Act 1 · Seeing · Course 02
The Journey
A beautiful screen can still be a miserable product. This course splits what you see from what you go through, and hands you the working vocabulary for the second half – journeys, heuristics, structure, and two tests you can run this week for free.
UI is the surface – type, colour, buttons, everything The Eye taught you to read. UX is the whole path someone walks – before, during and after the screen – and it's judged by different instruments – journey maps, flows, ten standard heuristics, and cheap reality checks that need no budget. The two halves bend each other constantly – beauty measurably changes how usable something feels, and usability constraints decide what beauty is allowed to do.
Walk away able to
- Route any design complaint to the right half – surface fix or path fix – before anyone debates solutions
- Choose journey map or user flow by the shape of the question, and know what each can't answer
- Name which of the ten heuristics a screen violates, instead of saying it feels off
- Call the structure-before-screens sequencing error out loud, with no design training required
- Run a real usability check this week with zero budget – five seconds, or a hallway, silently
The triage you leave with – five questions that route any design conversation
Five questions that route any design conversation to the right place – ask them in order and stop at the first yes:
- Which half is the complaint about? If it’s the surface (spacing, colour, clarity) it’s a UI conversation with a UI fix. If it’s the path or the problem being solved, it’s UX – and no amount of polish will fix it. See lesson 1.
- Is the question journey-shaped or flow-shaped? Churn, trust, cross-channel pain → journey map. One task, one product, screen by screen → user flow. Bringing the wrong artefact answers the wrong question precisely (lesson 2).
- Which heuristic is being violated? Swap “feels off” for a number – there are only ten (lesson 3).
- Has the structure been settled before the screens? If a feature conversation jumps straight to “what should it look like”, name the sequencing error – IA first (lesson 4).
- What’s the cheapest test that would settle this? Message and hierarchy doubts → a 5-second test. Flow doubts → a hallway test, watched in silence (lesson 5).
The five lessons build these in order. The quiz at the end checks the routing instinct, not definitions.
The lessons
Already seeing it? Take the quiz first – a pass marks the course done, no lessons required.
- 01Two lenses – What you see vs what you go throughUI is the surface, UX is the whole path – and they bend each other. Beauty measurably changes how usable something feels; usability decides what beauty is allowed to do.
- 02Zoom out, zoom in – Journeys and flowsA journey map is the whole relationship, feelings included; a flow is one task, click by click. The journey tells you what to fix – the flow tells you how.
- 03The critique vocabulary – Nielsen's ten heuristicsTen product-agnostic rules of thumb turn "this feels off" into "this breaks
- 04Structure before screens – Information architectureBefore anyone draws a screen, someone decides what exists, how it's grouped and what it's called. Get that wrong and no amount of beautiful screen design can fix it.
- 05The cheap tests – Evidence without a research budgetMatch the artefact to the conversation, then buy real evidence for free – five seconds for first impressions, a hallway for flows, and silence while they struggle.
Check your understanding
6 questions with distractors built from real misconceptions – each answer explains itself immediately. Nothing unlocks and nothing is gated; passing just marks the course done.