Digital Product Professional (Foundation Certificate)

"A short orientation before the tools. What a digital product actually is -- something people use to get an outcome, not a pile of features -- and the arc a professional takes it through: discover, define, design, build, ship, learn. You leave knowing the shape of the work, how the three levels build, and where the pathway leads."

"The visual-design literacy every interface course after this one assumes. Design as decision-making under constraints, not decoration: visual hierarchy, typography, colour, layout and composition, and the discipline of critique. Gives the engineering-leaning learner a real design vocabulary and the ability to tell "styled" from "designed". The design-thinking process itself is taught in Defining Digital Products, where the discover-define work lives."

"The mental model everything technical assumes. Client and server, the HTTP request/response cycle, how a browser turns HTML into a page, what an API is, and how a URL finds a machine somewhere. Conceptual and hands-on-light -- no framework, no build step -- so Frontend, Backend and Deployment all have somewhere to stand."

"Building the interface a person actually touches: semantic HTML, CSS from the box model up, responsive layout, JavaScript essentials, the DOM, and then component-based UI with a modern framework. Assumes How the Web Works; stops before state-management libraries and full SPAs."

"Git from first commit, through branching and conflict resolution, to collaborative workflows on GitHub / GitLab and reading history to find a regression. Sits in Fundamentals because everything built from here on lives in a repo."

"Finding out what people actually need before deciding what to build. Planning a study, running interviews and usability tests, reading behavioural data, and -- the hard part -- turning a pile of notes into insights a team will act on. Adds research planning and research ethics."

"Organising a product's content and navigation so people can find things and understand where they are. Content inventory, structure, navigation models, and validating the structure with card sorting and tree testing."

"Designing how a product behaves as someone uses it. Interaction principles, task flows, wireframing, high-fidelity prototyping in Figma, micro-interactions, and -- often missed -- designing the empty, loading and error states, not just the happy path. Ends with heuristic evaluation."

"The server side of a product: handling requests, building a REST API, talking to a database, structuring an application so it stays maintainable, and doing the unglamorous work -- validation, error handling, logging, background jobs -- that separates a demo from something real. Built end to end in one backend framework."

"How a product's data is modelled, stored and evolved. Relational modelling, enough SQL to work confidently, ORM-based access, migrations that do not lose data, and the integrity rules -- constraints, transactions -- that keep the data trustworthy. NoSQL and indexing at a working level."

"Knowing who a user is and what they are allowed to do -- the security foundation every real product needs. Sessions and tokens, password security done properly, the registration / verification / reset flows, then authorization: gates, policies, roles, and ownership checks. Third-party sign-in at the end. Framework-agnostic; replaces the on-loan Laravel-specific starter-kit course."

"Writing tests that catch real regressions and give the confidence to change code. Unit, integration and end-to-end testing, TDD, test doubles -- plus the judgement the current course skips: what is worth testing, and running the suite automatically in CI."

"Where the learner moves from "I can build a product" to "I can work out what to build and why." The design-thinking process as the spine, then the craft within it: given a vague ask, find the real problem, understand who it is for and what constrains the solution, scope an MVP, and write requirements and a product brief a team could build from -- and defend. First course vehicle inside DPA-FOUND for the two Professional & Solution Architecture competencies."

"Turning one-off screens into a reusable system a team can build with consistently. Design tokens, component libraries, usage guidelines, governance, and the design-to-development handoff. Builds on Design Fundamentals (which now carries the visual-design basics) and Interaction Design."

"Building products people with disabilities can actually use -- a professional and, increasingly, legal obligation. WCAG in practice, semantics and keyboard support, designing and building accessible interfaces, testing with real assistive technology, and inclusive design that goes past the checklist."

"Getting a product from a repo to a running service reliably and repeatably: environments and configuration, CI pipelines, containers, continuous deployment, and monitoring with a way to roll back. Sits in Professional next to shipping."

"The last mile: a real domain, correct DNS, working HTTPS, email and CDN records -- and then the launch itself. Same DNS/SSL content as before, reframed to end on going live: the pre-launch checklist, the cutover, and the checks you run in the first hour after."