A virtual engagement leading into the MPS UX Design program. Students will have an opportunity to meet MICA administration, interact with students in their cohort and work on a 3 day challenge led by UX Design Faculty.Virtual Residency for students starting the MPS UX Design program January 2019 and after.

Residency III occurs at the very end of the program and consists of final student presentations, assessment of thesis projects, and the program conclusion. Residency I, II, III for students in the MPS UX Design program prior to January 2019.

This weekend-long experience is designed to have you implement the concepts, methods, and strategies learned thus far in the program. You will network with industry professionals, collaborate with your cohort and faculty, experiment with technologies and applications in workshop settings to create visualizations, listen to experts and gain insight into design trends and strategies. Two elective sessions will be offered across all three MPS residencies to enable you to meet, learn from, and network with peers in UX Design, Business of Art and Design, and Product Management sections.

To ensure your success in the program, students will meet virtually for a 1-day orientation where they will meet administrative staff, learn more about student services and success initiatives, and engage in community building with their cohort. In addition, students will complete an asynchronous orientation course in Canvas as a means to introduce them to the navigation of MICA’s administrative tools as well as inform them of academic services available through MICA. The content and assignments in the orientation course are designed to be an introduction to the program as well as a resource throughout the students' time at MICA.

Students in this course focus on applied practices from the user research learned in the Foundations of UX Research course. Here, information architecture, interaction design, inclusivity, visual design, and usability are discussed as students explore screen and page layout, organization, navigation, labeling, search, and other core concepts and techniques such as user flows, wireframes, and content modeling. Students will gain practical experience as they design a prototype for further development in the next course.

UX design skills require a solid knowledge of practical aspects of a number of digital tools, technologies, and resources. Student success in this program and beyond relies heavily upon students’ ability to successfully deploy the latest UX tools to create elegant and fully realized interfaces. Projects focus on building knowledge related to industry standard tools through a sequence of exercises employing the most relevant UX technology.

This course provides an overview and introduction to the nature of human-centered design with a special emphasis on improving UX for accessibility and inclusivity. Using their projects from Prototyping, students study the nature of human-machine interactions that involve visual, sound, and haptic feedback. Additional user experience topics of learnability, functionality, elegance, clarity, efficiency, and information architecture are studied as students learn how to solve design problems using principles of cognitive psychology, linguistics, social sciences, and ethnography.

Students in Prototyping build on their ideas from Foundations of Design to deepen their understanding of the value and importance of prototyping within the design process. Students will learn how to use prototypes to explore, test, and communicate design ideas and they will be introduced to principles of design and usability, with a focus on digital experiences. Through an ongoing assignment, students will gain practical experience while iteratively building & testing prototypes. By the end of this course, students will be prepared to present their prototypes and study them through a more human-centered design lens.

UX design skills require a solid knowledge of practical aspects of a number of digital tools, technologies, and resources. Student success in this program and beyond relies heavily upon students’ ability to successfully deploy the latest industry tools to create elegant and fully realized interfaces. Projects focus on building knowledge related to industry standard tools through a sequence of exercises employing the most relevant UX technology.

A basic understanding of the business of UX is an essential skill for successful UX designers. This course provides a foundation of business knowledge including networking, marketing, budgeting, client and stakeholder relations, and business communications. Essential project management skills are also addressed. Students gain project management skills related to the creation of strategic plans, and the knowledge of professional workflow practices. Topics include project scope, time, cost, quality, and human resource management techniques as applied to the UX industry. Students learn to design a project structure and obtain hands-on experience using project management software. Additional focus is placed on leadership, teamwork, and project risk management.

UX Design Lab I: Users is a course designed to provide students with real world case-studies that illustrate challenges faced in the UX industry specifically related to end users. Students learned to construct personas or archetypal descriptions of users of a system and are an amalgamation of data collected from interviews with potential users and include details about behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environments, and are combined with a number of fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character. Students in UX Design Lab I learn research methods and strategies for considering unique, realistic user types as a means to make sound design decisions. Guided by how well results meet the needs of individual user personas, this course assists students to understand how effectively UX designers prioritize needs of a target population. Teamwork and collaboration are central aspects of this class which recreates industry processes with a special focus on user research and testing used in UX design companies.

UX Design Lab II: Utility builds on UX Design Lab I and is a similarly structured course. In the case of UX Design Lab II students are presented with real world case-studies that illustrate challenges faced in the UX industry specifically related to utility or ease of use. Focus is on user experience topics of learnability, functionality, elegance, clarity, efficiency, and information architecture. Conventions of use like challenge, flow, mastery, consistency, coherence, and control are evaluated and tested relative to the time users need to complete a particular task and learn how to operate the interface, as well as user satisfaction. Students also continue to develop their understanding of user research and testing. Projects in UX Design Lab II employ small work groups, modeled on current industry practices.

MICA’s industry partners are engaged throughout this course and present students with challenges faced by professionals in the UX industry. Students work in teams and are provided with access to the professional world they are about to enter. UX professionals provide feedback, insight, encouragement, and critical analysis to students as they execute their projects.

As the final course in the MPS UXD program, Capstone and Reflection requires each student to create a final portfolio containing a Capstone project from concept to a fully realized prototype. Students also provide documentation outlining their process for the design. Using research and materials developed over the course of the program, students work with a faculty advisor for guidance and critique during project development.

This first course is essential to define and develop a properly-formulated problem statement that drives research and the systematic approach to gathering and interpreting collected data to identify the needs of each target user base. UX methods and techniques, including user interviews, contextual inquiries, personas, affinity mapping, and competitive analysis will be covered as students explore research methods and strategies for considering unique, realistic user types to make sound design decisions (in the next course). As a result of this course, students will be able to construct personas/archetypal descriptions of users and write a user research report/plan.