The Human Mind and Usability

"Great instructor. Engaging. Funny. Not fatiguing even though it was so info heavy. So good! Thank you!"

Sierra Jahoda, Symantec

If knowing the psychological basis behind effective UX design is important to you — this course is mandatory. I love everything about it."

Elliott Maddox, The Yenze Group, Atlantla, GA

"Great class, I learned so much! Lots of psych concepts/principles and I was really glad we had a few minutes toward the end to go back thorugh on our own to see what we'd like to apply in our own work. Highly recommend this class!"

Rachel Hart, Digital Service Georgia

"This was my favorite class, even thought the other classes were all awesome and probably had a bigger impact on my actual day to day."

Josh Mace, SwampFox

"This course is an excellent supplement to any UX professional's skillset."

Chloe Cooke-Warren, InMotion Software

"I recommend this for everyone. I have clients that need to know there is an actual science behind the decisions we present. This course enlightens you to that science."

Dennis Driscoll, (add)ventures

"I'm really happy I followed this course. There are a lot of scientific proven things which help to convince people to change the strategie of how we do it now. I really like it that a lot of the content get rehearsed throughout the lesson. Maria is a really good speaker! There was a lot of content in the course but we never had to rush to get finished on time."

Lien Desombre, digicreate.be

"I think this talk covered several topics that I already knew, but its very interesting to discover the psychology / reason behind. It's also a great way to form arguments / reasonings for discussions with clients."

Rebecca, Paperkite, Wellington, New Zealand

"Very interesting and I can see how it ties together with other courses I've taken and how I can use it in my work. Really nice framing at the end about how far we can push tech when people are always behind."

Mary Butler, Webfactor

"Understanding your user's thoughts and emotions is a huge thing that gets overlooked and I really enjoyed the deep dive into the subject. This course will be extremely helpful for improving my design workflow to incorporate some thoughts around what a user is thinking/feeling."

Bob Burdekin, Allegis Group, Baltimore, MD

"Maria gave a good insight and argument I can use on a daily basis."

Geert van Grunderbeek, Kunstmaan, Leuven Belgium

"Being a psychology student can be hard as a UX Designer, this course helped me bridge the gap between my passion for UX and my final years of study at UBC."

Timothy, Red Academy

"Fun learning taught at a good pace. Great speaker using good examples and tests to keep you on your toes."

Abul Siddique, Salesforce

"Like the applied psychology elements. Touched on a wide range of topics from IA to UI in a structured way."

Victoria Bejsson, Sweden

"Great course because it gives you a scientific approach to real world problems related to human behaviour."

Ramoloa Buondestio, Gruppa HTML

"Excellent speaker with humor and audience interaction. Our mind is the only real user interface, so this class is very relevant for that."

Harry van Mierloo, Fox - IT

"Wow! This course nailed all the aspects designers need to understand the way our complicated minds work. Presentation was very engaging."

Nicole Maynard, Hyatt

"Amazing session. Understanding the psychology of the users will surely help me create better products and designs for my customers."

Tiffany Allen Hampton, Ounce of Prevention Fund

"A great course to help grasp the principals of human covered design and considerations of psychology when designing usable interfaces."

Graham Ayne, Beyond Trust

"This was a amazing deep dive into the psychology of design without being overwhelmed. I feel empowered to be a better designer."

Kimberly Thomas, Booz, Allen Hamilton

"This was a great reinforcement of what I do now. I appreciate the level of detail and the specific examples selected to describe the content. This course makes cognitive psychology useful and powerful when paired up with usability best practices and I would recommend it to anyone looking to validate all of their usability learning in a fun and interactive way."

Taylor Shireman, Southwest Airlines

"An impressively exhaustive overview of UX psychology and a must for any T-shaped designer."

Jeffrey Calhoun, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, USA

"I really appreciated the many up-to-date real examples. Fast paced, but the pace was great. The day went by quickly, but I feel as though I learned a lot."

Anne Richardson, StudioNorth

"Phenomenal class! Great delivery and content was a great mix of theory with rich real world examples. Delivery was engaging and felt genuine. Loved the class."

Chris Ciesiecski, GE Digital

"Loved the examples and the little excercises. They helped reinforce the course material."

Roderick Huzing, Legal Intelligence, Rotterdam

"I liked how the theory is connected to some real examples (websites, as well tekst/images/colors). The exercises are great. It's nice to experience sometimes yourself (from user p.o.v.). Raluca did a great job, speaks well, nice tempo and good attention for the class."

