Brandeis Online

May 15, 2025

Each year, the Rabb School of Continuing Studies selects an instructor for the Rabb Outstanding Teacher Award. Nominated by students, the recipient of this award is someone who goes above and beyond in the classroom, incorporating engaging learning strategies and demonstrating great passion in their work. 

This year’s recipient is user-centered design instructor Bob Thomas — someone who has truly made a mark at Brandeis Online. 

With over 40 years of distinguished experience, Bob has established himself as a leading authority in user experience design. His impressive career spans roles as technical writer, documentation manager, product manager, director of user experience design, and currently, UX consultant. But before his ascent in the UX field, Bob began his professional journey as an educator.

“I started teaching when I was 25 and in grad school at UMass Amherst, where I received my MFA in creative writing,” Bob told Brandeis Online. After graduation, he taught English composition and literature at various institutions, including Westfield State College, Asnuntuck Community College and the Enfield Correctional Institution. 

Though Bob eventually transitioned to the UX profession, his passion for education remained constant throughout his career. This is largely because Bob’s father — “who grew up in a one-parent household during the Depression, and was the first in his family to get a college degree after he completed 4 years of military service” — instilled a love for teaching within him at a young age. “He always told me that the value of an education was to teach you how to think critically,” Bob shared. 

This enduring connection to teaching led Bob to join Brandeis Online as an instructor in 2022 — a moment he describes as “full circle.” Bob expresses gratitude that his consulting work now provides him the flexibility to return to teaching.

With his years of experience as both an educator and a UX design expert, Bob immediately made an impact at Brandeis Online. He took the challenge of redesigning the Rabb School’s foundational User-Centered Design course head-on, transforming it into a hands-on learning experience that students can truly learn from. 

“Teaching means providing a framework for students to understand the world or at least give them a perspective on how to think about it critically, intelligently and empathetically,” Bob told Brandeis Online. With this philosophy in mind, Bob divided the course into two parts: First, students spend time understanding the goals of a business and the problems its customers face when using its website. Then, students use these findings to brainstorm, sketch, build and test a solution for a specific target audience. 

Moving through each step of the design process is no easy feat — but Bob is there for students every step of the way. While the course — like all Brandeis Online courses — is largely asynchronous and entirely online, Bob’s weekly interactive sessions give students the unique opportunity to learn with him in real time. 

In these Zoom calls, students are able to “ask questions, give feedback and tell stories that relate to the topic at hand.” By providing a forum for students to connect course material to personal experiences, Bob helps to clarify the applications and purpose of their learnings. He also gets to talk directly with students — which Bob says is his “favorite part of teaching.”

It’s clear that in both instruction and design, Bob prioritizes the so-called “human element.” To him, user-centered design “is really human-centered design, because we’re designing for people.” Whether he’s working with a product development team to fix a problem or adjusting his course to meet student needs, Bob always takes the time to put people first — and he teaches his students to do the same. 

“I want to show students that if you start by understanding the goals of a business and the needs of its users, and then identify basic but important problems that get in the way of achieving those goals and needs, you’ll go a long way towards making this world a better place,” Bob told Brandeis Online. 

Given the positive impact that Bob himself has left on the Brandeis Online community and beyond, we are honored to present him with this year’s Outstanding Teaching Award.

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Bob Thomas is the founder and principal of his own user experience research consultancy. He is also an adjunct instructor in the user-centered design program at Brandeis Online. For more information on Bob, visit his scholar page. 

Bob will be moderating a panel at Brandeis Online’s upcoming online career development seminar Designing for Impact: Elevating UCD and UX Skills for the Next Career Stage.