Teaching Module 2 of the University of Barcelona’s User Experience and Digital Design programme to the online group: UX fundamentals, dark patterns, web technology and artificial intelligence.
University of Barcelona · User Experience and Digital Design · Module 2 · Online group
Module 2 of User Experience and Digital Design at the University of Barcelona, online group.
How people read, decide and act on a screen, and the principles that make it easy for them.
The design tricks that push people into choices they did not mean to make, and how to spot them.
The web technology behind every interface, and what artificial intelligence changes in building it.
The University of Barcelona’s User Experience and Digital Design programme also runs an online group, and I teach its Module 2. The format changes, but the approach is the same one I bring to every classroom: real examples from more than twenty years in eCommerce and digital business, and a constant link between design theory and what actually happens inside a company.
We started with UX fundamentals: how people scan a page, what they expect to find and where, and how hierarchy, clarity and feedback turn a screen into something they can use without thinking about it.
Dark patterns came next, as the other side of the same knowledge. The principles that make an interface easy can also be used against the user: fake urgency, hidden costs, confirmshaming, cancellations buried three screens deep. Learning to name them is the first step to designing without them.
We closed with web technology and artificial intelligence: how HTML, CSS and the browser turn design decisions into working pages, and how AI tools now help generate layouts, code and variations in a fraction of the time, while someone still has to judge which ones respect the user.
“The best interface is the one people never have to think about, and never have to fight.”
Victor de la Fuente
An online store is a chain of small UX decisions: a menu label, a product photo, a form field, a button. More than twenty years in eCommerce taught me that understanding how those decisions are built on the web, and how easily they can turn manipulative, is what separates a good digital team from a busy one.
In eCommerce and digital business, brought into the UX and digital design classroom.
UX is often taught as research and wireframes, far away from the code. But every interface ends up as HTML, CSS and JavaScript running in a browser, on a real device, over a real connection. Designers who understand that material make better decisions, the same way an architect who understands concrete draws better buildings.
AI makes that understanding more valuable, not less. It can produce the material in seconds, dark patterns included. Knowing what good looks like, and what it should never look like, is the part no tool does for you, and it is what I try to leave in every class.
More from Victor de la Fuente: Teaching & Speaking
UX fundamentals explain why some screens feel effortless. Dark patterns use the same knowledge to work against the user, and naming them is the first step to avoiding them.
Web technology is the material every interface is made of, and AI now speeds up working with it. Deciding what deserves to ship remains a human job.
Learn more about user experience on Wikipedia.
