UX/UI Design
Semester II · BCA 155 · 3 credits
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The syllabus asks for
- What is UX? What is UI?
- Why design matters
- Core UX principles
- The core disciplines of UX
- Types of user interface
- Properties of good UX/UI design
- UX/UI tools
- Seeing the ideas: interface types, the honeycomb, contrast, the UX loop and a good form
Key points
- UX is the entire experience; UI is its visible and tangible layer. UX designers work on research, flows and structure; UI designers on visual and component design.
- The three guiding principles are usability, accessibility and simplicity, supported by consistency, feedback, affordance and error prevention.
- UX has six disciplines that feed each other in a loop.
- Interfaces range from CLI to GUI, menu-driven, voice and conversational; the right type depends on users and context.
- Good designs are useful, usable, findable, credible, accessible, desirable and valuable.
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The syllabus asks for
- The UX design process
- Mind maps
- UX research
- User personas
- User journey maps
- Ideation techniques
- Seeing the ideas: the process, mind map, sample sizes, persona, journey map and Crazy 8s
Key points
- UX design is an iterative loop; user-centred design involves users at every stage.
- A mind map explores a problem; research methods (interviews, surveys, competitive analysis) provide evidence, qualitative and quantitative.
- Personas and journey maps turn research into shared, human, visual artefacts; opportunities appear at the pain points.
- Ideation produces many options using mood boards, brainstorming and sketching before anything is built.
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The syllabus asks for
- Graphical and web user interfaces
- Interaction styles
- Principles of UI design
- The UI design process
- Human considerations in interface and screen design
- Technological considerations in interface design
- Seeing the ideas: interaction styles, Fitts and Hick, touch targets, the process, breakpoints and response time
Key points
- GUIs use windows, icons, menus and a pointer; web UIs add browser conventions, unknown screens and scanning behaviour.
- Five interaction styles each fit a task and user: command line, menus, forms, direct manipulation, anthropomorphic.
- UI principles stress consistency, feedback, affordance, error prevention and control; Fitts's and Hick's laws quantify pointing and choosing.
- The UI process runs from understanding and structure through wireframes, visual design, prototype, test and hand-off.
- Design must respect human limits (perception, memory, attention, motor skill, culture) and technical limits (devices, platforms, performance, network, accessibility technology).
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The syllabus asks for
- Menus
- Windows
- Screen-based controls
- Graphics, icons and images
- Seeing the ideas: menus, windows, controls, icons and images
Key points
- Menus let users recognise commands; format them consistently, keep them short and well grouped, and pick the type — bar, pull-down, cascading, pop-up, tear-off, iconic — by the task.
- Windows may be tiled, overlapping or cascading; primary, secondary windows and dialog boxes serve different roles; modal dialogs should be rare.
- Controls are operable, text-entry, selection or other; choosing the proper control for the task prevents errors and speeds use.
- Icons and images must be meaningful, consistent, accessible and technically optimised.
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The syllabus asks for
- Page layout
- Colour
- Font selection and typography
- Screen size and responsive design
- Visual hierarchy
- Navigation
- Seeing the ideas: grids, Gestalt, colour, type, hierarchy and navigation
Key points
- Layout uses grids, reading patterns, Gestalt principles and white space to make structure visible.
- Colour schemes are built from a primary, secondary, neutral and semantic palette; contrast must meet WCAG ratios and colour must never be the sole signal.
- Typography chooses one or two legible families, readable sizes, line height, line length and a consistent type scale; Devanagari needs extra leading.
- Responsive design combines fluid grids, flexible media and media queries, designed mobile-first.
- Visual hierarchy ranks elements through alignment, colour, contrast, proximity, size, texture and time.
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The syllabus asks for
- From idea to product: the fidelity ladder
- Wireframes
- Prototyping
- UX storyboarding
- Transitions and animation in prototypes
- Creating a simple clickable prototype (the lab method)
- Seeing the ideas: sketches, wireframes, prototypes, storyboards and motion
Key points
- Wireframes show structure and priority without style; mock-ups add the visual design; prototypes make them interactive so they can be tested.
- Low-fidelity prototypes (paper, grey boxes) test concepts early and cheaply; high-fidelity ones test visuals and detailed interaction late.
- Prototyping tools such as Figma link frames with triggers, actions and transitions; software prototypes may be throwaway or evolutionary.
- Storyboards tell the user's story in context and reveal needs that screens alone hide.
- Animation should orient, give feedback and focus attention, with sensible duration and easing and respect for accessibility.
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The syllabus asks for
- Why and when to evaluate
- Usability testing
- Analysing test results
- Evaluation through expert analysis and user participation
- The DECIDE framework
- Heuristic evaluation
- Task analysis and performance metrics
- Seeing the ideas: tests, numbers, heuristics and task models
Key points
- Evaluate iteratively: formative evaluation improves a design while it is made, summative evaluation judges the result.
- Usability tests observe representative users on realistic tasks; moderated tests give depth, unmoderated tests give scale; five users per round find most problems.
- Analyse with success rate, time, errors, SUS and severity-rated findings, then recommend fixes by priority.
- Expert methods (heuristic evaluation, walkthroughs) and user methods complement each other; paradigms range from quick-and-dirty to field studies and predictive models.
- DECIDE structures an evaluation plan; Nielsen's ten heuristics structure an expert review.
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The syllabus asks for
- Voice and NLP-based interfaces
- Command and control versus conversational UI
- Personas, avatars, actors and video games
- Speech recognition technology
- Dialog management
- Designing for wearable devices
- Seeing the ideas: voices, speech, dialogs, characters and wearables
Key points
- VUI and NLP-based UIs give hands-free and natural interaction but hide their options and suffer from recognition and ambiguity errors.
- Command-and-control uses fixed commands and is reliable; conversational UIs use intents, slots and context and are flexible but less predictable.
- A designed persona gives a voice or chatbot a consistent personality; avatars and game-style characters can engage users when their realism matches their ability.
- Speech recognition converts speech to text through acoustic and language models; Nepali is a low-resource language with higher error rates.
- Dialog management tracks state, chooses the next action, confirms risk, and repairs errors with a human fallback.
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The paper
TU assessment: 60% final examination set by the university, 40% internal (assignments, lab work, attendance). Confirm the split in your college's notice.
Where the hours go
Teaching hours are the board's guide to how much of the paper each part carries.
- Unit 4 · UI Components12 h
- Unit 3 · User Interface Design6 h
- Unit 5 · UI Design Considerations6 h
- Unit 7 · Design Evaluation6 h
- Unit 1 · Introduction to UX and UI4 h
- Unit 2 · User Interaction Design and UX Research4 h