Rutger Dragstra, Factor Tachtig

"Fantastic overview of the hard science that drives the behavior in our field."

Brett Rowley, Rapid Miner

"This class was a really great one-day deep dive into how we can leverage foundation psychology for building better products."

Brian Helton, CFA Institute

"It's great to get a background on psychological science which can be applied to interaction design."

Felipe Heredia, Bankia, Madrid, Spain

"This was the best course I took all week. All of the examples given I felt like I could actually apply to the websites I work on."

Jenna Calloway, Red Door Interactive

"Awesome, inspiring, brilliant. Wish I had gone for the whole week. Next time I will, no question!"

Gabriel Marley, BuildDirect

"This course was extremely interesting and engaging with fascinating content and professional delivery. I enjoyed the poll experiments/demonstrations, the ability to chat live to interact with exercises and the real life examples used throughout the course."

Cara Briscoe, Department for Environment and Water, Adelaide, Australia

"Fascinating review of the psychology and motivation behind users and their decisions. I would highly recommend!"

Lenka Keston, UX Designer, Appfolio, Inc.

"This was the most interesting and applicable course I've taken thus far. Very well presented, organized and structured. Almost everything was new knowledge to me. thank you!"

Kari Christie, Arizona State University

"Thank you! I love the way you established yourself as a true UX leader with your experiences in the beginning and then went on to use your own research stories to illuminate concepts as the day proceeded."

Nik Bresnick, Capital One, SF

"This is a great course for someone to start to understand how psychology affects the way users perceive your interface. I came out of the course with a practical list of guidelines."

Giovanna Coridoni, The Dow Chemical Co.

"Great insight into the human mind and helpful tips for improving my designs. Thanks!"

Scott Benson, Benson IDX

"Great perspective and look into how people think and perceive features/content on a site."

Cindi Brinson, Vulcom

"It's clear that Raluca is extremely knowledgable and offers a breadth of detailed information for you to absorb."

Kyle, Expedia

"Great way to understand how user perceive, understand and react to design or object around you. Basic entry guide to human psychology in design. Enjoy the overall session with great instructor and moderator."

Mohd Wardi Iswali, HP Inc, Singapore

"Awesome course, I really liked the approach and the way information was shared. A lot of real examples, make it super easy to understand the concepts, and also the short practices helped to comprehend best practices for our projects. The content covered many topics but was structured in a way easy to understand and follow."

Esteban Angulo, TINYpulse, HCMC, Vietnam

"I truly did benefit from this course because the topic is not technical, but very important and essential in understanding how the human mind and usability need to be linked together."

Elizabeth Chan, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada

"The samples presented during the class opened a whole world of understanding on how we process/interpret information on a daily basis. Would definitely recommend!!"

Aimee Cruz, Brooklyn

"This course was very interesting from the start - to see and understand how psychology should be applied to UX and how individual characteristics and experiences affect perception of a particular design or process. For me, this course further solidified the importance of usability testing and the use of personas to help guide the design process."

Alexander Fredette, Salem, NH, USA

"I've been to 20 UX conferences in the last 5 years... This has been my #1 from all. Fascinating stuff."

Steve Scasamora, Sophos

"Although I often give my own talk on UX and cognitive psychology, and I am very knowledgeable about perception, memory and the attributes, I still learned so much but I can see not only at my own workplace but in my teaching practice as well."

Devin Harold, Rise Interactive

"Great content delving into the psychology of usability. Content is timeless and will be useful for many years to come."

Aunroo P. Kalle, Elastic Care

"I enjoyed this course and found the subject interesting and helpful."

Elise St. Clair, Zillow

"Garrett is an engaging and seasoned instructor and presenter which makes for interesting information. I'm sure he's taught this class countless times but it felt fresh and like it was being taught for the first time. Great variety of case studies in particular!"

Felicity Quadri, Compare the Market

"Another really engaging class that explained, elaborated on and put a name to psychological concepts that I kind of knew and used but it just took it to the next level."

Helen Whittaker, Bank West

"More understanding how the good design must be created and I can evaluate the digital product in my company more detailed."

Widhia, PT Telekom Indonesia, Bandung Indonesisa

"This is an interesting course. There are many practical concepts and help me to understand better what people have in their heads. Definitely enjoyed the course."

