White background with navy text that says "Welcome: Chat with the Chair of User-Centered Design." Below, two people work on a design using sticky notes.
Thomas Screnci: Excellent. So thank you for joining us for this chat with the chair of user centered design. We'll jump right into our presentation here with our introductions.
Slide switches to show two headshots: Eva Kaniasty (ekaniasty@brandeis.edu) and Tom Screnci (tscrenci@brandeis.edu).
Tom Screnci speaks: First, I am Thomas Screnci. I'm the Associate Director of Admissions and Enrollment here at Brandeis Online. So as you look at master's degrees, master's certificates. Think about applying any questions about stuff related to that. I will be your primary point person, I'm happy to help related to any questions or advice I can possibly give, and joining us is the chair of the program. Ava. I'll let Ava introduce herself. Talk a little about her background. Eva.
Eva Kaniasty speaks: Sure. I have been the chair of the UCD program for over 5 years, and I've been actively working in the UX field for more than 15 years at this point. And in addition to teaching and trying the program, I also work as a user experience consultant doing kind of a mix of UX research, strategy and design.
I am a big proponent of evidence-based design. So using science and research to support design decisions. And that's something that I try to make sure that we incorporate into our curriculum. And then a little bit more about me. I've worked in in the past I've worked in healthcare education, UX for startups. And I've also been pretty involved in the local ux community in Boston and New England, including serving as president of the UXPA, Boston Chapter for several years. And then this year I am actually serving as co-chair for emerging tech at the UXPA International Conference.
Thomas Screnci: Excellent. Thank you, Eva, all right.
Screen changes to say "Agenda." Bullet points say: "Program overview, Marketplace information, Admissions info, Open Q&A."
Tom Screnci speaks: So our agenda is pretty straightforward. We're going to be covering overview of the program, talking about the marketplace what it's like for those who are in the industry which could, may or may not be very helpful, depending. If you're in the industry currently or not and wrap up by talking about admissions, information, and then we have plenty of time for Q&A at the end. So with that, I'm going to hand it right back to Eva to jump into kind of the defining features of the UCD or User-Centered Design program here at Brandeis Online.
Slide changes to say "Program Defining Features." Grid with four features listed: "1. Human Factors/Cognitive Psychology, 2. UX Research Methods, 3. Interaction Design/Info Architecture, 4. Leadership Skills/Design Process."
Eva Kaniasty: Sure. So, you know, one of the key differences in our program is that it is completely asynchronous meaning online. So as a student, you can complete your work kind of at your convenience. Most of our students work. Some of them do work full-time as well. And the program was structured this way from the very beginning, even before the pandemic. So you know, by now, we have a lot of experience in terms of implementing best practices for online instruction.
And in the user-centered design program we are, you know, as I mentioned, I really try to be very rigorous in teaching you kind of the human factors and cognitive psychology that you need to know. To be a truly effective UX professional. However, at the same time, we also focus on practical skills and projects that you can include in your portfolio most of the assignments that you'll be completing our kind of real world scenarios. So by the time that you leave the program hopefully, you'll have practiced a number of ux processes and methods, and you should be ready to start contributing at a pretty high level in your next or 1st ux position.
Our student body is pretty diverse, and I think it's, you know, because most adults in this day and age find it kind of difficult to put their life on hold to attend grad school in person. And by offering online learning, we are really removing some of those barriers that might limit you otherwise and what kind of program you can access.
One of the key differences from something like an online certificate is that our courses, even though it's there online, they are instructor facilitated. So you have the opportunity to interact with faculty and other students, whether that's doing group work or office hours or other meetings. And these days I do require that all faculty have standing office hours every week to make sure that students can stay engaged, as I find that, you know, it's very important to keeping you motivated and getting the support that you need to have at least a little bit of regular face-to-face contact.
If you could go to the next slide.
Thomas Screnci: Absolutely. Thank you, Eva.
Slide changes to say "Program Curriculum." Required courses include: RUCD 101 — User Experience Design, RUCD 120 — Human Factors Psychology, RUCD 130 — Information Architecture, RUCD 140 — Research Methods, RUCD 150 — Design Ideation and Prototyping, RUCD 170 — Design Operation and Leadership, RUCD 190 — Capstone in User-Centered Design.
Eva Kaniasty: So to give you an overview of the curriculum. This is a 30 credit program with 7 required courses and 3 electives. And our program is continually improving. It actually gets redeveloped, I believe, every 3 years. And we're doing that this year again. So we're always adding a new and special topics courses.
