User Experience Design

Interactive products are a part of everyday life, and organizations use them to deliver products, services and information to customers, employees and other stakeholders. Consequently, today's user interface for products/services must be seen as a central part of the user experience offered by an organization. Poorly designed interfaces negatively affect the user experience, while a well-designed one can contribute to a positive experience with that organization.

The minor User Experience Design aims to help you design interfaces that provide a good user experience and positively contribute to the user’s experience of the organization that provides its products/services through the interface. Using simulations and real-world assignments, you will learn to research, understand and design solutions for complex user experience design problems at both a strategic level and at the user interface level. We build upon your existing knowledge of UX design and prepare you for designing for complex projects that touch multiple devices.

By the end of the minor, you:

• have acquired the knowledge, skills and attitude of a junior UX designer
• can develop and create user centred concepts and solutions for complex UX design problems within given constraints
• master a variety of UXD skills and tools to design digital interactive media that are functional, reliable, usable and pleasurable in use
• are aware of and can deal with context factors that influence the design process: time, money, ethics, politics, strategy, technique, platform, etc.
• can document, present and effectively communicate complex UX solutions
• can test and evaluate the usability of interactive systems
• have developed your design attitude and an authentic vision of UXD
• have experienced and developed a feeling of what a professional setting of UX designers entails.

The minor consists of two acts:

Act I: Chapters about User Experience, Multi Modal Design and Big Information Architecture (15 ec, assessment)
Act II: Chapters about Cognitive Psychology, Seductive Interaction Design and HCI Mastery (15 ec, assessment)

During both acts, you'll:

1. work on your personal development as a designer together with a coach
2. work on a project for a client (either for a research group within the university or a company/organisation)
3. build an individual portfolio, which we'll discuss during an assessment
4. receive 15EC after completing the assessment

Entry requirements

More specifically we have established the following entry requirements:

• You should write and speak good English and be able to read and understand university-level English texts quickly and thoroughly.
• You can develop personas, user scenarios, storyboards, visual presentations, concepts and debriefings.
• You have knowledge of user interface patterns, guidelines and heuristics.
• You have knowledge of usability testing and are able to perform design research;
• You are able to work with UX design and prototyping tools like Sketch, Figma or ProtoPie
• You can develop/understand design specifications like user requirements, data models, use case scenarios, flowcharts, wireframes and wireflows;
• You can develop an interactive prototype with more advanced prototyping tools (like Figma, ProtoPie or in code)

Don't hesitate to contact us (Vincent Vijn and International Office) if you want to be sure that this minor meets your expectations and if your current coursework satisfies the entry requirements.

Contact

Coordinator UX Design: Vincent Vijn

E-mail: v.l.vijn@hva.nl

International Office CMD:

E-mail: international-cmd@hva.nl

More information

• download more information on the UxD module

Want to apply?