Soh Shi Qui, Housing and Development Board, Singapore

"Great course! Helps you understand why people do what they do."

Lavish Lalwani, Norbit Software

"Absolute must-learn, surprising facts that can fit any product or websites UX game were covered. Instructor delivered the content in an engaging, articulate way. Highly recommend."

Ayca Ipakcan, Yoghurt Digital

"This felt like vital context for all other UX topics. Really enjoyed, our instructor was exceptionally professional and competent!"

Clint Nieman, Legacy Foundry

"I am very passionate about this topic, and I loved this course. Thank you!"

Ramon Gilabert

"Really liked this course, good high quality speaker and interesting content. I would recommend this! Changes your way of working."

Maaike Bruggeling, CGI, Rotterdam Netherlands

"Good reminder we are not the user. The information density of this course is just right, covering principles illustrated by examples that will convince even the most stubborn manager. Cheers!"

Gustav Moorhouse

"A great course, enjoyable and informative.
I've been using some of the principles covered and the course has taught me there is real evidence and has justified my practice. Thank you!"

James Delaney, Sitekit

"It is really enlightening to find out why users react in certain ways and it will make it a lot easier to communicate usability issues to stakeholders and suggest solutions."

Hanna, Spreadshirt, Leipzig Germany

"Very interesting stuctures and a revealing one as well. New info was delivered to us in a very organized way, after the conference some user actions having a more accurate explanation. Super documented!"

Toader Antonia, Steelcase, Romania

"Lots of useful information about how users think and why they would mistakes, and best way to try to avoid them."

Klaudia Kovacs, Bossa studios

"What a great, informative and super applicable course!"

Mika Pritchard-Berman, Google

"This was very informative for me as primarily a graphic designer in my organization. This more in-depth psychological UX information will be a great and unexpected take away for my team."

Brian Franklin, Brushlight Studios

"Lots of content to assimilate but everything is SUPER interesting."

Cathering Girard, Absdunet

"Very interesting session. I learned lots of information I am excited about sharing with my teams. I wish all members of my team could take this course."

Daniel Olson, Thompson Reuters

"Good class for people who are curious about how to understand the people they are designing to or working with — also themselves! The cheat sheet is helpful to keep in mind these aspects while solving user problems and framing the reasoning."

Judie, SAP

"For anyone who is involved in design, product or any other related discipline, this is an extremely informative, fun, and sure-to-be-useful course."

Matt Marino, Sovos

"I like that this helps give me the vocabulary to make my arguments to the importance of UX. I feel like I have a sound, educated foundation to speak from."

Nicole Brennan, ICF

"This course gave me the knowledge and insight into how people think. With this knowledge, I can continue to build empathy for my users, and can better anticipate what they will do and why. Fantastic course about the instersection of phychology, human behavior and UX."

Kaitlyn Malson, Gordon Food Service

"This was awesome! Very engaging, informative and importantly fun!"

Cole Anderson, Northrop Grumman

"Tons of great insights. I look forward to bringing them back to the real world."

Jason Bay, CMFG

"Very comprehensive, but only as much as it needs to be. All worthwhile and useful."

Jordan Seegmiller Domo

"Solid basic you can apply to the work you do right away!"

Cathlee Hagan, Quicken Loans

"The course is very complete. It covers every aspect of the user behavior with a lot of real examples and research."

Mariana, iFood

"Just the right amount of information to activity ratio. I learned a lot but wasn't overloaded. I was engaged the whole time. Love love love all the use cases."

Sabaah Moffedi

"This is a great course. I've had some exposure to this in the past, but this is a fantastic refresher of the material, a great validation of my perceptions and plenty of new material, supplemented with lots of real world examples."

Brian Carroll, GSFCS

"It was really awesome to take a course on human mind from an expert in the field."

Heather Brown, Becu

"It is a fun and insightful course and yet not too overwhelming. It makes me think better when designing my work."

Leong Wai Yee, Ministry of Manpower, Singapore

"It gives you itchy feet, and the desire to do something — get on and sort stuff out."

Simon Phillips, Standard Life

"Raluca was an excellent speaker, and she managed to cover a lot of material effectively, in just one day. Raluca used activities like polls and bingo to reinforce our learning, which was a great way to keep everyone engaged, and being sent into a 'breakout room' during group activities and breaks meant we still got to network and socialise, despite the conference being delivered remotely. I feel much more confident now in my understanding of many of the topics the course addressed."

