User Experience Design

The minor User Experience Design aims to help you design web and mobile interfaces: interfaces that provide a good user experience and make a positive contribution to the user’s experience of the organization that provides their products / services through the interface. Through the use of 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 level of the user interface.

By the end of the minor you:  

• have acquired the knowledge, skills and attitude of an entry level 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 interactive media (websites, apps,...) 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, …;
• can document, present and effectively communicate complex UX solutions; 
• can test and evaluate the usability of interactive systems; 
• have developed your own design attitude and an authentic vision on UXD; 
• have experienced and developed a feeling of what a professional setting of UX designers entails.​

​The minor consists of the following elements:

Theoretical foundations; user experience, cognitive psychology, seductive interaction design (9 ECTS) 
The craft of user experience design: multi device design, big IA,  HCI mastery (9 ECTS) 
Individual UX project (9 ECTS) 
Coaching, X2 (3 ECTS )​

Admission

• You should write and speak good English and be able to read and understand university-level English texts quickly and thoroughly;
• You can develop persona’s, user scenario’s, moodboards, storyboards, visual presentations, concept plan, debriefings;
• You have knowledge of basis and platform UX-heuristics, -patterns and guidelines; ​You have knowledge of usability and - testing – and are able to perform (usage/user) research;
• You have knowledge of in- and external target groups, goals, values within the design process; 
• You are able to work with tools like: Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Visio, Omnigraffle; 
• You can develop/understand design specifications like: list of user requirements, data model, use case scenario, flowchart, screen transition​ diagram, wireframe; 
• You can develop a prototype or simulation in html, javascript, flash or with use of video.

If you think you meet those requirements, please write a motivation letter and send it together with a link to a portfolio of your work BEFORE October 1st 2016. The next step is a meeting with two tutors (via Skype or at the Amstel Campus in Amsterdam).