NN/g's UX Certification Program.
Application Design for Web and Desktop
GUI screen components, workflows, user types, design patterns, and ways of interacting with complex data
Topics Covered
Topics Covered
- Strategy and design considerations for apps
- Ease of use
- Learnability and learning curves
- Usefulness vs. usability and how they impact user attitudes
- Web-based apps vs. native desktop apps
- App structure: how to present it to users
- Task presentation
- Modules
- Control panels
- Menus & direct manipulation
- Workflows
- Wizards
- Guiding users through complex tasks or complex information
- Modes and views
- Different modes for different tasks
- Reusing the same UI elements in different modes
- Screen splitting and dealing with multiple sources of information
- Repetitive tasks
- Minimizing user effort
- Autosuggestion & autocomplete
- Predicting users’ next steps
- Presenting and interacting with complex data
- Information-visualization techniques
- Focus + context
- Tree maps
- Managing large datasets
- Filtering data and accessing data subsets
- Dashboards
- Information-visualization techniques
- Input, data entry, and selection
- Forms vs. other methods of data input
- Output and exporting data
- Errors and feedback
- Help
- Inline and contextual help and tips
- Documentation and tutorials
- Catering to both novice and expert users
- Progressive disclosure
Format
Format
The basis of the course is a lecture format with a few group exercises to reinforce the learned principles and guidelines.
UX Certification Credit
UX Certification Credit
Participant Comments
Participant Comments
"The instructor covered a lot of topics, the level of information is huge (coffee is available to keep you focused). It is great being able to approach such experts, discuss, share ideas and ask for opinions!"
Klervi Coccolini, LogicNew
"Great overview of application design best practices. I wanted to keep learning!"
Aaron Gillihan, Medimmune
"Gives good context on how to make the appropriate choices of which patterns to use. Love the common pitfalls and what it's best used for. The redesign rollout strategy is most helpful."
Shanti Hadietomo, Intuit Canada
"If you're designing software, this course will feel in some parts like a direct brain-to-brain knowledge transfer addressing or solving a lot of your everyday problems. All insights are backed by research and are so generously actionable that during the course you will have your fair share of "aha" moments that will instantly improve your day to day work. Amazing quality, no fillers - just pure, distilled expertise."
Paweł Haicki, Nielsen Global Media, Warsaw, Poland
More Participant Comments
"Excellent course that's perfect for those of us who may not work on the sexiest of applications, but we want them to work!"
Lynne Venart, The Art Monkey
"I would suggest that if people's backgrounds are primarily web apps, or consumer facing apps, to really consider this course if they are going to go into back office apps, as it is very relevant for that. I have seen lots of people come from consumer world and try to apply those ideas here and some things aren't as appropriate, or become too dumbed down for intermediate/expert users."
Anup, DrDoctor, London, UK
"This course takes the participants through a very practical UX world and great presentation!"
Anupama Bonakurthi, Lexis Nexis, Cary, NC
"A good and thoughful approach to UX in the context of desktop and web applications."
Arturo Santos Bermejo, JCCM, Toledo, Spain
"I loved the course and thoroughly and would recommend to my friends and colleagues. I work on various Applications and it is immensely useful for me as I got lot of design solutions from this class, Page is great and is very knowledgable instructor in Application Design."
Shilpa, Metro-Markets.de, Germany
"Focused, great key takeaways, decent puns :) Also great to do some light weight exercises with others in the course. Group 9 forever."
Melinda Kilner, Gem, San Francisco USA
"I like this online course so much since I live so far away and there's not much good conference/course to attend here. This online conference can be a solution for me. I can learn and add more connection with great people around the world. this is highly recommended."
Jauza Gebri Akmalia, Omni App Solutions, Singapore
"This course is a great way to get your bearings when embarking on complex or specialized systems."
Dave Kealey, CDM Smith, Boston, MA, USA
"Very informative course, really enjoyed the content and the presentation!"
Daniel Isylgan, doxy.me, Kyiv, Ukraine
"I found every piece of content extremely interesting and well frundamented. I really appreciate the effort of jamming all this information in one day! Gracias!"
Lucas Saeed, Almundo
"Such a large amount of information. I drank it all in and tried to digest (think I need more days to look over and review!). But awesome - LOVED!"
Elysia Howell, Charles Schwab
"This course does a great job of covering the fundamental building blocks of interface design. Can't recommend highly enough!"
Paul Dixon, AIR Worldwide
"Really helped me come up with better table specification for the Design System at our company. Loved the arguments — statements used for defending UX maximus/research data or to debunk some LOB/Dev preconceptions. I feel well "armed" to go back to my redesign of a large legacy application."
Leah Novaes, DEXX
"Right amount of detail to understand the important concepts for desktop and web app design — and it definitely helps to have the references available for further reading!"
Steve Zappe, Minitab, Inc.
"Liked all the real world examples. Felt this course was a good overview of common issue/problem and how people are solving them. Of course, each solution is manual, but class was helpful to get the mind thinking about tested alternatives."
