BCA Second Semester Syllabus: UX/UI Design (BCA155)

Course Code: BCA155 | Credit Hours: 3 | Year/Semester: I/II | Workload: 6 hrs/week (Theory: 3 hrs, Practical: 3 hrs)

Overview

UX/UI Design is the course that shifts BCA students from thinking purely about how software works to thinking about how it feels to use. It’s easy to build a functional app that nobody enjoys using — this course exists to close that gap, teaching the principles, research methods, and tools behind interfaces that are usable, accessible, and genuinely pleasant.

It sits alongside OOP in Java and Mathematics II in the second semester, and it’s a deliberate contrast to those more technical, logic-heavy subjects. Where those courses ask “does this work correctly,” UX/UI Design asks “does a real human find this easy and intuitive to use” — a question that matters just as much in professional software development, and one that’s increasingly a distinct career path of its own (UX designer, UI designer, product designer) rather than something left entirely to developers.

What You’ll Learn

The course runs through eight units, moving from foundational UX/UI concepts to advanced interface types like voice and conversational UI.

Unit 1: Introduction (4 hrs)

Covers the fundamentals of UX and UI and, importantly, the distinction between the two — UX (user experience) being about the overall feel and usability of a product, UI (user interface) being about the actual visual and interactive elements. You’ll look at the differing tasks of a UX designer versus a UI designer, core UX principles (usability, accessibility, simplicity), the core disciplines within UX (user research, content strategy, information architecture, interaction design, visual design, usability evaluation), different interface types (CLI, GUI, VUI, menu-driven, NLP-based), and an introduction to the industry-standard tools you’ll use throughout the course: Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch.

Unit 2: User Interaction Design (4 hrs)

Covers the UX design process and user-centered design approach, including mind-mapping as a planning tool. A major focus is UX research methods — conducting interviews and surveys, competitive analysis, creating user personas, and user journey mapping — the techniques that ensure a design is based on real user needs rather than guesswork. The unit closes with ideation techniques like mood boards, brainstorming, and sketching.

Unit 3: User Interface Design (6 hrs)

Covers graphical and web user interfaces, and the different interaction styles a designer can choose from: command line, menu selection, form fill-in, direct manipulation, and anthropomorphic (human-like) interfaces. You’ll study the core principles of UI design, the UI design process itself, and both human considerations (how people actually perceive and interact with screens) and technological considerations (platform and device constraints) in interface design.

Unit 4: UI Components (12 hrs)

The largest unit in the course, and a deep, practical one. Covers system menus and their functions, how to format menus properly (consistency, display, organization, item arrangement), and the different types of menus (menu bar, pull-down, cascading, popup, tear-off, iconic). You’ll study window selection and presentation styles (tiled, overlapping, cascading windows), types of windows (primary, secondary, dialog boxes), and a full range of screen-based controls — operable controls like buttons and toolbars, text entry fields, selection controls (radio buttons, checkboxes, list boxes), and other controls like sliders, tabs, date pickers, and scroll bars. The unit closes with how to select the proper controls for a given task and how to create meaningful graphics, icons, and images.

Unit 5: UI Design Considerations (6 hrs)

Covers page layout, color scheme and font selection, typography, and responsive design across different screen sizes. A key section covers visual hierarchy principles — alignment, color, contrast, proximity, size, and texture — the techniques designers use to guide a user’s eye toward what matters most on a screen. You’ll also study navigation types (global, utility, associative, inline) and navigational models like hub-and-spoke, fully connected, multilevel/tree, pyramid, and flat navigation.

Unit 6: Wireframing and Prototyping (6 hrs)

Covers wireframes and mock-ups, the difference between low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototyping, interactive prototyping, UX storyboarding, software-based prototyping tools, and how to add transitions and animation to prototypes. You’ll finish this unit by actually creating a simple clickable prototype — a core deliverable in real UX design work, used to test designs before any code is written.

Unit 7: Design Evaluations (6 hrs)

Covers formative and summative evaluation methods, usability testing (moderated vs. unmoderated), and how to analyze test results and gather actionable insights. You’ll study evaluation through expert analysis and user participation, iterative evaluation paradigms, the DECIDE evaluation framework, heuristic evaluation, and task analysis with performance metrics. This unit is what separates design from guesswork — evaluation is how you prove a design actually works for real users.

