Why I joined ‘Interaction Design Foundation(IxDF)’ community
It was the start of 2017 when I first heard about Interaction Design Foundation(IxDF). I was in college, pursuing my Bachelor of Design(B.Des) degree. It was my 4th semester. I’m not sure how I got to know about the IxDF, but I still remember one testimonial on the IxDF website, which reads- “A goldmine of information on interaction design” by Don Norman. I recently had finished reading “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman and had researched a bit about him. I was very impressed by him, and when I saw his testimonial on the IxDF website, I thought it’s(IxDF learning platform) something that one should not ignore if you want to be a UX Designer.
I started following the sites for their curated & open-source articles. The articles were fascinating and insightful. Then slowly, IxDF became one of my goto sites in case of any confusion, doubts, or looking for something related to UX Design on the internet, and it’s still one of my favourites.
Then, I started thinking of becoming an IxDF member to access its curated courses on various UX Design topics fully. But it couldn’t happen until the Covid’19 pandemic struck humanity. At this time, I was working with a multinational design consultancy firm, and due to pandemic, we started working from home. So, I had some free time, and I thought of investing that into self-learning.
I still remember my 1st course was “Psychology of e-Commerce: How to sell online”. The course was so good that I started recommending IxDF to all my friends whose background was in Design or who were interested in e-commerce. After going through multiple courses and completing them at my own pace, I realised that It was a mistake not to take the IxDF subscription when I was formally learning Design back in my college day. Every course was so interesting, intriguing and insightful that after completing each course, I felt that I have grown as a designer, I am more mature now, and I felt a little more confident.
The best part of IxDF courses is that every course will start with basics; it will have relevant research and findings from cognitive psychology, human behaviour, and sociology coupled with the latest trends & technology. It makes the IxDF course balanced, relevant, timeless and gives you a solid understanding of the subject matter. And to surprise, you can start any number of course at any time at your own pace. In addition, every course will have a combination of video & readable contents.
In my view, the followings are the benefits of becoming an IxDF member:
- I can’t say the best because I have not explored all the available Design learning platform on the internet, but I can say this- Every course is fantastic & insightful. They have something new to offer even if you are an existing practitioner of Design. But what I loved is the beautifully curated timeless knowledge(relevant research from the field of psychology, sociology & technology) in each course.
- To date, IxDF offers 30+ courses on UX design covering topics such as Design Thinking, Usability Engineering, User Research, Usability Testing, Interface Design, UX Management, Emotional Design, Accessibility, Information Visualisation, Service Design, etc.
- You will get an industry-recognised certificate for each course you are completing that you can add to your LinkedIn profile.
- You will be getting the opportunity to be a part of the IxDF international design community and IxDF local groups, which organises Design-meetups time-to-time.
I consider myself fortunate as I went to one of the most prestigious colleges in my country, which also happened to be the 1st college in the country which started a dedicated design department for undergrad in 1997. Therefore, In my view, learning Design is not like learning other disciplines like humanities, engineering, or natural sciences. Design has the studio concept, not the traditional classroom concept. No doubt IxDF is a great learning platform for Design, but I think they have not incorporated the studio culture in the forum yet. Certainly, they have tried by giving peer discussion forum at the end of every lesson, but I think that’s not enough. I understand it’s challenging, but this is the one area as a member of the IxDF community; I would love to see more improvements.
In nutshell, IxDF is a great platform for Design related conetnts and I would recommend IxDF to anyone wanting to learn UX Design or pursue their career in the ever-growing field of UX Design or already working in this field and have a desire to be a differentiator in their design team/company.
If you are thinking of joining the IxDF community then click on my invite link below and you will get 2 months and I will get 1 month of free IxDF membership :)
