According to LinkedIn, User Experience Designer is one of the top 15 emerging jobs in Canada. The LinkedIn 2020 Canada Emerging Jobs Report ranks Experience Designer with User Experience (UX) skills as the ninth top emerging job.
A University of Toronto Master of Information degree can help you work in this dynamic and growing sector.
To learn more:
- Attend a Student Experience Session on Saturday February 29.
- Read more about the UXD concentration.
- Apply now to the Master of Information in UXD
Master of information – with focus in UXD – gave Aditi Bhargava shot at Google
Not everyone lands their dream job right out of school. The story of how Aditi Bhargava did it involves careful planning, help from a professor and a lucky salmon-pink blazer.
For years she had wanted to learn design thinking – how to improve products and services with experimentation and by putting yourself in consumers’ shoes. She hoped to work for Google but thought a bachelor of arts wasn’t enough to get her there. “Anyone who wants to work for a big tech company like this needs to realize it doesn’t happen overnight,” she says.
She applied to University of Toronto’s master of information program, specializing in knowledge media design (which was revamped last year into the user experience design concentration to reflect changes in the industry). The two-year program mixes theoretical and practical lessons in design for platforms ranging from mobile to wearables and 3D interfaces. The training is meant to mould students into marketable UX designers or researchers by graduation. Read more
Career shift: Retraining as a UX Designer and landing at IBM
Christina Park, speaking above, feels she benefited from the Faculty of Information’s encouragement of interdisciplinary training and backgrounds.
At the beginning of her Master’s studies in user experience design (UXD), Christina Park, who did her Bachelor’s degree in education and had wanted to be a teacher, worried about the career transition she was making and that it might be tough for her to succeed in UX and the tech industry. “I remember feeling uncertain and out of place,” says Park, who was originally drawn to UXD by its focus on people.
Throughout her studies, however, she overcame her tech insecurities by focusing on her strengths and passions. For example, Park, who had worked in outreach and education roles at a public art gallery, was part of a multi-faculty team that created MuseGO, an app for caregivers that can help improve the accessibility of museums for children with autism spectrum disorder.
Park’s inspiration for the app came from one of the Faculty’s Museum Studies courses, where a guest speaker discussed sensory-friendly programming. At the recommendation of Assistant Professor Olivier St-Cyr, Park brought the idea to another course covering creative applications for mobile devices. From there, the multi-faculty team and the project emerged. The MuseGO app went on to win third place at the 2019 Innovative Designs for Accessibility student competition, which aims to encourage university students to develop solutions to accessibility related and aligned barriers. Read more
