As digital tools and platforms continue to shape how people interact with the world, user experience design (UXD) has emerged as a rapidly growing major at William Peace University.
From scrolling a website to searching on your phone, every digital product you use has been shaped by a user experience designer who played a pivotal role in making it accessible and intuitive.
At Peace, the UXD program prepares students to design meaningful digital experiences while gaining real-world skills that translate directly into today’s workforce.
What is User Experience Design?
UXD focuses on creating products, systems, or services that provide an easy-to-use and engaging experience for the user. Designers create prototypes and test designs to ensure products are user-friendly and accessible.
Peace students learn to solve design problems across various platforms, including mobile apps, video, websites, and gaming.
“I tell my students that the UX discipline is critical problem-solving,” said Jackson Bostian, assistant professor of user experience design. “It doesn’t matter what kind of company you go to; you can apply UX skills and solve problems. Part of the process is understanding how all the pieces move and anticipating where problems might pop up.”
Why Study UXD at Peace?
User experience design is a rapidly growing field, yet few institutions offer a degree dedicated entirely to the discipline. At Peace, the UXD major was intentionally designed with dedicated faculty and a curriculum focused on user research, prototyping, and testing. The program also draws from psychology, marketing, and entertainment to better understand how users engage with digital experiences.
“There aren’t many schools that offer a dedicated user experience design degree,” Bostian said. “And we have dedicated faculty. Having someone on the faculty who is focused solely on that is a rare thing.”
The curriculum emphasizes user research and allows students to move through the entire design process — from developing prototype ideas to testing and refining solutions based on user feedback. The program also integrates concepts from multiple disciplines, something that is uncommon at universities across the country.
“It does the work that a lot of other programs fail to do by touching on psychology, marketing, entertainment — what actually engages people,” Bostian said. “We’re going to have some cool structures set up to make sure students are building a robust skill set that is both technical and creative.”
Changes in the Field
AI continues to evolve rapidly, with new advancements emerging almost daily.
At Peace, faculty have designed courses to keep students from falling behind industry trends.
“For instance, user interface design generally means two-dimensional wireframes and website layouts,” Bostian said. “But the way the course is described and titled, it can also mean how users interact with designs through voice or other physical mechanisms and modes. It doesn’t have to be just one thing.”
By focusing on user behavior and anticipating where the industry is headed, Peace can stay ahead of the curve.
“Not boxing ourselves into one way of thinking about what users are doing and what UX education looks like is part of why we can create a UX education that stays modern and contemporary,” Bostian said.
Immersive Learning Experiences
IDX 210: User Experience is the introductory course dedicated to the major, but students are immersed in hands-on learning from the start.
Students in the course are broken into groups of three, and each group selects a service — such as academic advising, financial aid, or tutoring services — to research. They create research goals, develop interview questions, conduct interviews, and collect data on what is working well and where students experience pain points.
One of these groups is preparing a submission for the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR).
Other groups complete the full research process by affinity mapping their findings, identifying themes, writing problem statements, and developing “how might we” questions. From there, they ideate solutions and create presentations that outline the problem, illustrate where issues exist, and explain how their proposed solutions address those challenges. This process takes students through every stage of the UXD cycle.
“From their first course,” Bostian said, “they are doing highly immersive work with interviews and collaborating to design solutions.”
Future Career Paths
Peace graduates can pursue careers in UXD, web development, interaction interactive design, digital interface design, or graphic design.
“For UX, you’re looking at a specific job title that applies to several different disciplines,” Bostian said. “And I think that really appeals to students, because it signals security and expertise in a particular field.”
Learn more about User Experience and Design at William Peace University.