We have an internship course that's a few actually is a few years old already. This is a 4 credit internship that includes a learning experience to complement the hands on learning that you'll get at your internship site. And we designed this course to assist career changers get their foot in the door.
And then another thing that is relatively new is we just developed 2 new research courses, a course in contextual or field research and a survey methods course that actually, I will be teaching. In the past few years we've had more students coming in with an interest or even previous experience in user research. So having these courses, allows you, if you have that interest, to tackle more advanced topics, get more of an in-depth experience.
And then, since as you may have heard, AI and machine learning is something that we are all kind of grappling with, I am planning on adding a course that tackles this topic and its relevancy to user experience. And that should be coming down the pike. I think in the next year.
And then if you could go to the next slide.
Slide changes to say "Other Electives." Electives in design, project. management, analytics, strategy, and leadership are listed.
Eva Kaniasty speaks: So in addition, we have our obviously core courses and electives in the UCD program. And we also have a range of electives that you can take from other Brandeis GPS programs. And this is kind of a range of courses, including analytics, business strategy, and ethics. And even if you know, this is obviously a limited list of all the courses that are offered, if you are interested in a specific course. That's not on the list, but it kind of fits your learning goals, you can also apply to take that additional course instead of an elective that's on the official list.
Thomas Screnci: Thank you. I think the next is, is just a little jumping into a little more depth of a required course. One of the key courses here. So if you wouldn't mind jumping into a little more detail the breakdown of our user experience design course. Please.
Slide switches to say "Required Course Spotlight." RUCD 101: User Experience Design. Bullet points say, "Discover key methodologies for understanding users, including personas, stories, and storyboards; Develop foundational interactional design skills, including sketching, wireframing, and prototyping; Understand common approaches to usability evaluation, including heuristic evaluation and usability testing."
Eva Kaniasty: Sure. So this is kind of a foundational course. That will introduce students to the user centered design process and some of the key methods. So things like design, thinking, interaction design, usability, testing. And and just as with, as I mentioned, with most of our courses, you will get kind of the practical experience of creating deliverables that are pretty unrealistic, and that can you can use in your portfolio?
And the other thing to add here is that, as I mentioned, there is a redevelopment process for all our courses. So as things are changing in the field, the primary instructors, every, I think 2 or 3 years they go through and make sure that the course courses are updated and are not becoming outdated because we haven't kind of kept pace with the progress that's happening in the field.
The thing to mention about this course is that this is a course for students who may be changing careers or don't have a lot of experience in UX. If you have past experience, or if you have completed some kind of certificate, you can actually apply for a waiver and take a more advanced course in place of 101, and I believe there's another course you could go to that.
Thomas Screnci: Human factor.
Slide switches to say "RUCD 120: Human Factors Psychology." Bullet points say, "Understand the historical context and future trends in fields of human factors, ergonomics, inclusive design, and user-centered design; Examine the capabilities and limitations of human perception and cognition, and their relationship to effective design."
Eva Kaniasty: Yeah. So human factor psychology, that's another course that I am teaching a couple times a year. This is probably our most, you know, purely academic course. And I think it is one of our primary differentiators from something like a certificate or boot camp. But even with this course, even though it's it has a lot of kind of advanced readings and theory, you're still applying what you're learning to real world design challenges. So it's really not something where you're just kind of reading a textbook and taking tests.
Thomas Screnci: Thank you for the breakdown of the courses. And the curriculum it's a great opportunity for me to plug that this program can be done part time, which can be as little as one course per session. And there are 4 sessions a year currently, which are 10 weeks long, and starting this fall, which is actually August when the session starts, we're moving to 8 week sessions, so the sessions will be 2 weeks shorter, which will allow us to have 5 sessions per year and allow you to graduate a little quicker. So you can do these programs full time and complete them in a year's time, or you can do it part time and do one course at a time, and take 2, 3 years, possibly depending on your interest, your commitments your timeline so we do offer a full and part time option for our programs. But we'll jump back to our regularly scheduled programming here and headed back to Ava to jump into some industry insights about user center design. Please.
Slide switches to say "Marketplace Information." Bullet points say: "10.9% industry growth over the next decade; In the past year, over 74, 839 user-centered design related jobs posted in the U.S.; Median salary: $109k; UX managers make on average $150k, user researchers $107k, designers $115k."
