Apprentices will learn skills to provide exceptional customer service, to handle difficult conversations and to respond to customer needs/wants.

Product design starts with understanding the needs of users, which is gathered through comprehensive research. Apprentices will learn the core principles of human-centered design and how to appropriately scope a design problem. Understand how to empathize with users when performing user research, including how to conduct in-depth interviews and create quantitative surveys, and use research data to uncover opportunities. You’ll then apply psychology to design sketches, keeping the end-user in mind.

Insights from research are inputs to the design sprint process of creating a validated design solution. In this project, apprentices will take a product idea through the design sprint process to come up with a user-tested low-fidelity prototype of your solution. Step 1: Set up the infrastructure to start the design sprint and synthesize research findings. Step 2: Go through ideation exercises to create paper sketches, and digital prototypes based off the paper sketches. Step 3: Conduct a usability test of your prototype with users to validate design assumptions and create a second iteration of the prototype based on user feedback.

A low-fidelity prototype allows an individual to validate that the core functionality of your solution addresses user needs, and the next step is to ensure the interface and experience of your solution engages and delights users as much as possible. In this project, apprentices enhance a low-fidelity prototype through the application of a data-enhanced high-fidelity design by submitting a midterm and a final project. For the midterm project, apprentices source visual design inspiration to develop a style guide and component library. Then, apprentices use the style guide and component library to create a high-fidelity mockup of your low-fidelity prototype. For the final project, you’ll improve the accessibility of your design and iterate the design based on engagement data and key performance indicators.