By Aidan McNeely
As of Nov. 21, 2024 the major at William Peace University known as interactive design (IxD) will be renamed to user experience (UX) design and will be effective as of the Fall 2025 semester according to current Assistant Professor of Interactive Design, Jackson Bostian.
WPU has many choices when it comes to major and minor options, one of which being the study of interactive design.
Interaction or interactive design can be defined in simple terms as “the design of the interaction between users and products,” according to the Interaction Design Foundation. This type of design is a much smaller sub-discipline under the larger, main discipline known as user experience design.
According to the Interaction Design Foundation, user experience design can be defined as, “the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users.”
Jackson Bostian, assistant professor of interactive design at WPU played a leading role in the name change of the major to UX design.
“I originally brought the proposal to change the name to my chair professor, [Roger] Christman, and explained that the name interactive design was not in line with industry standard,” said Bostian. “We had a conversation about that, and we eventually brought it to the university’s curriculum committee and then to faculty assembly, and the faculty voted to approve it.”
Bostian explained his thoughts behind the original idea to change the interactive design name with his experience and knowledge about the industry.
“It was not the term that was used in job posting, it was creating confusion for students about what the discipline was,” said Bostian. “I worried that students looking for education in user experience design would not find our program, just because, if they were to look up programs online, they would not find a user experience design program here.”
Through Bostian’s efforts to change the name it makes it possible for students to benefit from their degree for their future endeavors in the career of UX design. This change also makes those students more competitive candidates for those careers.
“What the program was teaching was already user experience design and interactive design is a sub discipline of user experience design, one of many,” said Bostian. “Calling the program interactive design sold the program short, and ultimately, I think, was misleading, because it didn’t, it didn’t properly communicate what the subject of study was.”
Even UX design’s popularity far exceeds that of interactive design, says Bostian, “If you were to look at Google trends and look at the frequency of search for user experience versus interactive design, it’s no competition, absolutely, and for years it’s been no competition.”
Jake Valentine, WPU student, a junior, user experience design major, and English minor weighed in on his thoughts behind the name change to UX design.
“If you ever look at jobs, there’s never job listings for IxD designers, it’s for user experience designers, so it makes more sense for that to be what’s actually on your diploma and resume,” said Valentine. “It means that our user experience major is going to be more fleshed out, more detailed, and better at doing its job of preparing students to work in an actual field, user experience design field someday.”
UX design utilizes many different skills including analytical, design, creativity, research, etc. Valentine emphasizes why he made the choice to major in UX design.
“I think it’s cool because for me it combines logical methods and design processes and things that are more quantitative or mathematical, but then it also leaves room for the creative side and thinking outside of the box,” said Valentine. “That’s really where it entertains me, and there’s always a better way to do things, or a different way to do things to collect research or to design an interface and you really never know what the next standard is going to be within the industry and its always kind of cool to see where that’s going to go and be apart of establishing that.”
According to Nate Schloesser at Medium the many other sub-disciplines of UX design include, “UX research, UX writing, service design, information architecture, interaction design, information design, interface design, and visual design.”
This change will allow students to not just focus on one smaller discipline, but also allow them to take courses in the wide scope of UX design in order to provide a variety of knowledge and expertise for a future career in UX design.
“Businesses that are looking to hire user experience designers would also see a diploma with the title user experience design on it, and it makes it more competitive,” said Bostian.
Feature Image by Aidan McNeely