Eva Kaniasty: Sure. And I mean just one thing that I wanted to add. So, even though we are kind of compressing the the length of the course to 8 weeks we are still, it's still, is it 3 credits? So it's the the amount of material that you're covering that we're covering is still remains. The same. It's just that the timeline is a little bit compressed.
So in terms of the job market. So I think there's still opportunity in the field. It's been the case, for you know, since I've been in the field, and I think it's it will just continue to be true just because you know, there's always progress happening in technology, and then really nice thing that you know, I personally enjoy about working in ux is that the people coming into the field have pretty diverse backgrounds. So it's not necessarily everyone who just decides that this is what they want to do as soon as they as they unfinished college. So there are definitely a lot of kind of niches that you can find that based on your strengths and your background, your past experience.
So you know, to give you some examples, you could work exclusively in healthcare, or, you know, focus on mobile app design or cyber security. That's another really, really big one these days. And because UX is changing, it's very much collaborative in nature. Most of the jobs that you'll see do require strategic thinking and leadership skills, even, you know, at kind of individual contributor levels.
And you'll find there are fewer what you would call purely entry level jobs. And that's you know why we have the internship course as well. Having said that, you probably know that the tech industry has gone through some kind of ups and downs. There have been some layouts in the last year or so.
I personally hope that it's going to lead to more entry level hiring, as companies kind of become leaner and more efficient. But I don't have a crystal ball, so I there are no guarantees. Whatever happens. I so believe that having a master level credential can make a big difference in getting your foot foot in the door. Or if you're already in the field to transition to leadership level, there are definitely more people with master level credentials these days than there used to be when I 1st started out where you really, you know, there are some people who didn't even have an undergrad degree. So you know, to make sure that you're kind of prepared to meet those requirements that employers have.
We also have a required leadership course, as well as electives to prepare you to work on product teams, applying processes like agile. And then the last thing I'll mention here is that the pandemic has definitely had a significant impact on having more hybrid and remote opportunities, which means that you may not be as limited by geography as we used to be in the past. In particular, a lot of ux. Research is being conducted online these days. Because that's what companies had to kind of switch to during Covid. And I mean, obviously, design can be done from anywhere as well.
So that's that for me. Well, I still have more talking to do.
Thomas Screnci: I have one more, which is this in the Advisory Board. Then you're free, and then it's me.
Slide switches to say "UCD Faculty Job Titles." Bullet points say: Principal UX Architect for Cox Automotive, User Experience Lead at Dell Technologies, Head of UX and Digital Accessibility at Harvard University Library, Corporate Vice President of User Experience at New York Life Insurance."
Eva Kaniasty: Okay. So as I did mention previously, we do try to keep our courses and curriculum current and relevant to what's happening out in the real world and we do this in a few other ways. So 1st of all, all, our faculty work in the field and are not strictly academics. So they work for us part time. And we teach them how to teach online to meet our standards.
And being online also means that we're not geographically limited in hiring faculty, so we can hire the best people for the job regardless of their location. So what you're looking at right now are some of the roles of our user-centered design faculty. And then, if you go to the next slide.
Slide switches to say "Advisory Board and Industry Mentors." Bullet points say, "Senior UX Manager at NetApp, Director of Research at Tripadvisor, VP of Brand and Advisor Experience at Commonwealth."
We also have a pretty engaged advisory board and a team of industry mentors who are available to students either for kind of ad hoc, mentoring or ongoing relationships and professional development. And the goal here is to help you build your portfolios and develop your professional network, and, you know, become prepared to advance your career to the next level after graduation.
The way that works is that once you complete 2 courses in the program, you're eligible to request a mentor and you can do this as many times as you wish. You're not limited to to just one mentor and I mean, this program has actually worked really well. Since, obviously, you know we have myself and other faculty, but not everyone is an expert in everything, you know. Since I am a consultant, I'm not a hiring manager. So it's really great for me to have these senior resources who can assist you as your your job searching in particular.
Thomas Screnci: Thank you, Ava. You gave us a lot of great information about the program. I appreciate it. So use my talking as a quick break and segue into the admission side of things.
Slide switches to say "Application Checklist." List says: "1. Online Application, 2. Official transcripts, 3. Resume, 4. Statement of goals, 5. Letter of recommendation." NO GRE or GMAT required.
Tom Screnci speaks: I will start by saying, we do offer certificate programs as part of Brandeis online's offerings. This application checklist really just applies toward the master's degrees the master's certificates. It is a very straightforward process. There's an application on our website which you would fill in and add in a resume, and also fill in as part of the form where you completed your undergraduate.
