^{_{Caption: Walmart executive Michael Kopcsak ’94 says Guilford’s XD can be “a differentiator for a small liberal arts school like Guilford that wants to be more relevant in a modern world."}}

Let’s say you want to spend the holidays in the Caribbean. Everyone has their own favorite island but the process of getting there is the same. You get on your phone and shop for a plane ticket. Maybe you purchase the ticket through an app. When you get to the airport you check your bags at a kiosk.

It’s an experience that exists in both the virtual and real space, and one in which much can and often goes wrong – or leaves a lot to be desired. An experience designer’s job, as Mark Dixon ’96 describes it, is to make sure all the processes involved connect smoothly for the person booking a flight (or visiting a museum, or checking their bank statement online, or engaging in a number of other tasks).

“An experience designer is interested in all of the different ways that experience touches the user, the customer, the human being and connects to some pretty sophisticated back-of-house systems,” says Mark, who oversees Guilford’s growing Experience Design program. “In fact, good experience design would generally result in somebody getting the goods or the experience, without even really being all that aware that there is a complicated, connected, multifaceted system that they’re interacting with.”

Guilford’s Experience Design, or XD, program was started in 2016 after three Guilford graduates, Michael Kopcsak ’94, Wendy Lam-Rash ’02, and Mary Luong ’08, successfully transitioned from Art majors to user experience researchers. They proposed the idea of the new major and advised on its development. Many of Guilford’sXD classes — Art, Computer Science, and Psychology — were sourced from existing Guilford classes. Michael is Senior UX Design and Research Executive for Walmart’s international division. He says the College’s humanities-based education is a natural fit for students to pursue a career in experience design. “It’s a natural blend of taking the best humanities courses and blending them or pulling them together for a more relevant modern world,” he says.

Michael, who lives in California, relies heavily on what he learned in Guilford’s art studios for his job. “When I think about the ceramics work I did at Guilford, all that ties into what I’m doing, how I’m thinking and designing today,” he says. “The coffee mug — is the handle comfortable? Will the plate fit in the dishwasher? There’s a connection there as an Art major that can be very helpful working with software.”

Setting Guilford Apart

There’s a bonus for Guilford, says Michael. “XD can be a differentiator for a small liberal arts school like Guilford that wants to be more relevant in a modern world,” he says.

Mark, who is also co-chair of the Art Department, says an experience designer is like a liaison “between all the things that it takes to design an experience or product, and the end user.”

XD programs are still relatively new to colleges and universities.Guilford’s program came about after Michael, Wendy and Mary came together and brought some ideas to the administration on how to connect the various skill sets involved.“

The alums told us Guilford is already training experience designers,” Mark says. “You’ve just got to package that up and let people know that’s the case.”

Students in the program take a range of classes involving business, art and technology, along with some core courses and seminars on experience design principles.

Mark says the breadth of courses a liberal arts school like Guilford offers its students empowers great experience designers. “To design around people requires understanding human difference in all its forms,” he says. “A liberal arts education turns out students who can handle the complexities and ambiguities at the intersection of people and systems. It's what Guilford has always done. XD is just one more way to put that power to work.”

Instructor Margery Kiehn, who’s worked as an experience designer for more than 20 years, was on the committee that developed the College’s XD curricula. Those in the field, she says, enter the workforce with a variety of career options waiting for them.

“Many people with degrees in experience design go into digital design, and are part of digital design teams, whether that’s for banks or for transportation or for travel or for the automotive industry or for entertainment,” she says.

Michael Fernald ’19, one of the first students to take classes in the XD program, works as an engineer in identity and access management at Boston University. Having an experience design background, he says, provided him a good foundation for a career in information technology.

“We deal with the stuff that lets us know who’s who when students are applying,” he says. “We build systems, enhance systems. And, experience design, it has helped me think not just of ‘here are the requirements and we’ll build it.’ But, I’m also thinking about how the user is going to interact with this, how they are going to feel. Is this going to be easy? It helps you to empathize.”

About 20 students are majoring in Experience Design at Guilford. In a few years, Mark says that number could triple. Such is the demand for XD.

“People are still learning what the field is, but we’re working on making it more fun, attractive and accessible,” he says. “This puts to use that literature class, it puts to use that psychology class. And, there’s just a real proliferation of need for people who can play a role in making sure that a certain experience works for the person that it should work for.”