UX Modelling in Design Education: Methods, Processes and Examples

2018

The last two decades have given a new lease of life to the interpretation of users' interactions with products in human-computer interaction (HCI) and design domains. As a fast growing field, user experience (UX) brought along multifarious endeavors to frame this new field's definition and components. In the midst of this burgeoning field, many design related domains started to embrace the terms experience, services, and systems rather than a mere product focus. Academia's efforts to define what UX really is, influenced the practice by trying to investigate how UX can be put in action. Hence, growing demand from industry created a need for fully trained and specialized UX designers, turning the attention back again to academia. Although one of the most critical components of UX is research to understand users, their interactions, environments, and even the invisible factors; selecting and applying appropriate methods and tools are of high challenge due to concomitant dependence of experiences on subjective perceptions, contextual ties, and timewise conditions. In this light, we have devised a course to be integrated into design education at graduate level with the aim of teaching how to comprehend, interpret, and communicate UX to present input for the design process with a special approach. The particular approach is "modelling UX" because designing for experience and evaluating the success of design output, as well as bethinking scientific improvements and improving the practice, entail investigating experiences with opportune research methods. After delineating background for devising a UX course, this paper dwells on the objectives, content, structure, and outputs of our course; which would be a scaffolding resource for efforts to integrate UX research into design education.

The new generation of innovative technologies, such as ubiquitous computing, personal informatics, tangible interaction and Internet-based systems, blurs the boundaries between objects and services. Purdue University's interaction design program is its latest addition to the Industrial Design area within Department of Art & Design. The goal is to arm students with knowledge and tools to prepare for the integration of physical interaction and digital interaction. This paper focuses on introducing several education approaches to fit user experience research into the context of industrial design, which lead to several new interaction design courses. We also discuss the experience we gained from teaching along with potential improvement. Different from traditional Human-computer interaction courses in the computer science, we try to weave real-world projects into the courses, study related cognitive and social systems to inform knowledge, employ research methodologies to evaluate an...

Behaviour & Information Technology, 2006

Over the last decade, 'user experience' (UX) became a buzzword in the field of humancomputer interaction (HCI) and interaction design. As technology matured, interactive products became not only more useful and usable, but also fashionable, fascinating things to desire. Driven by the impression that a narrow focus on interactive products as tools does not capture the variety and emerging aspects of technology use, practitioners and researchers alike, seem to readily embrace the notion of UX as a viable alternative to traditional HCI. And, indeed, the term promises change and a fresh look, without being too specific about its definite meaning. The present introduction to the special issue on 'Empirical studies of the user experience' attempts to give a provisional answer to the question of what is meant by 'the user experience'. It provides a cursory sketch of UX and how we think UX research will look like in the future. It is not so much meant as a forecast of the future, but as a proposal -a stimulus for further UX research.

The 40th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication

One of the most important emerging trends in the field of user experience (UX) is the creation and use of design systems, which are a collection of documented elements that embody an organization's design rules and principles. While design systems are becoming ubiquitous among organizations, especially those with mature design practices, few academic programs teach students how to use or create them. In this experience report, we share details on how we incorporated design systems into assignments and courses in three different academic programs. In this experience report, we provide a definition of design systems and introduce a scalable and flexible model for teaching them. We reflect on our motivations, insights, and lessons learned from implementing this model. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); • Social and professional topics → Professional topics; Computing education; Model curricula.

