Intro to UI/UX: Designing Beauty and the User-Experience

 This spring is the inaugural term for the class “Intro to UI/UX Design I” with professor Lorie Loeb. According to Loeb, the class, which is open exclusively to first- and second- year students, focuses on creating meaningful, accessible and beautiful interfaces for technology. The class, which requires no previous experiences, uses elements of human-centered design, graphic design and design with digital tools. As the first part in a two-class sequence, students are expected to take “Intro to UI/UX Design II” in the following summer, fall or winter terms in order to apply their skills in the DALI lab as a designer.  

According to Loeb, she saw that the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning was offering seed money for the development of an experiential learning course. Seeing a “hole in the [Dartmouth] curriculum” for UI/UX, an area that has “growing interest and growing applications to the world,” Loeb said she applied for the grant and, upon receiving funding, solidified the course. 

The class’s experiential element of working hands-on in the DALI Lab has made it a very popular course, Loeb said. For this year, Loeb said 70 students applied for 20 spots. Loeb said she expanded the enrollment to 28, but could not accommodate all interested students.

Read more from The Dartmouth.