Now serving UX Writing in the snack and full meal deal sizes.

If you’re a product designer or UX designer who needs to pick up a few UX writing tips to handle that extra work you’ve been asked to do OR if you’d like to make UX writing a full-fledged skill to add to your resume, SVC is serving up two courses that should hit the spot:

UX Writing for Product Designers
2 Wednesdays, 10/4 & 10/11, 10:00a - 1:00p PT, $325
Instructor: Torrey Podmajersky, Author, Strategic Writing for UX

If your team has never had a UX writer, or you've lost your Content Designer through cut-backs, the burden to get the words right now falls on the designer's shoulders. But, if you’ve never been shown the essentials of UX writing or content design, where to start? Consider this two-part workshop where we’ll cover the basics of UI micro-copy, error messages, empty states, voice, tone, and more.

UX Writing 1: Fundamentals
5 Tuesdays, 10/17 - 11/14, 6:00p - 9:00p PT, $425
Instructor: Tracy Fontaine, Staff Content Designer, Navan

If you’d like to learn all the essential elements of UX writing — writing for navigation, calls-to-action, instructional copy, and error messages, this portfolio-boosting class is for you. We’ll do weekly assignments, put our work out there for critique, and get you set to make UX writing a regular part of your work diet.

New Classes Just Added to the Fall Schedule

NEW & FREE: Setting You & Your Portfolio Apart
Wednesday, 10/25, 6:00p - 7:30p PT, Free
Instructor: Dave Miller, Principal and Founder, Design Citizen

If you present yourself in a way that’s hard to distinguish from the other 900 folks responding to a job posting, you make it that much more difficult to be remembered by recruiters and hiring managers. The answer isn’t a weird typeface or unusual photo. It’s coming up with a distinct and relevant story about you, and then telling it visually and verbally. Dave Miller has seen thousands of portfolios in his time as a design recruiter, and he’ll show you how to make yours stand out.

NEW: Mapping User Experiences
1 Friday, 10/27, 10:00a - 1:00p PT, $225
Instructor: Bobby Hughes, Founder and Principal, Aardvark Design Labs

If you’re not familiar with the concept of a journey map or experience map, these graphical presentations chart a digital user’s or customer’s experience over time. With an experience map in hand, you can more easily spot opportunities as well as stumbling blocks. This workshop is for designers, strategists, and anyone who wants to think more strategically about the creation or marketing of any product, service, or experience.

NEW: AI Essentials for UX Designers
1 Wednesday, 11/1, 6:30p - 9:30p PT, $225
Instructor: Felix Chandran, UX Architect, NeuralRays AI

AI isn’t coming to take your job. It’s coming to make your job easier, and to let you focus on the part of your UX design work that takes advantage of that creative, intuitive, empathetic brain of yours. In this workshop, we’ll cover ways to harness the power of AI for productivity and career longevity. Whether you're a UX designer with years of experience or someone just starting out, you’ll get a great foundation in the role AI can play in your work.

More Classes Coming Soon to SVC

Copywriting Fundamentals
5 Thursdays, 10/5 - 11/2, 9:00a - 10:30a PT, $325
Instructor: Larry Asher, Creative Director/Copywriter, Worker Bees

If you’ve been thrown into the role of copywriter — whether for web content, social media, ads, or what have you — and you’ve never truly learned the essentials, now’s the time. In five very efficient morning sessions, we’ll take you through the basic principles and steer you in the direction of writing that gets noticed and prompts action. It’s a pretty simple equation when you think about it: Write dull stuff and no one will notice. Write interesting stuff and they just might click or buy or remember or love you

FREE: Using AI for Better Design Systems
1 Wednesday, 10/11, 7:00p - 8:00p PT, Free
Instructor: Felix Chandran, UX Architect, NeuralRays AI

As design systems grow in complexity, there’s a role for some assistance from artificial intelligence engines. AI doesn’t replace humans but can do some of the routine and mind-numbing tasks, such as design pattern recognition, generating predefined components, and automatically updating systems and flagging inconsistencies. Join us for this one-hour free intro.

Better Presentations
2 Wednesdays, 10/18 & 10/25, 10:00a - 1:00p PT, $325
Instructor: Larry Asher, Creative Director, Worker Bees

If you’ve spent any time in the business world you might wonder why so many presentations and PowerPoints are so bad. Did the presenters not think about their objectives? Were the slides too cluttered to comprehend? Did the speaker’s nervousness get in the way of communication? These are all things we can fix with a little guidance and practice — like the kind you’ll get in this workshop.   

Intro to UX Design
2 Saturdays, 10/28 & 11/4, 10:00a - 1:00p PT, $325
Instructor: Julia DeBari, Lead UX Designer, AgentSync

Even in the current economy, there are still thousands of postings for careers in UX Design. Around 8 percent of them, surprisingly, are for entry-level jobs, that (according to Glassdoor) pay an average of $95k. So, it’s understandable that people who are good at logic, spatial organization, and helping others, might like to learn more about this field and its career opportunities.