Visual Design at General Assembly Review

hey welcome back today I wanted to film a review video for the visual design course at General Assembly I just don't think that this course about a month ago and when I was looking for reviews of the course to know what to expect I really couldn't find any online I think I found one for the visual design course so I would enjoyed this video to help anybody that is going through the same process that as I was and trying to decide if it's something that would be right for them I also thought it would be nice to make this video well the course is still fresh in my mind to look back on and remember what I learned and my experience of the course this course was taught online the visual design course is only offered online where I live they offer the you UX design course in person sometimes but it's also more often taught online so online is really my only option for this the course was taught using zoom conferencing so when we would mean to have class we use zoom and then we use Google classroom to submit our homework assignments each week and then we also use slack messaging if you're familiar with that to chat with our classmates and ask the instructors any questions we used sketch to create the actual designs for the class sketch is a tool that was created for UI UX designers it's a lot more intuitive than Doby tools in my opinion people that kind of elected to use illustrator or photoshop to create their design instead of sketch ended up having a really hard time and wound up using touch anyway so i would recommend using the tool let they recommend they give you a 50% off discount for sketch but you have to ask for it it didn't seem like that was like public knowledge but that was offered so they do after that the final project of the class we were creating a mobile web landing page it was all more tired that you created a mobile view but i'd like to create a desktop view as well because i figured if i was actually doing this in real life I couldn't just present a mobile web version I would need to do desktop as well so I did both and it seemed like most people ended up doing both we had two prompts to choose from for made-up companies that needed us to design a landing page for them at the start of the class you picked from one of those prompts and then that was the project you were working on for the entirety of the class the structure of the class was that we spent one or two weeks at a time focusing on each phase of the design process we started with research and user interviews so interviewing the target market for the product or service that the company that you're designing a landing page for provides we found out pain points that the users had with similar products or services what they would like to see in a new one and what they liked about similar applications or products or services that they use then moved into design discovery and we created mood boards for the overall mood that we wanted our landing page to emulate and the design direction we did several iterations of these to get a lot of different ideas out there we talked a lot about accepting critique in this class and that was something that I wasn't expecting it's something that I you know experienced before first hand when I was studying fashion design in college and we learned about not only how to accept design critique but how to give design critique in a way that's beneficial to the person that you're taking so that you're speaking to how their design solves the problem or business problem that they're aiming to do versus just giving criticism based on your own opinion and how to accept that because design can be a very personal thing that you put your heart and soul into and how to you know accept those comments well if you're in a critique that is not going well and it's kind of way off the rails how to bring it in kind of bring everybody back in and really focus on the matter at hand versus I don't like this color and how to explain why your design solves the need then we learned about typography and this was my favorite part of the class learning about pipe hearings what looks good together why certain types and the most readable and a small size it might be best for a heading and as I go about my daily life I'm more able to pick out what funds are being used and be able to explain why one thought might be better than another for certain case why you want to use two together and things like that in that phase of we went on to create our wireframes for our landing page wireframes are a mock-up of the basic layout and functionality that your product or website will have this is just in black and white we started only using one typeface to keep it really simple and really focus on the layout that was able to do because working in software that's something that we do for clients is create wireframes so now I know how to do that the next phase was to learn about UX motion and prototyping so with this we showed how if you click one place on the landing page what does it take YouTube what does that workflow look like and we also learned about affordances so things that tell users exactly what to do on your page for example when you see something underlined you know but that's a link if you say a little magnifying glass you know that that's where you're going to be able to search the page and how do you combine affordances to make it very clear what you're supposed to do if a quiet is your customers left not knowing what to do on your page maybe you didn't use affordances correctly then we began to incorporate color into our design and part of learning about color was learning about maybe a compliance and ensuring that if you use one color font over a different colored background that will be legible by everybody and people who are colorblind when I'll be able to literally read your website at all if that color combination doesn't work well for them it's something that you don't designers having to consider but you definitely do I wanted to list some pros and cons for people that maybe think better in that way smooth the pros for the class I think if I think for some people the fact that it was online would be a pro because it allows for a more flexible schedule for higher taking the class if you are isolated at work you can just take it from your office you can take it from the comfort of comfort of your home versus having to maybe travel downtown to the classroom of perhaps the busy city that you live in another pro is that the teachers assistance we're available for office hours outside of the class and there are two teachers assistants and it was really cool that something like this offered additional time that you could spend one-on-one with the instructor another pro was that through the class you got to know all the tools that real designers out in the wild are using and feel equipped that you could do that too because you have all the tools at your disposal as they have another Provost classes that it makes you actively think about design while you're taking the class every day and think about the concepts after thinking the class I realize that I know more than I think I do the cons for me the fact that it was online was akkad I think I learned a lot better in person they tried to address that by breaking us into breakout groups within the video conference zoom conferencing allows for that functionality and that could work in a way but I think only if people are super comfortable speaking on video chat it was a little bit more awkward and less collaborative and so I think that you know it was a hindrance that it was on line another con is that because General Assembly is not an accredited university this course was taught pass/fail and you could get a certificate of completion from the course if your work day was paying for it and they needed proof that you had indeed completed the course for me who was paying for it up on pocket that maybe wasn't a huge motivator and I don't think I'm super motivated by pass/fail classes it just seemed pretty arbitrary if you go to all the classes and turn in most of your homework on time and do the final presentation you pass essentially so I would be this chorus of 4 out of 5 stars as my review I love the course when I was taking it I'm so glad that I chose to invest myself and learn a new skill I think that the reason for the 4 out of 5 is that it was online and you're going into it that that wasn't my preference so maybe you know that's my own fault but I didn't really get the feeling that I had gotten my money's worth it was pretty expensive for me at least it was $2,800 and I just didn't get that feeling at the end of the course I think it's a good thing but honestly as I prepared this video it made me realize that like I said I know more than I think I do and maybe the course was more beneficial than I originally thought and I think that maybe a little bit of a higher rating with that four out of five I hope that this was helpful to anybody who's considering taking the course if there's any questions and I didn't answer in this video feel free to comment below and I would be so happy to help anybody you know make their decision on whether or not to take it and thank you so much for watching be sure to give it a like if you liked it and subscribe so you can find out when I post other videos and I hope everybody has a great rest of your day

Channel: Mollie Dunn

Views: 4,262

Keywords: iMovie, general assembly, visual design, ui/ux design, review, online course, online course review, mobile design, web design, web designer, mobile app designer, prototyping, wireframing, wireframes, landing page, landing page design, sustainable fashion, design, GA denver, general assembly denver, visual designer, prototype, slow fashion blogger, fashion blogger, style, outfits, fashion

Id: MuehD0MyeS4

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 11 2018