And with that we would follow up, and then, you know, see if you're qualify for the program and start the enrollment process. So a very quick process for the master's degrees, this is the process one update I did not make is, it does say there is no G matter required. That is correct. There is also no application fee. That is one thing I wish I added to this. So there's no cost to applying for this program. It is, of course, an online application which you fill out through our website, we require you to submit your official transcripts as part of your application.
If you attended multiple universities, if you transferred, we would require official transcripts of all previous institutions. If you happen to have copies laying around, and you wanted to use that, and you didn't want to wait for your school to send you a transcript. We can send. Excuse me. We can make decisions and send out decisions with copies of transcripts. But we would need an official transcript by the end of your 1st session. So we would eventually need an official transcript. But we can make admissions decisions with copies.
We're also looking for an updated, resume from you to showing your your background. We always note that you can very much break the norms, the traditional standards, so to speak, of resumes where it you know, you typically hear the advice that it should be one page. With with us it can be 2, 3 pages long. You can dive into great detail about the projects and work you've done. We're not so much criticizing the formatting of your resume. We're really just looking at the content of it, showing us your experience, however related or unrelated it may be.
It's great to have as much knowledge about your experience in the field or related fields. Before we make our decision. So giving us lengthy descriptions of a current and former roles is fantastic. To have it gives even myself a lot of context of what the what you, as an applicant, are bringing to the to the program. So please feel free to give us a very lengthy resume. If you feel that is appropriate for you.
The statement of goals is 500 words or more. This is really just you answering the question, why are you applying to this program? Why are you picking Brandeis? You might have a promotion in mind, a career change in mind. You might want to leave your company, or maybe there's a new thing, a new opportunity you're looking for. You can discuss that. You can, of course, discuss events of your past some people have had unrelated or just rougher undergraduate, you know, bachelor's degree experiences. They wanna just discuss that. That's totally fine.
You know, while 500 words is typically less than a page. If you ended up being 2, 3 pages long because you really wanted to give us a lot of context, that's completely fine. Your essay can be 501 words, and that's acceptable if it just meets the minimum, or if it keeps going on because you want to give us a lot of content and context. By all means. It's truly up to you as to what you feel best, describes you best, gives you the best, gives us the best picture of you as an applicant. So 500 word statement of goals.
And then, lastly, we're looking for one letter of recommendation. This is ideally a current manager or supervisor. It can also be former manager or supervisor. If you're a more recent graduate which we have plenty of. We have people who are, you know, been out of college for one year to people who have been in the industry for 20 years, plus if you're a more recent graduate and you only have someone who led a research project or oversaw an internship or something like that. Someone oversaw you at a part-time job is, you think, your best reference? That's okay. You know, managers and supervisors are ideal. But someone who can talk about you at good length and good context of what you are, how you are in the workplace, in a professional setting is really the context, the material we're looking for within the recommendation. So you can send 2 or 3 recommendations or more if you if you want to, but just sending one as a minimum and completely acceptable.
You see, the deadlines for applying listed right there as well. We have a rolling admission meaning we send out decisions as applications are completed. Decisions typically take about a week's time to get sent to you once the application is completed. So you apply whenever you want to, and once it's ready we will send out a decision as soon as we can.
And that completes the application. Very straightforward. No standardized testing, no application fees required pretty straightforward process here, and you can always reach out to us at online@brandeis.edu. That is where transcripts get sent to is that email address at the bottom of the screen. That is where you'll send these transcripts. If you have questions about your unique status, please feel free to reach out to us. I think maybe one of the next slides is the contact information of us again, because we're recent end of our presentation here.
Questions, yeah, I'll just jump ahead one more.
Slide switches to display contact information for Tom (tscrenci@brandeis.edu) and Eva (ekaniasty@brandeis.edu).
You can email me directly with questions about admissions, processes, or procedures. If you feel you're in a unique circumstance and wanted to ask questions, you can email me directly. You can, of course, send it to the Online email address, which I also check. So I'll get the email either way. And of course, you can call us, too.
As I mentioned, the certificate process is very, very much abbreviated for the application process with just a resume and some information about you know your your background and your basic information. And that completes the application process. So but with the amazing information from Ava about what the program is like, and with me giving you the information about admissions that really concludes all the the core material we like to cover in this presentation. So I'm going to end the recording right now. So those who have been watching this in the recorded format thank you for attending. If you do have questions, please feel free to email us or call us at the information on the screen. So thank you for your attendance, and we'll wrap up the recording right now.