Physics for UX Designers
An 8-Week Immersive Course in Systems Thinking, Behavioral Modeling, and the Invisible Forces Behind User Experience Modern UX challenges aren’t just about screens, flows, or interface elements—they’re about systems, forces, and behaviors. Designers work every day with concepts like friction, …
Overview
An 8-Week Immersive Course in Systems Thinking, Behavioral Modeling, and the Invisible Forces Behind User Experience
Modern UX challenges aren’t just about screens, flows, or interface elements—they’re about systems, forces, and behaviors. Designers work every day with concepts like friction, momentum, bottlenecks, stability, chaos, feedback loops, and entropy… often without realizing they’re already speaking the language of physics.
This course introduces physics not as math, formulas, or problem sets, but as a way of thinking that gives designers sharper intuition, stronger prediction power, and a deeper ability to shape how products behave.
“Physics for UX Designers” is an accessible, visually-driven, hands-on program that teaches beginners the core principles of physics through the lens of interaction design, product flows, and human behavior. No prior science background is required—only curiosity and a willingness to see the world in a new way.
Why This Course Matters
Digital products are increasingly complex systems. To design them well, practitioners need frameworks that handle:
-
Dynamic user behavior
-
Feedback loops and emergent patterns
-
Systemic friction and flow
-
Motivation, energy, and attention
-
Stability vs instability in user engagement
-
Information clarity vs noise
-
How interactions change over time
Physics offers a powerful set of mental models for all of this. Designers who learn to think like physicists gain the ability to:
-
Simplify complexity
-
Predict outcomes
-
Diagnose problems at the system level
-
Build resilient, scalable, low-entropy interfaces
-
Understand user behavior as a dynamic flow, not a static moment
This course reframes design through the lens of forces, fields, flow, stability, and energy—giving students a fresh, rigorous way to understand the products they build and the people who use them.
Course Overview
Over 8 weeks, students will explore the foundational principles of physics—from force and energy to flow, friction, and entropy—translated directly into UX practice.
The curriculum blends simple physical demos (no math, no formulas), metaphors, visual models, and real product case studies. Each week ties classical physics concepts to practical design challenges and gives students tools to diagnose and improve real-world digital systems.
By the end of the course, students will be able to model user interactions using physical principles and explain UX decisions through a clear, scientifically-grounded narrative.
What You Will Learn
-
How to use force diagrams to understand motivation and resistance in user behavior
-
How energy landscapes explain drop-offs, onboarding issues, and task abandonment
-
How to reduce interaction friction using the physics of resistance and viscosity
-
How to map user flow like fluid flow, identifying bottlenecks, turbulence, and choke points
-
How to create stable systems and prevent churn or behavioral collapse
-
How to reduce entropy and noise inside complex interfaces
-
How to build simple, predictive models of product behavior
-
How to apply “first principles thinking” to UX problems
-
How to present design rationale using clear, data-backed physical metaphors
This course builds not just skill—but a new mindset.
Who This Course Is For
This course is perfect for:
-
UX designers (junior to senior)
-
Product designers and product managers
-
Design strategists
-
Founders and builders
-
Anyone who works with complex systems or user flows
-
Anyone curious about physics but intimidated by it
No math skills required. No science background assumed.
If you can design a flow, diagram a journey, or think visually, you can learn this.
Capstone Project
Students will select a real product or flow and:
-
Diagnose its forces, friction, and energy landscape
-
Model its behavior using physical principles
-
Redesign it to improve flow, stability, and clarity
-
Present a physics-based design rationale
This project becomes a powerful portfolio piece demonstrating advanced conceptual thinking and systems mastery.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
-
Think like physicists when evaluating UX
-
Diagnose product problems with greater precision
-
Model user behavior using forces, flows, and energy
-
Reduce entropy and friction in digital systems
-
Build more predictable, stable, elegant experiences
-
Communicate design decisions with scientific clarity
-
Approach UX with a richer, more rigorous mental toolbox
Curriculum
- 8 Sections
- 8 Lessons
- 8 Weeks
- WEEK 1 — Physics Is a Way of Thinking, Not MathTheme: How physicists see the world, and why it matters for UX. Learning Objectives • Understand physics as a mindset: simplifying, modeling, predicting. • Learn foundational ways physicists break down complex systems. • Build comfort and curiosity—remove the fear of physics. • See the parallels between UX thinking and physical reasoning. Core Topics • What physics really is: models, not equations. • Systems, constraints, interaction rules. • Inputs → transformations → outputs. • Equilibrium vs. far-from-equilibrium systems. • Entropy as “decay of order” and interfaces that fall apart. • Negentropy as clarity creation. Activities • Group exercise: “Model a coffee shop as a physical system.” • Demo: Heat dissipation → how complexity spreads in products. • Interactive: Take any app and map “forces” acting on a user. Assignment Pick a complex UX flow. Build a simple “physics-based model” of it using only words, arrows, and boxes.1
