The wide range of new interactive screen based form factors and digital products continue to transform the requirements and expectations of the user experience designer. Today’s designers must incorporate project planning, user research, creativity, visual design and technical knowledge into their portfolio. To prepare students for this challenge the New Media Design, Bachelor of Fine Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology has created a rigorous 4 year interdisciplinary degree program. While maintaining a strong core creative and visual design curriculum the New Media Design program incorporates collaborative courses from the Bachelor of Sciences in New Media Development and supports the Liberal Arts Digital Humanities and Web and Mobile Development programs. These unique interdisciplinary curricular relationships along with robust industry participation with companies like Adobe, Effective UI, Kodak and Xerox create a learning environment that prepares students for jobs across the UX landscape. Through curriculum exploration, project based education examples and collaborative industry relationships this presentation will explore the academic program design, teaching processes and student experience developed for creative visual and user experience designers.