Alex Fleiner, Fisher Investments
"Fantastic course! Loved it. He is very approachable and explained things so well! I honestly learned so much!"
Nicolas Baroudi, Nationwide Insurance
"Really great course to take! Ties in concepts discouraged earlier in the week but also provides a great overview of common UX/UI application design aspects."
Tali Oliviera, Deloitte
"Excellent instructor. I really enjoyed the pace & delivery."
Deniz Koteen, Medimmune
"Great speaker with the right tempo. Open to new ideas and input. Lot of interation & interesting exercises."
Harry van Mierloo, Fox-IT
"Great course conducted by an engaging instructor. Excellent opportunity to learn and re-imagine existing knowledge."
Paul Medland, Green 4 Solutions
"Page is a really good and funny speaker. The course gives you really tips you can use immediately. There is a lot of content but it's worth following the course."
Lien Desomber, digicreate.be, Oostkamp Belgium
"I am not a designer but this course gave great insights! Very helpful! for our new global intranet."
Elly Breekman, ING Bank
"Page really know what he is talking about, gives reasonable answers to any questions, shows a lot of examples and is very interested in attendees work. Great class!"
Janina, Etas GMBH Germany
"Awesome. Answered so many questions we have been struggling with. Definitely feel have gained tools I can take back with me. Thank you so much!"
Christina Kerr, DNV GL
"Garrett did an excellent job engaging the audience and encouraging discussion. This course does an amazing job laying a foundation for application design."
Patrick Miller, Altair, Troy MI
"I really enjoyed Garrett. He's very funny, warm, engaging and made the whole process comfortable and feasible. Also his content delivery was fantastic. I was scrambling to scribble down all those nuggets of gold. There were rich contextual examples for every slide."
Angela Stucky, Chicago, Il
"This course is the link between theory and practice; This is where you learn to apply what you’ve learned in the theory-based courses to app design. I am grateful to have taken this course, as well as “The Human Mind and Usability” with Raluca Budiu. Raluca is extremely knowledgeable, works hard to ensure everyone has a solid understanding of the course material and to reinforce your learning in fun and clever ways."
Christopher Butler, Accenture
"To be honest this was one of the best virtual classes I took, in terms of content, quality, professionalism & support. I was recommended to take the course & i'll be recommending it for others for sure."
Khalid AlMushaddak, AEC - Advanced Electronics Company, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
"This course shows solutions and multiple ways to reach them."
Martin Kaethner, PCS Systemtechnik GmbH, Munich, Germany
"Excellent! Being in government, I was especially interested in the speaker's previous work with TurboTax forms and data collection tricky. Thanks!"
Hayley Moore
"Page was outstanding! Truly impressed with the course and the information covered. It was just the right amount of information per topic so we could cover a lot. The break out groups were a great way to practice what we learned (or already know). The documentation is really helpful and the everything overall was super organized. I am excited to take another course!"
Lauren Sherby, Spire Digital, Denver, CO, USA
"I loved the course! Large data visualization is very difficult, not as exciting as designing a mobile app. In fact, there were only small attendees. That's why I believe that taking this course is so valuable and sets me apart in a large group of UX designers because less UX designers have the knowledge of Application Design for Web and Desktop. Page is a great instructor that who taught very difficult things in easy-to-understand language. My understanding level of the course was the highest among the other courses I took because he explained the difficult large amount of content very clearly without any big words (I speak English as my second language). Thank you, Page! I'd LOVE to take his course again for sure!"
Designing applications for desktop and laptop computers poses special challenges: facilitating intricate tasks and workflows, enabling users to comprehend and manage complex data, and accommodating a rich variety of user roles, needs, and processes. Effective design and implementation of applications can have profound, positive implications on productivity, efficiency, accuracy, and satisfaction in a huge range of environments: creative studios, healthcare, home entertainment and productivity, manufacturing, call centers, supply-chain management, and many more.
In this seminar, we explore interaction-design patterns found in a range of desktop applications, from web-based configurators, to creative and productivity software, all the way to complex native desktop apps built for expert professionals with specialized domain experience. We review design considerations for cloud-based webapps and Software as a Service (SaaS), as well as native apps built for Windows and macOS. In addition, we demonstrate key workflow concepts for different task types, and we present guidelines for specific application types. We’ll cover how to understand users’ needs, goals, and tasks, and how to enable users to not only use your app immediately, but also learn advanced functionality over time.
Meredith Englund
Intronis
Please note: This course doesn’t cover the screen design or implementation of mobile-specific or tablet-specific apps. If you’re designing native apps for mobile devices such as the iPhone, Android, or iPad, consider our Mobile User Experience course. If you’re designing applications to be accessed from both desktop and mobile devices, then consider taking both this course (on the general application user experience independent of platforms) and the course on Scaling User Interfaces (on how to adapt the design across screen sizes using techniques such as responsive design and other multi-platform approaches).