Unit 8: Advanced Techniques — VUI and NLP-based UI (4 hrs)

The most forward-looking unit, covering command-and-control versus conversational user interfaces, the use of personas, avatars, and actors in interface design, speech recognition technology and dialogue management, and considerations for designing for wearable devices. This reflects where interface design is heading — voice assistants, chatbots, and conversational AI interfaces increasingly need the same design rigor as traditional screens.

The Lab Component (48 Hours)

Lab work in this course centers on actual design tool practice using Figma, Adobe XD, or Sketch. You’ll:

• Use the basic tools and features of a professional design tool for visual design
• Apply proper page layout, font selection, and responsive design across screen sizes
• Implement color theory and typography in real interface designs
• Build designs using proper grids and layouts
• Integrate interactive elements into designs
• Create designs with different window types and operable controls
• Apply different navigational styles
• Construct wireframes and prototypes
• Create storyboards for interaction designs
• Apply effects, styles, and animation

The semester concludes with an individual project: designing the basic interface and interaction flow for a topic of your choosing, followed by running your own design evaluations on it — essentially a compressed version of a real UX design cycle, from research through to testing.

Why This Course Matters

UX/UI Design is one of the more directly employable specializations available to BCA graduates, and increasingly a standalone career path separate from software development. Companies building web apps, mobile apps, and digital products need designers who understand not just visual aesthetics but user research, information architecture, and usability testing — all of which this course covers. Even for students who go on to become developers rather than dedicated designers, understanding UX/UI principles makes for much better collaboration with design teams and a stronger sense of what makes software genuinely usable.

Recommended Reference Books

• Galitz, W. O. (2007). The Essential Guide to User Interface Design (3rd ed.)
• Gothelf, J., & Seiden, J. (2013). Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience (1st ed.)
• Green, T., & Brandon, K. (2024). UX Design with Figma: User-Centered Interface Design and Prototyping with Figma
• Tidwell, J., Brewer, C., & Valencia, A. (2020). Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design (3rd ed.)
• Wood, D. (2014). Interface Design: An Introduction to Visual Communication in UI Design

Study Tips for BCA155

1. Get comfortable in Figma early. Since Unit 4 through the final project all depend on practical design tool skills, the sooner you’re fluent with frames, components, and basic prototyping in Figma, the less friction you’ll hit later.
2. Don’t treat user research as a “soft” topic to skip. Personas, user journey mapping, and competitive analysis (Unit 2) are frequently tested conceptually and are also exactly what real UX job interviews ask about.
3. Learn to name and distinguish UI controls precisely. Unit 4 covers a lot of specific terminology (tear-off menus, iconic menus, anthropomorphic interfaces) — exam and portfolio-review questions often hinge on using the correct term, not just describing the idea.
4. Practice visual hierarchy deliberately, not just intuitively — try redesigning a cluttered screen using alignment, contrast, and proximity principles from Unit 5 as an exercise.
5. Build your final project as a portfolio piece, not just an assignment. A well-documented UX case study (research → wireframes → prototype → evaluation) is one of the strongest things a BCA student can show in a job or internship application.
6. The DECIDE framework and heuristic evaluation are common exam topics — know the steps, not just the acronym.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between UX and UI? UX (User Experience) is about the overall usability, flow, and feel of a product — how easy and satisfying it is to use. UI (User Interface) is about the specific visual and interactive elements — buttons, menus, colors, layout — that make up the screens a user actually sees and touches.

What tools does this course use? The syllabus specifically points to Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch for both classroom teaching and lab work, with Figma being the most commonly used in practice.

Is coding required for this course? No. UX/UI Design focuses on design principles, research methods, and visual/interactive design tools rather than programming — though understanding it does help developers build more usable products later.

What does the final project involve? Students individually design the basic interface and interaction flow for a topic of their choice, then run design evaluations on their own work — mirroring a real UX design and testing cycle.

This page summarizes the official TU BCA Second Semester syllabus for BCA155 (UX/UI Design). For the complete, authoritative syllabus document, refer to your college’s official curriculum handbook.