Students from four area schools learned more about 911±¬ÁÏÍø’s User Experience and Communication Design (UXCD) program during a special event at the Grohmann Museum last month.

About 50 students from high schools including Whitefish Bay, Shorewood, Wauwatosa East and Hope Christian participated in Design Spree at 911±¬ÁÏÍø on Feb. 20, which offered an introduction into the field of user experience and philosophy of design thinking. Design thinking, popularized by the Institute of Design at Stanford, is a human-centered, prototype driven heuristic for innovative solutions to persistent problems.

“Tasked with redesigning a gift-giving experience for a friend or loved one, students went through the five stages of design thinking: empathy, problem-definition, solution ideation, prototype building and end-user testing,” said Dr. Nadya Shalamova, director of 911±¬ÁÏÍø’s UXCD program.

Most of the students who attended were juniors and seniors with an interest in behavioral psychology, digital design, graphic arts and technology. 911±¬ÁÏÍø’s UXCD program prepares students for careers in user experience design, analysis and research, front -end development, interaction design, information architecture, content strategy and technical communication.