Sophie Keren, Department for International Trade, UK

"Great class for all designers and my favourite class and instructor so far! It is a good class in terms of understanding who we are designing for and why people behave or interact the way they do with user interfaces. Raluca made the virtual class fun and it made me retain the concepts by heart."

Stephanie O. Chan, Hong Kong

"Our brain is really an amazing thing! Shout out to Raluca for making this subject even more interesting with her experience and exercises! Loved the experience ! :)"

Inês Avelar Silca, Lisbon, Portugal

"Hats off to Raluca for THE perfect course: relevant content, clear structure, perfect pace, with activities that helped review concepts in a fun engaging way."

Elisa Ferroni, Bristol UK

"Best lecture I have ever attended, and I feel it will be the most useful one in my career going forward! All humans should attend this :) It did give me a very long reading list though, and I've read dozens of behavioural economics and cognitive psychology books already!"

Sophia Exintaris, Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

"All content was credible and delivered with authority. The use of examples throughout was the main reason I found this to be better than most training sessions."

Fred Constable, DIT, UK

"I loved the amount of content that was covered in this course! It was really well delivered at a comfortable speed using comprehensible terms. This course was really well put together and I would highly recommend it! Thanks Maria!!"

Dean Campbell, Catalyst Advertising Inc., Toronto, Canada

"Maria does an awesome job in explaining principles of cognitive psychology and how they apply to our every day life and website applications. Her presentation style is amazing: engaging, kind, and professional. I loved the visualization of the material and the different mediums used to engage with the content. Definitely would recommend this course!"

Daniela Von Kameke, Textron Aviation

"Excellent insight to how design drives user actions. I learned techniques I can start applying immediately to my work."

Jason N., Data Basis, Albuquerque/USA

"Great course that sums up HCI, human factors, and cognitive psychology as they relate to design. Come prepared with multiple pens and a snack, because it's a lot. But I would highly recommend this course."

Alex, DOD, Virginia, United States

"A great review of key topics related to psychology in HCI."

Lauren Guldan, Verizon, NYC

"I’ve had Maria as an instructor in a live conference before and she is always so good. She did not disappoint this time. Thanks for sharing the knowledge!"

Tia, Web.com, St. Augustine, FL, USA

"Maria made it so easy to follow and understand the material even though I was virtually taking the course with a 12 hour time difference. Before I knew it, it was already 5 AM!"

Sabrina Pardus, Bank of New York Mellon, Singapore

"Great course which covers a wide range of topics and principles of the human mind with some superb real world of examples of these been applied in apps and software. Speaker's delivery was very clear and precise so it was easy to keep track and keep engaged!"

Nick Hoyle, Utiligroup, Southport

"I actually preferred the remote format. The speaker and the person running the technology did a FABULOUS job with the breakout rooms. It all ran very efficiently. Very impressed!"

Karen E.

"If you're at all interested in understanding the psychological underpinnings of how and why people think the way they do (and you SHOULD be interested!), then this course will give you a wealth of information to help you become a better researcher, designer and all-round empathetic human being. I would highly recommend it to anyone, regardless of their role or industry."

Nigel Moyes, Tundra Interactive, Melbourne, Australia

"Great and educational course and instructor!"

David Bilbo, Acworth

"From the beginning, you can see that this is a high quality course, with a lot of important information, guidelines, and real life examples!"

Marina Bošnjak, VNTRS Consulting AB, Stockholm

"Great insight into how our minds work: loved the interaction and real-world examples."

Sarah Lyle, Northrop Grumman, Battle Creek

"As a researcher, it's critical that I am able to understand not only what a user does but why. This class helped me understand some of the "whys" at a deeper, more scientific level, I will be using what I learned to not only conduct better research but to guide and direct design efforts."

Erica Isaacs, Nemera, Chicago

"Yes, I would recommend it. Valuable information applicable in real situations and presented in a way that is understandable and memorable."

Danielle Sessa, Medicines for Malaria Venture, Geneva, Switzerland

"I learnt a lot about the theory behind designs decisions which will help me when communicating to clients and getting buy in to the UX process."

Charlotte Tracey, Fathom, Belfast

"I would tell them that it is a very interesting and insightful course. If your a UX/UI designer, web designer, graphic designer or a front-end developer, you can benefit from this course because it really helps you understand how users and customers minds work and how the human mind was constructed to view, retain, and engage with certain information and imagery and how that impacts how we create and interpret websites and applications."

