A look back at a UX/UI training course: how non-designers understood the secrets of a good website in just a few hours

Have you ever wondered why some websites make you want to smash everything, while others make you feel like you're sailing on a cloud of absorbent cotton? Recently, I had the pleasure of leading an online UX/UI training course with a gang of curious people from completely different backgrounds - we're talking about manufacturers rubbing shoulders with tech people, a more successful mix than when all restaurants started doing fusion cuisine in the early 2000s.

When I look at my participants at the start of this kind of training, I often see the same expression: that of someone about to plunge into a bath of incomprehensible acronyms. UX, UI, CTA, CX... it sounds like a bowl of alpha-bits. But the real beauty of this training course is that it demystifies all that while making small talk.

When experience meets appearance

Imagine your website as a house. The UX (user experience) is the structure, the framework, the foundations - everything you build to ensure that it's solid and meets the needs of its inhabitants. Is the kitchen close to the dining room? Are the bedrooms far enough from the living room for peace and quiet? Is the main entrance easily accessible? Meanwhile, the UI (user interface) is the interior design, the choice of paint colors, the position of the furniture. It's what makes even Daniel Corbeil of Sell or Renovate proud. You can have the most beautiful designer home in Montreal with marble finishes, but if the staircase is badly placed and you have to walk through the whole house to get to the bathroom, no one will want to live there.

During the course, we dived into user research methods, personas and journeys. Basically, I explained that before building a website, it's like planning the blueprints for a house: you want to know who's going to live there, how they live their daily lives, and how to organize the rooms so that everything flows naturally.

One participant from the manufacturing world had a realization that designing a product page is exactly like organizing your production floor - you need a clear, efficient path.

The science behind your clicks (and Montreal's pigeons)

We then moved on to the principles of interface design, and this is where it gets trippy. Laws with fancy names like Hicks, Miller, Gestalt and Fitts - it sounds like an accounting firm checking the bottom line at the Golden Goose, but it's actually the secret recipe for creating interfaces that work.

My favorite part? When I talked about the principle of consistency, drawing a parallel with superstitious pigeons. Scientists have discovered that if a pigeon learns that pressing a button gets it food, it will always reproduce that behavior. Logical, no? But where it gets funny is when you give the food with a timer rather than by the button. If the pigeon flaps his wings when the timer starts feeding, he'll think it was HIM who caused it. It will continue to flap its wings continuously, convinced that this is its infallible technique. Maybe that explains why the pigeons on St. Catherine Street seem to go through such bizarre rituals before pecking at their crumbs!

The moral of the story? If a button on your website does something in one place, you need a similar button to do the same thing elsewhere. Otherwise, your users will become as confused as our feathered friends.

The parallel made everyone smile, but more importantly, it turned on the lights. Several participants realized that they had already encountered this problem on certain sites (those made by the competition): inconsistencies that created confusion.

Your new digital autonomy

What makes this training really relevant to our customers is that it gives them superpowers. You see, after we deliver your brand-new website, life goes on. You'll want to add a new section, modify a button, create a landing page for your next promotion. With the basics of UX/UI in your pocket, you're no longer navigating blindly - you understand WHY some things work and others don't.

In concrete terms, this means that when you add a new section to your site, you'll ask yourself the right questions:

• Is it consistent with the rest?
• Are my buttons big enough?
• Am I giving too many choices at once?

These small decisions can make the difference between a visitor buying and a visitor giving up.

And with the explosion of tools like Canva that make design accessible to everyone, you no longer have to call your agency every time you want to create an Instagram post or a banner ad (although we always return calls if you're short on time). You now have the knowledge to make informed choices, organize your content logically, and create visuals that respect the basic principles of human perception. It's like learning to cook instead of always ordering St-Hubert - sometimes it's satisfying to do it yourself.

The future belongs to the curious

What touched me most during this training course was seeing people from completely different backgrounds - some making robotic arms, others developing software - all realizing that they were ultimately speaking the same language: that of the human experience. Because that's what UX/UI is all about. It's just trying to make life a little simpler for the people who visit our corner of the internet.

If you recognize yourself in these challenges, if you've ever looked at your website and thought "there's something wrong but I don't know what", maybe it's time to dive into this universe. You don't have to become a designer overnight. Just understand the basics to stop creating superstitious suckers. Your users (and your conversion rates) will thank you.

And who knows, maybe we'll run into each other in a future training session, where together we can laugh about Montreal pigeons while revolutionizing your web presence.

In the meantime, keep your buttons consistent and your users happy!