Second year, Kyler Emig from Tupelo, Mississippi came to SCAD because he was interested in both art and technology as a whole. “SCAD seems to be one of the most technological art schools in America right now,” said Emig. “I was already very excited about [UX] when I heard SCAD made it a major. I guess that’s why I was one of the first to switch. I switched from interactive so it was a smooth transition.”
Last fall SCAD was the first university in the United States to offer a B.F.A. in user experience design — UX for short — and in its first two quarters the major has taken off. But what is UX design? Why do we need it, and how is SCAD making it worthwhile?
“We only notice UX design when it’s bad,” said interactive design and game development Professor Gustavo Delao. If you are going through a computer program or even walking through a door you won’t notice the experience unless the door does not open or the program doesn’t work. If the design is flawless then the user won’t even register that there was an experience and the designer will have done their job.
User experience has been a term in the tech industry for decades. In 1993, Don Norman, an author and fellow at Apple, coined the term “to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with the system including industrial design, graphic, and interface, the physical interaction,” said Norman.
According to Delao, “Even though [Norman] claims to have invented the term, there is evidence of people using ‘user experience’ all the way back to the 70s with different meanings.”
Today, UX design is an essential job for big companies such as Amazon, Apple and Google. “We have been doing UX design for HP and BMW; it’s not just now starting. We have people who have been graduating and getting those jobs for a very long time. It’s just now more of a formal track for people to take,” said John McCabe, coordinator of user experience design, service design, and design for sustainability.
Before it was a delicate balance of which industrial, interaction, or graphic design classes would get you the UX job. “The core of what is going on here are classes that exist already. So if you look at the [curriculum], 80 percent to 85 percent of it already exists,” said McCabe. SCAD already had the legs to make this major take off they just wanted one important ingredient, Google.
For a while now SCAD has been collaborating with Google to create a curriculum that prepares students for the top UX jobs.
“They could have gone anywhere,” Delao said. A more logical choice might have been U.C. Berkley, considering geography and that university’s long record of working in Silicon Valley. But Google “has been coming here for years. We have about 36 alumni working there, so we have been going there for years and they have been coming here for years. Our relationship was pretty solid,” said McCabe.
Mike Buzzard, a design manager at Google, has been one of the associates helping with the curriculum. Buzzard has worked with SCAD before on projects with SCAD’s Collaborative Learning Center, the University’s program that pairs student groups from multiple disciplines with businesses.
“We already know these students are extremely creative and artistically talented, otherwise they wouldn’t be at SCAD,” Buzzard said. “What we want to encourage is how to apply these talents in a way that focuses on shaping products that solve problems for people. We want them to develop an objective empathy for users, a deeper understanding of tools and technologies, and a range of methods and processes for crafting digital products.”
Google’s relationship with SCAD seems to be mutually beneficial. There is a high demand for UX designers and SCAD and Google are working together to fill that need in the best way possible.
“Google is great. They have a lot of money to help us out so they fly in all the time and are a part of the conversation. And they are great people. They are really nice, humble designers that are trying to change the world,” McCabe said.
What can make UX design confusing is it sounds a lot like majors SCAD and other schools already offer. Interaction, interactive, industrial, service, and graphic design all have core aspects that are found in UX design.
“They all understand human factors — psychology — they understand how people are going to go through a space. To me, I really feel that UX is definitely foundational for all design,” said McCabe.
When asked what the difference is between the titles Buzzard said, “It’s not [different] at Google, UX is a multi-faceted group comprised of various disciplines and roles that focus on the user’s first-hand experience. This includes interaction, visual, motion, industrial, and production design as well as research, writing, and client-side engineering (web, mobile web, native mobile, etc.).”
Although this leaves UX design to be widely interpreted. Second year UX major, Andrew Sibert from Raleigh, North Carolina has a good idea of what he is in for.
“User experience design gives me the opportunity to design the future”
“User experience design gives me the opportunity to design the future: A Holy Trinity between research, design and computer science. UX gives me the opportunity to not only craft products, but holistic experiences and services,” Sibert said.
For students contemplating a UX major, Sibert thinks there are factors that make certain students a good fit for the program.
“UX, as the curriculum currently exists, is extremely focused on digital product design. The program involves a lot of computer science, which for some is a turn-off,” Sibert said.
“If you’re interested in the business side of things, do service design. If you’re into physical products, then do industrial design. If it’s a debate between interactive design and UX, I highly recommend UX. It’s the natural evolution of the interactive program at SCAD.”
Nine-years-ago the service design program was introduced at SCAD and today the program has 60 students. Two quarters in and the UX major has nearly half that many students.
“If you are taking graphic design you have already taken these classes,” McCabe said. “There is no change in trajectory. Service design and industrial design have to take a lot of these classes too, so it won’t take much to move over [to UX], and I think that is appealing to people, because people get jobs with this title right now.”
