Cory Lebson Headshot from LinkedIn Learning page

Cory Lebson is a LinkedIn Learning instructor for a variety of courses:

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Watch Now! Planning a Career in User Experience

User experience is a rewarding career. Successful UX professionals can improve technology so that it is more efficient, effective, and satisfying for those that use it. But where does a career in UX start? In this course, UX expert Cory Lebson breaks down the sub-disciplines of user experience (the trifecta of design, research, and strategy), so you can learn about the different jobs that align with your strengths and passions. Cory helps you understand job responsibilities as well as the benefits of working full-time for a company vs. consulting or freelancing. With his guidance, you can create a more compelling resume and portfolio package and make sure that you properly brand yourself as a UX professional. This course offers focused career advice for job seekers, tips for recruiters and employers who want to better understand UX, and a necessary framework for grad/undergrad students exploring the next step in their career. Along the way, Cory highlights training in the library to build specific UX skills.

Learning Objectives:

  • What is UX?
  • Should you be a UX generalist or a specialist?
  • Available UX career types: design, research, and strategy
  • Working in-house, consulting, or freelancing
  • Telling a story with a portfolio and resume
  • Working with recruiters

Watch Now! Freelancing and Consulting in User Experience

Freelancing provides you with the freedom to choose your clients and UX projects, and—as you enjoy this increased flexibility—it can potentially help you increase your earnings as well. In this course, join Cory Lebson as he takes you through the ins and outs of becoming a successful user experience freelancer. He provides a brief introduction to life as a UX freelancer, and shares tips and tricks for maintaining a successful independent UX career.

Learning Objectives:

  • Traits of successful freelancers
  • Specializing as a freelancer
  • Transitioning to freelance work
  • Searching for your first freelance gig
  • Starting as a UX freelancer when you’re just out of college
  • Finding out what life is like as a freelancer
  • UX branding and networking for success
  • Advertising your services
  • Learning what companies are looking for in a UX freelancer

Watch Now! Strategies for Successful UX Freelancers

How can you be a successful UX freelancer? This course provides guidance to both experienced freelancers and those who have recently entered the world of freelancing, helping you to scale up your projects and clients. Cory Lebson explains what critical skills can enhance your workflow and help make you more successful. He discusses how to manage your workload, keep your pipeline full, and reliably produce high-quality deliverables as you effectively work with stakeholders and extended teams.

Learning Objectives:

  • Managing your freelance workload
  • Keeping your freelance pipeline full
  • Letting go of perfectionism
  • Subcontracting
  • Working with primary and extended stakeholders
  • Tips for balancing stakeholder needs
  • Working with freelancers as a UX manager or project manager

Watch Now! Hiring and Managing UX Professionals

UX professionals help shape your product into something your users will love. You need people with the creative skills to meet your business goals. But how do you determine which UX skills your team needs—design, research, or strategy? And how can you tell if a freelancer, full-time employee, or design agency would be the best fit? Whether your team needs to recruit more UX talent—or you want to better support the team you already have—this course can help. Join Cory Lebson as he provides a holistic take on hiring, contracting, and retaining UX professionals. Learn about the different specialties within UX, how to determine what kind of help you need, and how to find that help. Plus, get strategies for cultivating a work environment where creatives can thrive.

Learning Objectives:

  • UX design, research, and strategy jobs
  • Determining which skills you need on your team
  • Finding employees, contractors, and agencies
  • Assessing talent to fill UX job openings at your company
  • Evaluating a candidate’s user experience credibility
  • Working efficiently with consultants
  • Managing a staff of creatives

Watch Now! Empathy in UX Design

Learn about how to build your empathy skills and create a culture of empathy that enhances user experience and promotes product success. Author Cory Lebson starts by defining empathy and explores how it can help UX professionals, designers, and researchers understand customers’ needs and goals. He moves on to explain how empathy skills can be developed and discusses how to foster empathy and engage stakeholders with empathetic storytelling through the project lifecycle. Cory also covers why empathy is critical for effective user research and design, how to manage difficult emotions while remaining empathetic, and how to be an empathy advocate.

Learning Objectives:

  • Empathy and user experience
  • Building personal empathy
  • Dealing with the pain of empathy
  • Empathy in UX research
  • Storytelling with research findings
  • Choosing methods to tell a story
  • Empathy for career success
  • Designing and delivering empathy

Watch Now! UX Research: Being Flexible

If you do UX research, you often find that projects don’t go quite the way you plan. Technology glitches, last-minute changes, unpredictable participants, and last minute tweaks to a script—there’s always something that you didn’t anticipate. In this course, instructor Cory Lebson explores what can go wrong and what you can do about it to make sure that your UX research efforts are ultimately successful.

Discover strategies for scheduling, planning, and responding to problems as you research within a fast-paced and often agile environment. Learn how to prepare for unanticipated challenges and accommodate them most effectively. Get tips for dealing with participants, technology issues, and other unforeseen events. Cory covers what you need to know to better manage your stakeholders’ expectations when surprises emerge.

Watch Now! UX Research: International Projects

Do you ever feel like there’s a disconnect between your products and the rest of the world? While it’s certainly easier and more affordable to conduct your UX research close to home, it’s also critically important to consider how a global audience may understand and use your products differently. In this course, instructor Cory Lebson gives you an overview of how to conduct international user research with this wider audience.

Learn about how to pitch and validate international projects to your managers, executives, and stakeholders. Get tips on conducting both remote and in-person real-time studies in another country—perhaps in a language you don’t even speak. Cory walks through everything you need to know to set up a portable international research kit, build in-country relationships, and create an effective workflow. The world is big. So why think small? Start your adventure today and learn more about how you can support meaningful user research experiences and gather new insights on a global scale.

Watch Now! Conducting Research in a Post-Pandemic World

Research is typically an interactive hands-on process. But with so much currently happening in our distributed, post-pandemic world, it’s important to keep a few points in mind so you can keep taking care of yourself. In this course, instructor and UX expert Cory Lebson gives you an overview of the key considerations, challenges, and best practices for productive, remote research.

Learn about planning and conducting successful research projects during troubling global times, with strategies for recruitment, flexibility, logistics, and mixed methods to keep everyone safe when meeting in person or using a hybrid approach. Cory shares insights on how to take care of yourself and manage your emotions throughout the process, mitigating risk and stress in tricky research sessions, and practicing kindness every step of the way.

Watch Now! Managing Stakeholders in Research Projects

Managing stakeholders in a UX project can be a tricky balance of disclosure, efficiency, and social influence. In this course, Cory Lebson explains his techniques, tips, and processes for managing the various stakeholders involved in UX research projects. Cory covers important topics that include: the role of a stakeholder in UX research projects; when and why to involve your stakeholders in the process; how to collaborate with stakeholders to plan research and data gathering; how to allow stakeholder observers in research sessions without clutter; and addresses the potential impact of socializing with stakeholders.

Watch Now! Finding Meaning in Your UX Design Career

No matter how much fun you’re having as a UX professional, you may wonder how much your work actually helps people. In this course, instructor Cory Lebson details how to take better care of your users, your colleagues, and yourself—and, in turn, find a pathway forward to a more meaningful, resonant design career.

Cory explains what it means to design for good and approach your work with a do-no-harm mentality. He also shares practical ways you can make a difference with your product’s users, find more fulfillment within your team and organization, and contribute back to the design community (and your organization!). Plus, learn how to determine when finding a new job, project, or team might be the most positive step forward for your career.