User Experience (UX)
Engage with UMSI students along the design cycle to provide meaningful, relevant, accessible, and desirable experiences for users via a variety of projects. Some examples of UX projects are field research and product ideation; evaluation of the usability and engagement of an existing website; creation of initial designs and mockups for a new idea; development and launch of a working prototype; and solving challenges with technology and accessibility
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What is User Experience?
How do you define "User Experience"?
The field of User Experience (UX) helps organizations better understand the users of their products and improve user interactions.
UX is all about improving the quality of the interactions between a person and an object. The object can be anything: a website, a desktop computer software, or a mobile phone application—but also the mouse and keyboard used to navigate the website, the table and chair used to sit at computer, or the mobile phone itself.
Anytime a person interacts with an object, an experience is produced which can be taken as the focus of UX. For clients, this means that websites, software, processes, and products—from voice-activated navigation systems in motor vehicles to virtual reality headsets to medical devices—can all potentially be improved through UX.
How can UX students help my project?
Our UX students specialize in several different areas that may help improve the user experience—and customer satisfaction—of your product.
Our advanced undergraduate and graduate students assist clients in the following areas:
User Research. Students recommend creative and compelling solutions— supported by field research of target users—to clients in the early stages of new product development.
Design. Students provide wireframes and prototypes of creative and compelling solutions to challenging design problems. Check out this video to see how students helped an organization recruit volunteers and this video to learn how students supported teachers to build an online community.
Development. Students help clients bring non-mission critical projects from concept or idea to prototype.
Evaluation. Students evaluate the user experience of an existing product, identify strengths and weaknesses, and provide a blueprint clients can follow to improve their product.
Accessibility-Focused Research & Design. Master’s-level students work with clients to research and design a tool or product, with a focus on accessibility for marginalized, disabled, and/or aging populations.
How does UX improve products?
Creating a good user experience (or improving an existing experience) requires understanding users and focusing on a core set of measurable attributes to improve their interactions.
UX improves products by understanding users—their needs and goals, values and preferences, abilities and limitations—as well as stakeholder goals and objectives, and using that understanding to measure and improve specific attributes that are common to all or most interactions with a product.
Those attributes (outlined by Peter Morville, an influential information architect) include the following:
Usefulness. Does the object fulfill a need?
Usability. Are users able to intuitively use the object?
Desirability. Does the object's design elements—image, identity, brand, etc.—inspire appreciation?
Findability. Can users locate what they need?
Accessibility. Is the object accessible to people with disabilities?
Credibility. Do users trust and believe what the object tells them?
The UX field has several subdivisions and specializations dedicated to answering these questions, and suggesting or implementing improvements where the answers fall short.
I'm interested, but I don't know where to start.
Don't worry! Our team will find the best fit for your project.
If you're interested in submitting a UX project idea but aren't sure which area would be most appropriate, don't worry—we still encourage you to submit a project. Our team will work with you directly to determine the UX area that will most benefit your project.
Past Client Testimonial
"The research and recommendations presented by the students has validated several assumptions and provided valuable new insights about the learning needs of our users. Their work will contribute to easier-to-use software, and more usable, findable learning content to support the needs of users."
Tom Vollaro, Autodesk
Fall 2020 – Winter 2021 | User Experience Opportunities
In SI 682: Advanced User Research in the Field, master's-level students collect data from the field related to a specific usability challenge articulated by the client, providing creative and compelling solutions supported by extensive user research.
In SI 487: User Experience Final Project, advanced undergraduate students deliver research and design solutions to problems that involve user requirements analysis, user research, prototyping, and user experience evaluation.
In SI 699: User-Centered Agile Development, master's-level graduate students work with clients to identify potential project areas, then employ user-centered Agile methodologies to conduct research and develop products, applications, or services.
In SI 699: Mastery User Experience Research and Design master's-level graduate students work with clients in this advanced course to demonstrate command of the UX key methods, theories, approaches, and capabilities that they have acquired by creating a portfolio-quality concept design using recognized experience design methods. This course offering is focused on accessibility projects.
In SI 622: Needs Assessment and Usability Evaluation, master's-level graduate students work with clients to evaluate how well the user experience of their product or service meets the needs of its users, using a variety of methods to identify areas where the product or system succeeds and where it can be better at helping users achieve their goals.