User Experience Design with Diploma in Creative Professional Development

Norwich University of the Arts

BA (Hons) User Experience Design at Norwich is a forward-facing contemporary Communication Design degree in which you will create interactive products including websites and app prototypes, digital imagery, video and motion graphics, and designed research outputs. You will explore the technologies and people involved in providing the systems and services behind the interfaces and investigate the different ways users experience a design depending on their circumstances. You will identify users’ goals and needs and map their emotional journeys. User research, user interface design, copywriting, typography, motion, and interaction design will all feature in the work you make. As a UX Design student at Norwich, you join students from the other graphics courses in an industry-rich, employer-focused curriculum that places engagement with professional designers and agencies right at the heart of the course. Your opportunities to meet and work with industry, in a wide variety of ways, are unparalleled.

- Share your first year, and then continue to work alongside graphics students, allowing for a unique cross fertilisation of knowledge, skills and experience. - Become adept at problem-solving through understanding and deciphering project briefs, conducting discovery research, generating ideas, developing prototypes, testing, and iterating these into successful concepts, and presenting the final work.- Participate in workshops and classes run by external professionals, undertake project briefs initiated and taught by designers from industry, and enter national and international design competitions judged by the design industry. - Industry engagement including portfolio reviews and surgeries, talks from practising alumni focused on portfolio development and employability, interview practice and graduate portfolio showcase events.- Develop your project management, communication and collaborative working skills so that you leave with a standout CV and portfolio. - Work with a team of expert staff, who are talented educators and designers. Many of whom are practising designers working with clients week in, week out.

The Diploma in Creative Professional Development offers undergraduate students the chance to spend a year between Year 2 and 3 of their course exploring their employability options through a structured programme of input sessions and work-based learning. The aim of the course is to provide you with an opportunity to gain industry insight, develop your employability skills through a series of supported experiences, expand your network and build your confidence in the workplace.

The practical studio projects are designed to mimic the type of briefs you would be given in a design agency, resulting in outcomes that genuinely prepare you for the real world of work. Your work throughout the course will generate case studies for your portfolio that showcase your knowledge of user research, user interface design and interaction design to copywriting, typography and motion. You will also create a range of employment-focused tools including a CV, email/covering letter and a career overview and strategy. During the summer break between second and third year, and after completing the course, students have taken up internships and joined graduate schemes which frequently lead to full-time employment. Our graduates have gone on to become employees at digital design agencies including Foolproof, The User Story, Other Media and Cheddar Creative, and in-house positions e.g., at National Grid, Stardust, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Tata Consultancy Services