User Experience (BS)

Strengthens design elements and principles. Explores, creates and critiques cross-media design work for print and digital outputs.

Presents a broad overview of the field of storytelling with data. Examines how data, narrative and visuals are combined to communicate and influence the audience to some aspect of change.

Principles and tools of visual communication in print and electronic media, with an emphasis on document design, including typography and color.

Principles of writing for the Web, including information architecture, accessibility, usability and responsive design. Explores basics of markup language and content management.

Explores how accessibility in communication is, should be and can be achieved. Investigates how accessibility concerns interact with current and emerging technology, trends in industry, public policies and the government agencies that enforce these policies. Includes access to telecommunications (including Internet and wireless communications, relay services, etc.); information; video media; emergency services; public accommodations; employment; education and other contexts. Students employ this information to design communication that is accessible, usable and effective for a wide range of audiences.

Explores the planning, building, launching and maintenance of product design systems. Includes defining existing and new UI patterns for creating a cohesive design language and developing strategies for communicating the system's importance to stakeholders.

Focuses on user experience (UX) writing practices to build. Covers the principles, techniques and tools of UX writing and teaches how to approach interface writing--thinking about how it enables and hinders the user, and how microcopy and content design can maximize the user experience. Assignments focus on hands-on learning and writing.

Focuses on evaluating, designing and conducting user experience (UX) research. Introduces methods commonly used in the field and provides the foundational knowledge needed to plan and design effective UX research in any field and for any size project. Allows students to focus on practices and methods that are most relevant to them while also learning general principles for evaluating, designing and planning research, as well as collecting and analyzing data and information and reporting/presenting results.

Explores the knowledge structures of websites, apps and other interactive media. Focusing on practical skills, covers the main pillars of information architecture (such as structure types, organization schemes, labeling, logic, navigation patterns and meta-data); evaluation methods; design strategies that account for diverse mental models and user scenarios; and deliverables for user-centered projects. Gives special attention to issues of accessibility; the readings may introduce cross-disciplinary insights from cognitive psychology, library science and architecture.

Covers how barriers to digital accessibility affect those with differing abilities. Through the analysis of digital interfaces, students employ accessibility guidelines and testing methods to identify and recommend solutions to accessibility barriers. Also explores the legal implications of inaccessible interfaces.

Explores principles, techniques and tools of user experience (UX) in medical and health care settings including user and task analysis, user-centered design and usability testing. Students employ medical UX theory and practice to develop holistic understandings of the ways that patients, families and caregivers, health care professionals, places and technologies intersect. Understanding experiences within these contexts allows communicators to support and advocate for patients in digital and physical environments.