Ali Rizvi

Teaching

14 course sections of 6 courses at the University of Waterloo between 2021 and 2024, across 2 departments and 3 programmes, undergrad and grad, in classes of 40 to 180. ~700 students from 9 departments in total.

Approach

I teach the way I worked in industry.

  • UX sequence. Students run real studies on real people from week one, because contextual inquiry and task analysis only make sense once a participant has surprised you.
  • Capstone. Teams build working prototypes for external clients and present to them, so scoping, trade-offs and saying no are part of the course, and they get to practise all three before it matters.
  • Analytics. Experimentation taught from the funnels and instrumentation I used in industry, including the failure modes.

Students who learn this way have a more grounded understanding of theory, and can apply it pragmatically. In interviews, my students can say why a specific analytic belongs in a feature, and their case studies show better thinking about second-order effects. Obviously, it starts with brilliant students. I just help them understand and apply what I teach.

Courses taught

  • GBDA 310
    Fall 2023 · Spring 2024
    4 sections · 222 students
    Advanced User Experience Design and Research

    Real studies on real people from week one.

  • GBDA 402
    Winter 2022 · Winter 2023
    12-credit · 187 students · online and in person
    Undergraduate Capstone Seminar

    Teams build working prototypes for external clients and present to them. Every term shipped something that ran.

  • GBDA 410
    Fall 2023
    2 sections · 91 students
    Seminar in User Experience Research (Virtual Reality)

    The UX research seminar - that year, in VR headsets.

  • MSCI 543
    Spring 2023
    Graduate · 87 students
    Analytics and User Experience

    Experimentation taught from the funnels and instrumentation I used in industry, including the failure modes.

  • MSCI 630
    Winter 2022 · Winter 2023
    Graduate · 86 students
    Human-Computer Interaction

    Graduate HCI, taught through the students' own research projects.

  • GBDA 210
    Fall 2021
    54 students
    Introduction to UX

    The start of the UX sequence, and the first course I taught.

Mentoring

  • Capstone teams delivered working prototypes to external partners in every term I ran the course.
  • I supervise the way I was supervised: weekly meetings, the student's question at the centre, and the expectation that the work ends in something that runs.