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User Experience Design emphasis, Professional Writing and Interaction Design BA

About The Program

This major prepares students for a wide range of careers in professional writing and interaction design. It enables learners to write for professional and technical contexts and produce multimodal and intelligent content. In addition to completing a core curriculum, learners choose to specialize in one or more of these emphases: technical communication, science and medical writing, user experience design, and game design. 

User Experience Design Emphasis:
The user experience design emphasis enables learners to analyze, design, and evaluate the user experience of content. Learners use various methods and tools to analyze users and contexts and construct the user experience. 

Other available emphases

Technical Communication Emphasis: 
The technical communication emphasis enables learners to write and produce multimodal and intelligent content for technical problem-solving. Learners write technical documentation and ensure that such documentation is usable, accessible, and compliant with regulations. 

Science and Medical Writing Emphasis:
The Science and Medical Writing emphasis enables learners to produce content for science and medical writing situations in research, government, technology, and other contexts. Learners apply rhetorical theory to create effective science and medical writing deliverables for a variety of audiences. They analyze how power and knowledge iterate within science and medical writing. 

Game Design Emphasis:
The Game Design emphasis helps students produce interactive and static writing artifacts that showcase their ability to write creatively, technically, and consistently across complicated technological environments. Using principles and strategies utilized in the video game industry, this concentration allows students to create innovative game worlds; write compelling storylines, characters, and mechanics; create and maintain design documentation; and work with a variety of different team members and in a variety of different roles in a production team. Students who choose this emphasis do not need any prior programming knowledge.

Student outcomes

  1. Analyze the audience and context of rhetorical situations
  2. Use digital technologies to create effective technical and scientific communication artifacts
  3. Write and design interactive content that is engaging and rhetorically effective
  4. Create and edit for ethical, inclusive, and accessible content
  5. Evaluate communication artifacts for effectiveness, usability, accessibility, and compliance

Related programs

How to enroll

Current students: Declare this program

Once you’re admitted as an undergraduate student and have met any further admission requirements your chosen program may have, you may declare a major or declare an optional minor.

Future students: Apply now

Apply to Metropolitan State: Start the journey toward your User Experience Design emphasis, Professional Writing and Interaction Design BA now. Learn about the steps to enroll or, if you have questions about what Metropolitan State can offer you, request information, visit campus or chat with an admissions counselor.

Get started on your User Experience Design emphasis, Professional Writing and Interaction Design BA

Courses and Requirements

SKIP TO COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Core Requirements (20 credits)

This class begins with students self-assessing their digital skills in several areas, including design for print and digital documents; web tools; visual tools; and project management tools. Students work with the instructor to create a learning contract with the goal of acquiring tools in a certain number of these areas. In order to acquire knowledge of these tools, students complete online tutorials. Only offered S/N.

Full course description for Digital Tools for Writing and Communication

Content strategy encompasses the creation, management, testing, and governance of content, whether that be a website, printed document, social media, or other forms of information. In this class students will gain a comprehensive understanding of content for contemporary information-intensive organizations as well as hands-on skills to create effective, user-friendly, and culturally sensitive content.

Full course description for Content Strategy

Artificial intelligence (AI) is used in workplace writing and communication practices. This course offers a basic understanding of core concepts relevant to AI writing tools. Students will be prepared to use AI writing tools in responsible, ethical, and productive ways for technical and non-technical audiences. Students are introduced to generative AI tools and learn to design effective prompts to help with the writing process.

Full course description for Workplace Writing with Generative Artificial Intelligence

This course covers editing principles and techniques. Topics include how readers use and comprehend texts, the editor's role in the publication process, the writer/editor relationship, and editing for organization, format, style, grammar, punctuation, usage, consistency and accuracy. Students edit a variety of texts, including technical documents and newsletter articles in print and online.

Full course description for Editing

This course introduces students to the principles, processes, and techniques of front-end Web development. Students gain solid knowledge and practical skills in HTML, CSS, website genres, design patterns, Web writing, and usability. Students will analyze and build websites. Students must already possess basic satisfactory digital literacy, such as managing files and folders, and adding and removing programs.

Full course description for Writing and Designing for the Web I

User Experience Design concentration (18 credits)

User Experience writing enables learners to design human-centered content for user interfaces and to create compelling user experiences. Learners will analyze user needs and rhetorical contexts, develop appropriate tone and voice, produce inclusive and accessible text, write for user interface components, create content prototypes, and assess the effectiveness of user experience content.

Full course description for User Experience Writing

In this course, students will learn the unique style of writing and storytelling used in an interactive environment. In this production-focused course, students will produce a video game (or slice of a video game), interactive story, or interactive website prototype by the end of the course. Students will focus on creating a continuity of experience across a system, writing compelling prompts, writing and thinking in decision trees, and anticipating audience input. Students will conduct usability testing/playtesting and revision of their constructed environments. No programming knowledge is assumed.

Full course description for Writing in Interactive Environments

This course is designed to provide an introduction to Learner Experience Design, which brings together principles of design and learning to create effective interactive training and learning experiences. The course draws on fields such as instructional design, user experience design (UXD), and learning and development. Students learn concepts and techniques to prepare them to analyze learners and learning situations and to choose appropriate strategies in order to create interactive, engaging, and effective learning experiences

Full course description for Foundations of Learner Experience Design

This course focuses on usability and user experience for technical and information products. Students learn concepts, principles, processes, and methods of usability and user experience. Students work in teams and conduct a usability study systematically to improve an information product. Topics also include usability in business and organizational settings, usability workflow and governance. Students will also interact with user experience professionals.

Full course description for Usability and User Experience

Interaction design is an interdisciplinary field integrating theories and methodologies across several disciplines such as computer science, cognitive psychology, technical communication, user experience, human factors, information technology and engineering design. In this course, students are introduced to the theoretical knowledge of and practical experience with concepts of interaction design, design theory and techniques, and implementation and evaluation of interfaces. Topics covered include: interaction design, human-computer interaction, prototyping, usability evaluation, universal design, multimodal interfaces, and virtual reality. In addition to lectures, students will work on individual assignments and team projects to design, implement, and evaluate various interactive systems and user interfaces.

Full course description for Interaction Design for User Experience