University of Lancashire

Master of Science in User Experience Design with Professional Placement

Our MSc in User Experience (UX) Design course follows a human-centred design approach to understanding, designing, and evaluating digital experiences. User Experience includes all aspects of an end-user’s interaction with a product/service. We use UX to drive change within context, content, and users. Empathising with a user’s needs, motivations and behaviours is critical in today’s evolving digital landscape.

Our User Experience course welcomes you into postgraduate study from a range of backgrounds including computer science, design, media, and psychology and supports technical and non-technical disciplines. You’ll gain in-depth theoretical knowledge and build on essential UX skills through testing, analysing, and evaluating. Complimented by hands-on practical experiences focusing on creative thinking, problem-solving and prototyping. The UX course focuses on modern technologies that allow us to create meaningful, disruptive, and transformative experiences.

The course covers industry and academic knowledge, encouraging best practices. You'll learn to adopt industry frameworks and tools mixed with academic methods and methodologies. These create the foundations for designing, developing, and studying emerging technologies. Our academic experts specialise in designing content and interactions for core, ubiquitous and future technologies. They have expertise in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer Science, and Software Engineering. This knowledge will guide you through UX applied research and help you develop skills in applying design principles. You'll also learn about data collection, analysis and evaluation for both qualitative and quantitative data. You'll apply this knowledge by developing a portfolio of low and high-fidelity digital prototypes. This work will be rooted in research problems and industry challenges.

Prepare for the workplace by designing, developing, and evaluating appropriate technologies to meet your users' needs. You’ll focus on building physical and digital experiences. Based on the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ubiquitous computing. By learning how these technologies work, how to design for interactions, employing practical approaches for building prototypes and the application of methods for evaluation. You'll also consider the legal/ethical implications of collecting data. Whilst applying practical methods for studying data collection and analysis.

You'll have many opportunities to work in collaboration with other students in the school and our research centres. These include Human-Computer Interaction, Mixed Realities, and Internet of Things research projects. We use industry and research activities to inform course teaching. Aiming to provide you with the theoretical and professional skills needed in both areas. You'll leave the UX course with sought after skills that are transferable to a range of future careers.

Our UX Design course is flexible, it's designed to be studied full- or part-time, or as a sandwich option. This means the course fits around you and your personal needs