The Bachelor of Science in User Experience degree is the first of its kind in the state and will launch with the Fall 2025 semester.
The Council on Postsecondary Education has approved Western Kentucky University’s new Bachelor of Science in User Experience program. The university can begin enrolling students into the program for the Fall 2025 semester. The new program, which is the first of its kind in the state, is an interdisciplinary STEM program that will prepare students to design user-friendly interfaces for websites, apps, games, and wearable technology.
According to an article on Western Kentucky University’s website, Kristina Arnold, who serves as the Chair of WKU Art & Design, was quoted as saying of the new program, “This new degree rounds out our UX curriculum. We currently offer both a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a UX concentration, which contains a robust foundation in art, design and art history classes; and a 6-course UX Certificate, that serves as an academic add-on for any major. As UX is inherently an interdisciplinary field, this new degree gives those students interested in approaching UX from a computer science pathway an option for a major program.”
Courses for the program will be co-located in the Potter College of Arts & Letters and the Ogden College of Science and Engineering. The new program was borne out of a five-year partnership between the WKU Department of Art & Design and the WKU School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, coming to fruition due to students’ desires to approach UX from a STEM perspective, using art and science.
Mark Simpson, an Associate Professor in Art & Design, said of the new program, “Our new UX BS reflects the way tomorrow’s products will be built—by teams who speak both the language of code and the language of people. By collaborating with the Department of Computer Science, we are giving students an academic program that values aesthetics, usability and functionality in equal measure.”
The program will prepare students to work as a user experience designer, a front-end web developer, a digital designer, a user researcher, or an information architect, among other similar jobs. There are approximately 50 UX programs at colleges and universities around the country, though only a handful are undergraduate degree programs.
Leah Spalding, an Assistant Professor of UX Design in the WKU Department of Art & Design, said, “This Bachelor of Science in User Experience is not only unique because it’s a new and growing discipline, but because it’s a cross-college program. User experience is the process of designing, researching and creating technological interfaces. It can be thought of as digital product design.”
For more information about Western Kentucky University, visit the school’s website.