User Experience Design: Strategic Partnerships

User Experience Design: More than Usability

Wilfrid Laurier University's Bachelor of Design in User Experience (UX) is a four-year comprehensive degree program – the first of its kind in Canada. UX designers seek to create something new for the world by combining creativity, strategic design-thinking, user research and social awareness.

Students gain the intellectual tools to think critically about the world, and understand how cultural, societal, economic, political and environmental factors contribute to users’ experiences. Students are exposed to the impact that good design has in tech, not-for-profit, government and public sectors. Students work in teams to solve design challenges while contributing to social justice, community building and corporate goals.

Designing a Better World, One Experience at a Time

Throughout the program, students have opportunities to interact with clients across industries through experiential and work-integrated learning. Students are mentored by industry partners and complete industry projects that reflect real challenges and opportunities in the way humans interact with technology. Students may apply to Co-op at the beginning of their third year of study.

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Get Involved with the UX Design Program

Our program depends on real-world, experiential learning as we connect students to the real world of work. The UX Design program has several options for partners to get involved, with both no-cost and for-a-fee opportunities.

Bring Your Challenges to Our Classroom

To reinforce pedagogy based on discovery and inquiry, we encourage our clients to partner with faculty in our classrooms on real projects. Over a full term (12 weeks), our students will work through your challenge and come up with creative solutions for a product, service or space.

Career Readiness

Help our students meet their career goals. We host cover letter, resume, interview preparation sessions and workshops. We also host portfolio review sessions.

Co-operative Education

Students compete for admission to co-op, and successful candidates apply for jobs in third year and begin their co-op work term after third year. The extended work term of 12-16 months allows each student to engage in a project of reasonable complexity and see it to completion. Recruitment for UX students begins in December for work terms beginning in May.

Usability Testing

Our students are available to run usability testing and other UX services for a fee. This is a great option for partners who know how important UX is for a high-impact product/service, and are looking for creative solutions at a reasonable cost.

Be a Guest Speaker

We are always coordinating guest speakers from various areas of the UX industry to meet with our students in the classroom, on panels or at other events.

Sprint with Us

Our Brantford campus is a perfect option for design jams and hackathons, face-to-face or virtually. Have a challenge that needs lots of creative minds to explore? Connect with us!

Get Involved with our Development

Our program is growing, and it’s growing quickly. Learn how you can get involved philanthropically with our UX Design program, and contribute to the success of your future designers.

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Courses in the UX Program

  • Design Thinking I and II
  • Designing for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
  • UX Strategy
  • UX Research
  • Information Design
  • Interaction Design
  • Design of Immersive Spaces,
  • Mobile App Design
  • Maker Lab I and II
  • Digital Technology Lab
  • Web Design I and II
  • Special Topics in UX
  • Graphic Studio Design I, II and III
  • Fourth-Year Capstone Project

Contact Us

For partnership involvement inquiries on any of these opportunties, to learn more about our program, or to chat about other options to interact with our young designers, contact Abby Goodrum, professor and coordinator of the UX Design program, at agoodrum@wlu.ca.

Sponsor an In-Class Project

Building on our curriculum, students work in teams tackling real-world problems that exist in industry, not-for-profit, government and the public sector.

Starting with stakeholder empathy as a key tenet, students move through a full cycle of horizon scanning, problem discovery, user research, solution finding, solution evaluation and communication techniques.

Working with and for actual clients, students progress through seven weeklong agile design cycles, culminating in an interactive prototype that is only a few steps removed from a minimal viable product.

What We Need From You

  • Bring in your unsolved challenges or problems to our classroom and support a team of 4–6 creative students in helping to develop a solution.
  • We need a one-page project proposal outlining: project overview, objectives, components, project vision, stakeholders, and the value to the students. Be as specific and concrete about the challenge as possible.
  • Projects can come from postsecondary institutions, 
faculty, industry associations, community organizations, corporations (large and small), corporate labs, start-ups 
and government agencies.
  • Industry project sponsors are invited to a mandatory in-
class “pitch” session, where sponsors pitch their projects to 
the class.
  • At the first meeting, a timeline is agreed upon between the project sponsor, student team and instructor. Students assign roles and responsibilities and begin work.
  • Student teams communicate once a week with the industry partner virtually with a pre-arranged agenda. One student is assigned as the communication lead.
  • Weeks 6–11 will be spent in agile sprint design and development.
  • Final in-class presentations occur last week of class.
  • It is mandatory for project partners and their guests to attend in person or virtually.
  • A final project presentation and/or Word document is required from students for industry partners.
  • A final project evaluation is required from the industry partner by completing a project rubric to assist with grade assignment.
  • Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are available.

Note: Students own their Intellectual Property.