Abstract:

User experience (UX) design is a multi-disciplinary profession that is a combination of graphic design, industrial design, psychology, research, computer science, and business. It requires both big picture, strategic design skills, and the ability to design the very detailed interactions of user interface. The demand for UX designers and researchers has been growing and is expected to continue to expand. High technology industries including social networking, mobile devices, smart appliances, and gaming all need UX design to be successful.

According to professional UX designers back in 2011, it was very difficult to find UX designers because there was a lack of suitable education or training available that prepared graduates for this work. Current professionals have come into the field from varied backgrounds and have adapted through learning on the job.  It became clear that the university had an opportunity to prepare students for this dynamic, new field, but several obstacles stood in the way.

In a traditional university setting, graphic design, industrial design, psychology, marketing, and computer science all are organized into separate colleges, departments, buildings, and faculty. However, professional UX design crosses and blurs the boundaries between these disciplines. Although the university claims to value cross-disciplinary endeavors, it inhibits those efforts by its own systemic divisions. For a successful UX curriculum, it became clear that it would need to bring different programs together cooperatively.

A proper UX design education deserves its own bachelor’s degree, however, due to the organizational and funding challenges within our university, the proposal to create an entirely new major was rejected. To act quickly and respond to the overwhelming demand from industry, a supplementary minor program was proposed. The author assembled a multi-disciplinary planning team, and with a strategic combination of existing courses, a user experience design program was developed as a minor at this university in 2013.

This paper documents the origin, planning, development, execution, and successful results of this multidisciplinary UX design minor over the past seven years. It describes the origins based on professional advice, developing curriculum across departments, and new course creation. Today, UX design industry partners collaborate with a final capstone course consisting of cross disciplinary teams of industrial design, graphic design, computer science, marketing, and psychology majors. The UX design minor has enhanced each student’s education and experience, resulting in significant job placement in the field.

Keywords:

Design Education, User Experience Design, Multidisciplinary, Teams, Interaction Design.