- WEEK 2 — Forces, Energy, & MotivationTheme: The physics of behavior. Learning Objectives • Understand force, energy, work, and motivation as conceptual tools. • Learn how “pushes” and “pulls” shape user movement. • Map energy barriers and UX friction. Core Topics • Force = any influence that changes state. • Potential energy = motivation yet to be used. • Kinetic energy = active engagement. • Force fields → default choices, habits, environment design. • Barriers, ramps, resistance, thresholds. Activities • Demo: Rolling objects down slopes to illustrate “motivation gradient.” • Workshop: Identify energy barriers in onboarding flows. • Diagramming: Map all forces acting on a user in one task. Assignment Choose a multi-step task and diagram the energy landscape (inclines, cliffs, wells, friction zones).1
- WEEK 3 — Friction, Resistance, and Cognitive LoadTheme: Understanding “UX friction” through real physics. Learning Objectives • Learn what friction actually is. • Translate viscosity, drag, and resistance into UX patterns. • Redefine cognitive load in physical terms. Core Topics • Mechanical friction vs. interaction friction. • Viscosity: “thick” vs “light” interfaces. • Drag and turbulence as unpredictable UX behaviors. • Activation energy: why tiny hurdles matter. • How complexity increases system entropy. Activities • Demo: Water vs honey → cognitive viscosity. • Heatmap exercise: Identify high-viscosity zones in an app. • Real-world: Test interface “stickiness” through quick tasks. Assignment Redesign a sticky friction-heavy flow using physical metaphors to justify your changes.1
- WEEK 4 — Flow, Fluid Dynamics, & SmoothnessTheme: Treating user journeys like fluid motion. Learning Objectives • Understand flow, laminar vs turbulent movement. • Diagnose product bottlenecks like fluid chokepoints. • Learn how to design “paths of least resistance.” Core Topics • The basics of fluid flow (no math). • Pressure → urgency, demand, load. • Bottlenecks → slowdowns and drop-offs. • Flow rate → task throughput. • Turbulence → inconsistent patterns. Activities • Demo: Water flowing through tubes to show bottlenecks. • Flow mapping: Draw user flow as a “river.” • UX teardown: Identify turbulence in a real product’s IA. Assignment Select a UX funnel and redesign it to improve its “flow rate.”1
- WEEK 5 — Stability, Instability, & Systems That Tip OverTheme: Understanding stable vs unstable user behavior. Learning Objectives • Learn why systems remain stable or collapse. • Understand user churn as instability. • Predict when changes destabilize interfaces. Core Topics • Stable equilibrium vs unstable equilibrium. • Pendulums, attractors, and feedback loops. • Positive vs negative feedback. • Critical points → when small changes matter disproportionately. • Path dependence. Activities • Demo: Pendulum to explain stability. • Group modeling: Identify stabilizing forces in a product. • Systems synthesis: What holds a user journey together? Assignment Build a stability diagram for a product (what keeps users engaged vs what destabilizes them).1
- WEEK 6 — Information, Signals, Noise, & Entropyheme: Bringing information theory into UX. Learning Objectives • Understand clarity vs noise using physical and communication theory. • Learn how to create low-entropy design systems. • Diagnose entropy build-up in real products. Core Topics • Signal-to-noise ratio: clear messaging vs clutter. • Entropy as “choices, chaos, overload.” • Negentropy = simplification, patterning, consistency. • Error correction → onboarding & guidance. Activities • Live redesign: Remove noise from a crowded page. • Demo: Whispering-chain game to illustrate entropy in communication. • Exercise: Entropy audit of any design system. Assignment Pick one page of an app and reduce its entropy by at least 40%. Document how you achieved it.1
- WEEK 7 — Modeling Interactions Like Physical SystemsTheme: Turning UX problems into physical models. Learning Objectives • Learn to build simple, powerful physics-inspired models. • Predict behavior using first-principles physics thinking. • Formalize intuition into repeatable frameworks. Core Topics • Modeling with constraints and state transitions. • Flow-field modeling (gravity wells & habit formation). • Interaction networks. • Homeostasis and adaptive systems. • Threshold models. Activities • Mini-lab: Model a feature using fields, forces, and flows. • Critique session: Compare different modeling approaches. • Workshop: Build your own UX “force diagram.” Assignment Write a short “physics model” of a product problem and show how your design changes the system.1
- WEEK 8 — Capstone: Physics-Based UX Diagnosis & RedesignTheme: Apply everything. Learning Objectives • Integrate forces, flow, friction, stability, and entropy into one model. • Confidently use physics as a design tool. • Present a system-level UX narrative using a new conceptual language. Capstone Project Choose a real-world product or feature and: 1. Diagnose the physics of the current experience 2. Model forces, flows, friction zones, stability points, and entropy sources 3. Propose a redesign based on physics reasoning 4. Present the model as a narrative Final Deliverables • Diagrams: force maps, flow lines, energy barriers • A systems explanation of behavior • A redesign justified via physical concepts • A short classroom presentation1
Instructor
You May Like
Introduction to Utorics and the QFIT Framework
Step into the future of design science with this foundational course in Utorics — the emerging discipline uniting quantum mechanics, fluid dynamics, and cognitive psychology...
Course Features
- Lectures 8
- Quiz 0
- Duration 8 weeks
- Skill level Intermediate
- Language English
- Students 12
- Assessments Self