Experience Design

• The Background: Comfort Zone Camp (CZC) is a local nonprofit that hosts weekend grief camps throughout the country for children who have lost a parent, primary caregiver, or sibling.
• The Opportunity: Help CZC reach more kids by expanding into the virtual realm
• The Solution: The Bubble—a multi-player grief game hosted on the Roblox platform. Many of the elements of the game mirror the in-person experiences kids would have at a CZC weekend camp, and the name of the game is derived from a term used often at CZC. Kids are invited to enter into “the bubble” of camp—a place of safety and community set apart from the stressors of the outside world. The Roblox game is intended to be a similar haven, but one that can be accessed anytime anywhere.

You might be an Experience Designer:

If this sounds like you:

• You think design is beautiful but also useful, purposeful, and powerful enough to shape behavior and solve problems
• You have an insatiable curiosity and hunger for what’s new or next—culturally and technologically—and enjoy learning new technology and software
• You identify as both a storyteller and a systems thinker, a thinker and a maker

If a day in the life of an experience designer sounds fun:

• Concepting, designing, prototyping, and building brand experiences that serve people and push the envelope of what is technologically possible
• Going beyond just visuals—blending form, function, and materials to imagine experiences that look, feel, and function beautifully
• Exploring possibilities of media and technology to create new experiences that are enabled by the rise of the digital, mobile, social, AR/VR, mixed reality (MR), web3, Artificial Intelligence (AI), etc. 
• Envisioning new platforms, products, and services that entertain, provide utility and resources, and connect people to each other and the ideas of the brand
• Embracing human agency, interactivity, and information in your designs to move from one-size-fits-all brand experiences to highly interactive and personalized experiences

• The Problem: Parents spend much of the teenage years anticipating whether and when their child will leave home and become independent. For parents of students with autism, there is often dread regarding the transition from high school into adulthood, which is sometimes described as falling off a cliff.
• The Solution: Ascend, powered by Autism Speaks, is an interactive, online learning and resource-accessible platform that more effectively guides users in planning, managing, and tracking progress during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. With the help of Autism Speaks existing resources, Ascend is paving the way for transition planning and the future for young adults with ASD. 

Experience Design at the Brandcenter

Studying Experience Design at the Brandcenter prepares you to hit the ground running as an Experience Designer, User Experience (UX) Designer, User Interface (UI) Designer, Interaction Designer (IxD), or Digital Product Designer.

Curriculum

You will not only perfect your craft in Experience Design, but you will also work collaboratively with your classmates across concentrations.

Here’s what you’ll do on all-concentration team projects as an Experience Designer, as well as what your teammates will do:

Here’s what your sixty weeks will look like:

Prerequisites

Here are the prerequisites for experience design applicants and for all applicants:

Experience Design Chair

Andrew LeVasseur

Chair & Professor, Experience Design

• Background: Postpartum mothers are exhausted both physically and emotionally, and social support is crucial during this challenging time. Sending food is the most common form of social support.
• Solution: Introducing Warmly—a service designed to provide social support for new moms. The mobile app allows new moms to order soups tailored to their specific needs and to have access to virtual social support via features like gift registry and live chat rooms.

Ready to apply for Experience Design?

Explore the concentrations