User Experience as Innovative Academic Practice, 2022

Although this project began before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was written and revised in the midst of the lockdowns and the profound personal and professional changes that accompanied it. We could not have known when selecting these chapters what the future held for us. For this reason, especially, we are grateful to our authors who met deadlines and responded to reviews with grace and goodwill. We are also grateful to the Foundations and Innovations in Technical and Professional Communication series editors, especially Kristin Bivens. Thank you, Kristin, for engaging Kate in a conversation that led us to producing this collection and for shepherding us through the process. You answered our questions patiently and advocated for us when editorial processes were new or opaque to us. A group of nine reviewers offered recommendations for our chapters. Although it is not always easy to hear criticism and suggestions from reviewers, we acknowledge the time, energy, and thought that they contributed. They asked tough questions and made us dig deep in response, not always in ways we anticipated but certainly in ways that made these chapters stronger. We thank them for their efforts. Kelli, specifically, would like to acknowledge and thank a special group of scholars whose research introduced her to user experience (UX) and engaged her in discussions of UX and pedagogical innovation: Drs. Nick Carrington, Nancy Barber-Chase, Kate Crane, Elizabeth Kafka, Sarah Martin, and Brian Still. She is also grateful to the directors and members of the Women Faculty Writing Program (WFWP) at Texas Tech for asking her to dedicate three hours weekly to research activities. She could not have completed this project without WFWP's support. Kate would like to thank her colleagues who entertained the idea of using UX methods to revise the English studies degree at Eastern Washington University. In particular, Drs.

Understanding your Users, 2015

Creating a great user experience is essential to any business, and technology companies are using it as a secret weapon to usurp incumbent players in almost every industry. UX can be a key differentiator in that it adds a new dimension that emphasizes not only the product or service itself, but instead the consumer's experience of using that product or service. It is a subtle and often misunderstood distinction with profound implications. UX is an essential skill for those interested in a career in technology and/or product management, but more generally, providing a great experience to your customers is a universal imperative for any business. This course is aimed at those without a strong technical background who want to develop knowledge and skills to get a leg up when founding or joining a technology company.

2012

Designing for the user experience has been an important topic in human-computer interaction (HCI) discipline. However, there was no single definition of the user experience (Law et al., 2009). This paper intends to study the concept of the user experience from the perspectives of system design and system practice. A user experience model is proposed in this paper as a framework for information system’s user interface design. The attributes in the model could be utilized to enhance user’s experience.

2007

ABSTRACT In this paper we describe an analysis framework for analyzing UX studies. The framework consists of three approaches: Grid Analysis, Citation Analysis, and Content (Manifesto) Analysis. We apply these approaches to analyze the submissions to the workshop “Towards a UX Manifesto”. Some preliminary findings are presented. We aim to apply this framework to other UX studies in the future and to refine it accordingly.

Behaviour & Information Technology, 2015

ABSTRACT The key prerequisite for experience-driven design is to define what experience to design for. User experience (UX) goals concretise the intended experience. Based on our own case studies from industrial environments and a literature study, we propose five different approaches to acquiring insight and inspiration for UX goal setting: Brand, Theory, Empathy, Technology, and Vision. Each approach brings in a different viewpoint, thus supporting the multidisciplinary character of UX. The Brand approach ensures that the UX goals are in line with the company's brand promise. The Theory approach utilises the available scientific knowledge of human behaviour. The Empathy approach focuses on knowing the actual users and stepping into their shoes. The Technology approach considers the new technologies that are being introduced and their positive or negative influence on UX. Finally, the Vision approach focuses on renewal, introducing new kinds of UXs. In the design of industrial systems, several stakeholders are involved and they should share common design goals. Using the different UX goal-setting approaches together brings in the viewpoints of different stakeholders, thus committing them to UX goal setting and emphasising UX as a strategic design decision.

2022

User experience (UX) is an established practice in industry and is taught as a necessary skill for future technical and professional communicators. However, its use in technical and professional communication (TPC) pedagogy and program development is notably absent in TPC literature. This chapter contextualizes and situates UX in TPC, documenting its evolution from user advocacy to usability, to user-centered design, and then to UX. UX is a broadly used term that, at its core, values design processes that are focused on the user experience (notably, user-centered design, human-centered design, participatory design, and design thinking). Further, UX promotes the collection of user data to understand how the user experiences products and processes in a way that promotes iterative design and assessment. UX is contextually bound, non-linear, and often not generalizable; yet, to build and assess programs and curricula, TPC needs to take a UX approach to our work to best serve our student...