UXD Principles and Concepts - Week 1 - Reflective Journaling

I am repurposing this blog for my first online class in User Experience Design (UXD) at Kent State University, UXD-60001: UXD Principles and Concepts. Considering I haven't posted anything here in 12 years, I don't think it will make much difference to anyone. 

In my first week of this class, I have largely been getting used to the whole scenario of taking an online college course. The last time I was in grad school, earning my MLIS from Kent State's School of Library and Information Science, it was the early 1990s, so all of this is a new experience for me. One interesting irony being that we are using websites to learn, essentially, how to make better websites; I have definitely already been feeling like some UX principles that we are learning about could have been better applied in the design of the websites we are using to learn them. 

Since this is the first week of the first course in a structured 2-year program, we have been concentrating on learning some of the very basic concepts that are dealt with in the UX field. How the form of an object can communicate to its user the ways in which that object can or should be used, and some of the ways in which this kind of communication can be better facilitated through better design. To understand this, we've been learning about how people acquire knowledge about the things they deal with, and how to plan for "meeting people where they are" with regards to making what is being designed easy, intuitive, and satisfying for people to use. 

I have already started to notice that I am noticing things more in my every-day activities where UXD could be applied to make things easier & better to use, or the differences in design of various websites and other objects that make some easier/better to use than others, and collecting potential helpful resources for future projects in this field. I am looking forward to getting more deeply into the inner workings of the various stages of UX Design, and how research in this field is done. I am also hoping that my abilities to cope with all of the online educational website things will quickly improve!