Skip to content
RUROEN
Sign in Choose a course
Design DS—03

Before the layout

A course about the part of the work that happens before the first pixel. In «Interfaces in Figma» the catalogue wireframe was handed to you ready-made — here you arrive at it yourself: from the brief and the scenarios to screen structure, copy and testing against awkward content. This is exactly what a designer gets paid more for than for tidy auto layout.

8 modules19 lessons
14 hoursof video and practice
Basics neededrequirements
Foreveraccess and updates
Format
€39 one-off payment
Place the order Open the programme
Payment by card or through PayPal
Access opens immediately after payment
14-day refund, if you have not started watching
Outcome

What you will be able to do

Take a brief that leaves you knowing what to do
Tell the client's problem apart from the solution they proposed
Describe a scenario as a person's path step by step, not as a list of screens
Build the structure of a product: sections, navigation and screen content
Draw wireframes and test decisions on them while changes are still cheap
Write button, error and empty-state copy without «oops, something went wrong»
Test a layout on awkward content: long names, zeros and edge cases
Run a hallway test on your own and carry the findings back into the layout
Programme

8 modules, one project

Press a module to open its lessons

01 The problem before the pixels2 lessons · 1 h 24 minOpen

We work out what has actually been ordered: where the problem is, where someone else's solution is and what the boundaries of the project are.

The brief: the questions that make things clear
Problem or solution: how not to draw someone else's guess
02 Scenarios3 lessons · 2 h 08 min

A person's path step by step: where they came from, what they wanted, where they might get stuck and how it all ends.

Who uses it: roles, context and motive
The scenario step by step: from intent to result
Practice: scenarios for booking a service
03 Structure3 lessons · 2 h 12 min

We lay the content out across sections and screens and check that a person finds what they need without reading the whole menu.

Sections and grouping: card sorting on your own
Navigation: what is always visible and what is on request
Practice: the screen map of a service
04 Wireframes2 lessons · 1 h 36 min

Quick schemes that show the decision rather than the styling: a change here costs minutes, not days.

Speed over neatness: how to draw the schemes
A clickable wireframe: testing the whole scenario
05 Copy in the interface3 lessons · 2 h 10 min

Buttons, hints, errors and empty screens: the place where the interface talks to a person.

Buttons and labels: a verb instead of «Submit»
Errors and hints: what happened and what to do
Empty states: a new user's first screen
06 Awkward content2 lessons · 1 h 30 min

We test the structure where layouts break: long names, zeros, negative numbers and the ends of ranges.

Long names, many and none: the limits of content
Practice: breaking your own wireframe with real data
07 Testing on people2 lessons · 1 h 28 min

A hallway test with no lab and no budget: five people, one scenario and honest conclusions.

How to ask without prompting the answer
Going through the observations and changing the design
08 Handover to UI2 lessons · 1 h 32 min

The final module: what has to be decided before anything is drawn, and in what form it moves on.

What must be decided before the first pixel
Defending the decision: why the structure is exactly this
Materials

What you get

19 lessons with transcripts

Videos with timecodes and a written version — the wordings of the questions and the copy are easy to come back to at work.

A brief and scenario template

The list of questions for the client and the structure of a step-by-step scenario: intent, action, result, what can go wrong.

A wireframe library

Grey blocks, fields, lists and tables in Figma — so you assemble a scheme out of ready pieces instead of drawing rectangles again.

A set of awkward content

Real names, amounts, empty lists and extreme values, for testing the structure before anything is drawn.

Tomsa Daria
Course author

Tomsa Daria

Teaches the «Interface design» direction at Forma. The full list of their courses is on their page.

All courses by this author

The whole first module is open

Watch the lessons of the first module and the first task. If the format does not suit you, you have lost nothing.

Buy for €39Watch for free