In this course, you'll take all that you've done so far, and put it all together into a significant, meaningful project that you can use to demonstrate what you've learned and what you can do. You've learned a lot. The basic principles of user-centered design, how to take a design concept and test it with users to see if it works, how to take a concept and develop personas and scenarios to give that concept substance, and how then to sketch, wire-frame, and prototype that concept. You've learned how to uncover user needs and organize them into a structure that will guide your design, and you've learned how to use large-scale methods like surveys, analytics, and remote testing to understand what users think and how they respond to particular products once they're released out into the wild. In the capstone, you'll choose a design problem and dive into it. You'll apply your needs-finding skills to gain a better understanding of who your users are, and what they need. You'll apply your design and prototyping skills to come up with and make material your best ideas about what could address your users needs. You'll use the evaluation methods you've learned including user testing and heuristic evaluation to assess and improve your design. At the end, you will produce a prototype of a system that addresses your target users problems and that you can use to showcase your new and improved UX research and design skills. This capstone has been designed for learners who have completed all of the other courses in the UX Research and Design Specialization. If you haven't completed the other UX specialization courses, you should go back to the earlier courses and review them before undertaking the UX capstone. We've structured this capstone into five milestones. These milestones gives you an opportunity to put your skills into practice with a real world design challenge that you select. In each of the milestones, we'll give you specific instructions about the activities to perform, and how to document the work that you do. All of the work you do for the milestones will contribute to the final report that you will submit when you complete the capstone. The milestone documents themselves however, will not be submitted or graded. We have however, provided you with a way to get feedback on your work from your fellow learners. The course includes a gallery tool that will allow you to post your work, and ask for feedback. It will also allow you to see examples of your fellow learners work as you provide feedback to them. To be successful in this course, do the work that's laid out in the milestones, share your work in the gallery, provide feedback to help other learners as they help you, and remember that all of the work in the milestones will be required for successfully completing your report at the end. Along the way, you'll also be quizzed on essential material that you would have learned in the earlier courses. The quizzes make up a small percentage of the grade, but they will be very helpful for helping you review and refresh your knowledge as you work on the milestones. Your final report will be graded. It will be graded by peers like you, and you'll be asked to grade other learners as well. An important ingredient for success in this capstone is to participate in giving and receiving feedback in the course gallery. There's no guarantee that you'll receive feedback on things that you post in the gallery, and this is why we encourage you to be generous with feedback for others. If everybody participates in giving feedback, then everybody will benefit by receiving feedback from the other learners. So think about other learners like you and share your thoughts on their work, and that will help make sure that you receive the benefit of other's feedback as well. To succeed in this capstone, we recommend that you allocate an effort of 10 hours a week, sometimes even more, in order to produce a quality prototype for your final report. Now, if you have less time than that available, do remember that the course is self-paced, and you can spend more time on the milestones that are trickier for you and they can take longer to complete. If you ever have questions, if you can't remember how to do something, or you're not sure what a milestone is asking for, we encourage you to go back, and review the earlier course material that refers to that particular method or process. One last thing that you should keep in mind, is that anything you produce in this class will be seen by others. It will either be seen in the gallery or it will definitely be seen as part of your final project report which will be reviewed by your peers. So keep this in mind as you select your design challenge. We definitely recommend selecting a real world project that mean something to you, but only select a project that you are comfortable with sharing publicly. I'm excited and I hope that you are too. So let's get going.
