User Experience Design Curriculum
Years Active: 2017-Present | Role: Graduate Endorsed Lecturer
How do you create a curriculum that prepares college students for a career in user experience design that gives them the knowledge and experience to elevate the discipline?
Collaborator Ruscha Cohen, Co Director of Graduate Programs at ATLAS Institute at CU Boulder
Following a guest lecture at the TAM (technology, arts, and media) School at CU, the ATLAS School in the University of Colorado at Boulder invited me to create the first User Experience Design course for their undergraduate and graduate students. It was an unexpected opportunity, but I jumped at the chance to share my knowledge and experience in UX with the next generation of designers. After some conversations with Ruscha Cohen we decided to create two classes, the fall would be an introductory course to teach the basics of UX and the spring would be an advanced course that would help the serious students prepare for a career in UX.
“Building a boat isn’t about weaving canvas, forging nails, or reading the sky. It is about sharing a love for the sea, by the light of which you will see nothing contradictory but rather a community of love.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Sharing a Love for the Sea
Teaching process is easy, realizing passion* is hard.
I treated designing my curriculum as I would anything else, in this case my students were the users and the class was the experience. I knew from my own journey that students would be most invested in experiences they care about, so my curriculum would need to start with them. Their experiences, their curiosities, their passions.
I will not be sharing my full curriculum here. My classes contain the usual explanation of user research, data synthesis, wireframing, prototyping, etc. I will share the ways in which I introduce design thinking to my students and give them the eyes to see the world in a less subjective way.
Design is the Art of Paying Attention
My favorite book about design doesn’t talk about design at all or, at least, not with words. “Thoughtless Acts” by IDEO is a book that chronicles the many small design solutions that people manifest in their daily lives. Before my students can learn how to create solutions they must first learn how to identify problems.
These images communicate the ways we design for the problems we encounter in our everyday lives. When I have talked with students in the past there has been a hopelessness that there is nothing new to create and that design is just an endless regurgitation of the existing. By encouraging them to look at the world through the lens of problems and solutions they begin to see that there are more design opportunities than ever, all it takes is paying attention to the world around us.
Below Student submissions for my “Art of Paying Attention” assignment
Giving Everyone the same Opportunity
Accessibility is a subject that is incredibly close to my heart. My mother was a social worker for a very marginalized and forgotten community in our hometown and I experienced first hand the ways in which the world is not always designed with everyone in mind. A large part of my pride in being a designer is watching how the digital world gives dignity and autonomy to people who have been previously forgotten.
In the below images I show examples of the ways in which for some, online shopping isn’t just a convenience, it is an essential tool of existence.
If we are truly designing a world that is meant for everyone, then we must work systematically on every level. While the above experiences may be obvious, there are more subtle elements to accessibility that are oft overlooked.
Inclusiveness
Our imagery says so much about our values. What are the ways in which we can be inclusive that is not an afterthought, but instead an essential part of the vision of the original experience?
Physical Tools for Digital Environments
This is the first time in history in which children with significantly limiting physical disabilities can play on the same level as their peers. Instead of looking at how an object can be adapted to those with disabilities, can we find ways to design objects that are accessible to all in their original form?
Access to Internet
Many of us take our internet access for granted viewing it as an endless resource that is always available. This is not true for millions in this country. How can we be sensitive to limited bandwidth or inconsistent internet access?
Navigating a Fine Line
When sharing this curriculum I am always careful to inspire and not shame. I want my students to see accessibility as a beautiful expression of the intricacies of design and encourage them to be excited to view the world through a different lens.
An Evolving Discipline
I rewrite my curriculum every semester. I do this more out of love than necessity, but there is always something I have learned or experienced that shapes my opinion and love of design.
But while I am always excited to include the newest insights into user research or share new technologies that are shaping our world, I am most fascinated by the things that stay the same. The base universal truth of design that transcends circumstance, experience, and ability; our shared humanity.
*Passion comes from the Latin “passio” which means to suffer. To suffer in this way is to love and to believe in an ideal version of this love. To find joy in the pursuit of that which is beautiful to behold, but impossible to achieve.