Justyn Webb, The General, Nashville, USA

"The course was very well organized. It covered a variety of topics: some familiar ones in the first half to refresh my memory of topics I've come across over the years (e.g. Gestalt Principles), and then some unfamiliar more advanced ones in the end. It was nice to have those interactive polls and quizzes to keep us engaged. In the end, our instructor use a single analogy to tie together many of the concepts, which was a very elegant way to summarize the presentation."

Vincent Lo, Vancouver, Canada

"The course was very well structured, with concepts explained in a story telling method that made them easy to absorb. Key points were further explored through interactive exercises and mini quizzes to reinforce learning."

Rohit Shukla, Black Pepper Limited, Leamington Spa; United Kingdom

"As a designer with no psychology background, this course does a deep dive into how to apply principles to everyday design and improve the usability of the products. This course gives a great understanding of how people think nad explains the limitations of human brain which people often forget when designing things."

Vamsi Batchu, Truist Bank, Atlanta, USA

"I would highly recommend it because it helped me get a better vocabulary for some design decisions I inherently knew but didn't know how to explain."

Eric Lim, Orange, CA, USA

"I liked having the principles reinforced with examples and that I was reminded of the psychology principles behind a lot of the observations and behaviors we experience on a daily basis as UX practitioners."

Hannah Coley, INCATech, Colorado Spring, USA

"There were so many actionable take aways from this class. The way it was presented and the way the slide deck was organized explained the concepts and then showed them in use in the real world."

Rebecca Jankowski, EnergyCAP, USA

"Fantastic presenter, helpful content and engaging presentation. I will seek other courses taught by Garrett. His enthusiasm is contagious!"

Lynn Newton, University of Tennessee Chattanooga, Chattanooga

"The course is a very solid foundation of usability concepts and how different characteristics and factors of the human mind play out when interacting with products, I liked particularly that it gave a 360-degree view of how the human mind works and how it affects perceived usability."

Paola Molina, Friedrichshafen

"If you want to truly begin to understand how your users think, perceive and behave including yourself, this is the class to take!"

Jonny Butler, Mile Two, LLC, Dayton, Ohio, USA

"I definitely benefitted from this course because of the great information about how people perceive, process and respond to external stimuli as it applies to websites. I plan to use my newfound knowledge to make better designs, because I'm better equipped to match those designs with user needs and expectations. Thank you!"

Jo Marsicano, Hennepin County, Minnesota (government organization), Minneapolis, MN USA

"I would recommend, although theoretical, many practical examples of interfaces and resources to further deepen the knowledge were presented. Very useful for any UX designer to know these basic principles."

Joana Beltrão Garrido, Talkdesk, Coimbra, Portugal

"Everything about the Human Mind and Usability class was done well and professionally. It was high value for the time and cost. During Networking Roulette someone told us that this was their favorite course, having taken it several years ago they still were drawing from it. It lived up to those expectations."

John Quillen, Mobiquity, Malvern, PA USA

"I loved the comprehensive nature of the course, the numerous practical examples from across different industries and the instructor' fun, engaging and participatory approach!"

Maysa Zorob, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, New York, USA

"Fantastic. Thoroughly recommended, packed with detailed examples and good tips and reading material, wonderfully presented."

Justin Beasley, Hutchison 3G UK, Reading, UK

"I would definitely recommend this course for any UX designer. For those new to UX, maybe taking a general education course before this one would help. I really enjoyed the up-to-date examples and conversation with the participants in the chat."

Gabrielle Ciminello, Corporate One FCU, Columbus, Ohio, USA

"I think the content of the course has been so valuable! Also, the way of managing the class has been very nice and for the very first time, I didn't struggle or worried about being remote in attending a course."

Val, Docebo, Milano - Italy

"I enjoyed learning about psychology and applying this information to research and design. Even though we understand some of how our minds work with applications and websites, there is always something new to learn, and it is important to keep updated on new findings."

Karen Schwartz Decker, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, San Francisco

"I really enjoyed the class. It was actually what it promised to be and the speaker really grabbed our attention with all the examples and the interactive tasks!"

Eleni Vl, Channel VAS, Athens Greece

"Although it was virtual I thoroughly enjoyed it."

Rooha Sulehri, The National Archives, London