UX Design Initiative for Cornell NYC Tech Campus

Posted: January 16, 2012 | Author: cornelluxdesign | Filed under: Uncategorized |Leave a comment »

As NYC aims to become the world’s leading center of technical innovation in the service of business or industry, there is no better time to bring user experience design education to the city and Cornell’s tech campus than now. The need for user experience design skills in the city is quickly surpassing the number of trained designers in the area. We as the Cornell User Experience Design Club have prepared a preliminary proposal for a UX Design program in the Cornell NYC Tech campus. We had enormous support from alumni in UX as well as entrepreneurs who see the ever-growing need for designers. We are sharing a bare-bones version of what our proposal entailed, and you can see the full proposal upon request. Comments and suggestions are welcome as we are still in the early stages of proposing the program!

Our Objective

Cornell has the opportunity to gain recognition in User Experience (UX) during a time when the importance of UX is increasingly revered. By integrating UX Design into Cornell Tech Campus’s plans from the very beginning, we will not only strengthen our design community, but also enhance the growth of the Tech Campus’s hubs.

UX’s Role in the NYC Tech Campus

A UX program aligns perfectly with the Tech Campus’ mission to accelerate existing sectors of NYC’s tech economy. NYC will benefit from a great UX education program that will develop highly demanded, cream-of-the-crop designers. In particular, incorporating user experience design into the Tech Campus is highly beneficial for its three interdisciplinary hubs:

Connective Media Hub

Effective UX can produce more streamlined and intuitive interfaces and interactions, more mindful of the needs of the user, and can also elucidate how connective forces, such as how network effects impact individual users.

Technology for Healthier Lifestyles Hub

A UX approach can help design technology that uses positive feedback loops, cognitive dissonance, and other user-centered faculties to incentivize healthy (or sustainable) behavior.

Built Environment Hub

Design thinking applied to scenarios and user contexts would enable innovative integrations between the physical bult environment and digital world.

What is UX

UX explores how humans use and interact with technology in order to design effective and pleasing interfaces for users.

Why UX is Important

The demand for UX designers is growing. In an age of abundant data and complex systems, information accessibility and usability have become vitally important. User experience has become widely recognized as a crucial factor in a product’s value and of a company’s success.

What we’ve done

We’ve already proposed a new user experience design studio course for the Ithaca campus under the Information Science department which is currently in review during the 2012-13 school year. This course takes the existing theoretical design courses at Cornell and extends them to include hands on project based studio class for design.

Additionally, we’ve written a proposal for a larger UX design program for the Cornell NYC Tech campus. Please contact us to request a copy for viewing!

Our Goals

What we want is a dedicated graduate studio/creative space for Cornell in NYC, along with a faculty of well known designers and design professors who will fuel the creative environment necessary for design and entrepreneurship.

To learn more about our initiative, please contact us at cornelluxdesign@gmail.com!

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