UT Dallas arts and tech program trains students in UX design field

UT Dallas’ arts and technology program has a recruitment program with major employers.
UT Dallas’ arts and technology program has a recruitment program with major employers. | File photo
The University of Texas Dallas recently highlighted its growing prominence in the user experience (UX) design field, enabled through the school’s transdisciplinary ArtSciLab and the university’s School of Arts, Technology and Emerging Communication.
 
“There’s a growing trend in more courses focused on user experience (UX) design and interaction design at colleges across the nation,” ArtSciLab director of design and research Cassini Nazir said. “Many of these concepts have come out of human computer interaction concepts, but design research and UX have really emerged as disciplines in their own right. Industry has helped by investing in design researchers and user experience designers in their spaces.”
 
UX is also receiving growing attention from companies, ranging from large, established companies to startups, that see the value of the field as it pertains to their customer relations. UT Dallas’ arts and technology program has a recruitment program with Sabre and Intuit, and UT Dallas students who learned and practiced in the lab have gone on to work at companies like Dell, Capital One, Cisco Systems, AT&T, Siemens, General Motors, Fossil and J.C. Penney.
 
“UTD has really benefited from it because there’s a boom of businesses setting up offices in Dallas,” Nazir said. “Many of those companies have been hiring teams of designers, and we’ve been successful in filling those needs.”