New Product & User Experience Design Program Offers a Multifaceted Learning Experience to Aspiring Designers
The BYU Department of Design introduced a new major in Fall 2023: Product & User Experience (UX) Design. This innovative program equips students with the skills to design both physical and digital products, preparing them for the evolving field of product design. The program combines elements of the previous industrial design curriculum with new digital design practices, focusing on user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design.
Associate Professor Richard Fry said, “The students who will move forward in this hybrid program will get a lot more digital experience that they did not have in the industrial design program. There is a whole new suite of programs and a new target.”
The program prepares students to work on a variety of projects, including backpacks and desktop computers as well as apps and web pages.
Holland Seamons, a senior design student specializing in UX design, worked as a TA for the program’s introductory class in Fall 2023. She highlighted the program's emphasis on "end-to-end thinking," where students learn to consider the entire experience a user has with a product, from initial interaction to completion. “I was challenged to think bigger and embrace the process," Seamons said, "and because of that I feel like I am graduating as a lifelong learner of creativity and design.” Following graduation, she will begin working for Nike as a digital product designer.
Fry noted that an element of digital product design has existed within the field for many years: "Through the new program, students will still have those opportunities to be physical or digital and they will also have more opportunities to expand their scope into a hybrid space.”
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