Program Overview

MA User Experience Design

The MA User Experience Design is a postgraduate program that prepares students for a role in the digital UX professions. The program introduces students to the necessary core principles of UX Design through lectures, seminars, and hands-on studio projects, and no prior knowledge of UX Design is required.

Course Overview

The program aims to transform students' thinking, enabling them to critically contribute to their chosen profession in or beyond UX Design, and help shape its future through ethical awareness, sensitivity to the heterogeneity of user needs, and cultural appreciation of the contexts in which UX Design is developed and encountered.

Features and Benefits

• Students become an integral part of SODA, home to a vibrant creative community of research-active staff with expertise in diverse fields of practice.
• Students have the space, expert guidance, and technical resources to enable them to develop their independent UX practice.
• Students have the opportunity to extend and develop their professional networks and experience by being introduced to national and international educational partners, research communities, and exceptional links with the creative and digital sectors in Manchester and across the UK.
• Students have access to facilities such as the Virtual Reality studio and UX Labs.

Year 1

The MA User Experience Design will be made up of five core modules:

Core Modules

• UX Principles and Design Studio: This module introduces students to the principles of User Experience Design, including industry-standard terminology, practices, tools, and methods.
• Co-Creation for Sustainable Futures: This module challenges students to harness their creative, collaborative, and critical skills in narrating matters of concern and developing aesthetic experiences that raise awareness and/or debate around environmentally sustainable and socially just futures.
• Critical Contexts of UX Design: This module develops students' critical understanding of the wider intersecting professional and societal contexts in which UX Designs are conceived and developed for specific groups of 'users'.
• UX Methods and Practices: This module introduces students to a toolkit of methods and practices that provide building blocks for undertaking a major independent UX Design or UX research project.
• Designing for Transformed UX: This major independent project provides the opportunity to work towards developing a substantial UX Design project, applying the range of UX Design skills and knowledge acquired to produce a UX Design portfolio or empirical research project independently, under supervision.

Study and Assessment

• Full-time: 20% lectures, seminars, or similar; 0% placement; 80% independent study.
• Full-time: 100% coursework; 0% practical; 0% examination.

Entry Requirements

• Students should have at least a 2:2 undergraduate UK honours degree, ideally in a creative arts and design discipline.
• Equivalent EU/international qualifications are also accepted.
• Applicants who do not meet these criteria will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
• Overseas applicants will require IELTS with an overall score of 6.5 with no less than 5.5 in any category, or an equivalent accepted English language qualification.

Fees and Funding

• UK and Channel Island students: Full-time fee £12,000 per year.
• EU and non-EU international students: Full-time fee £22,000 per year.
• Fees may be subject to change.
• Many international students are eligible for a discount on their tuition fees.

Careers Support and Prospects

• The MA in UX Design specifically benefits from building on the School of Digital Arts' relationship with leading industry partners, ensuring students have the technical know-how to launch a career in the UX industries and graduate with industry-ready skills.
• UX graduates work in UX teams across a wide range of sectors, from telecoms and wider utilities, financial services, consultancies, and accountancy to smaller independent creative studios and agencies.