Master in Design and Management of UX and Digital Services

Design products and services for websites and apps. This master will teach you to execute and direct projects in the areas of user experience design, interaction design and interface design.

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Presentation

The Master in User Experience Design and Digital Services Management is designed to help you develop your skills in the main areas of user experience design, interaction design, and interface design. Think of your favorite website or app; you probably like it because of the sounds it plays, how easy it is to use, or how well it integrates into your daily tasks.

If you shop online, you likely value ease of use, functionality, or how intuitive and fast the platform is. When it comes to reading newspapers or news, you probably appreciate related information and the legibility of the typography.

We could go on, but what you probably value is that these tools give you what you need at the moment you need it. When everything works well, you’re often not fully aware of it, as your energy is focused on selecting that product or flight you’re searching for, reading that article, or watching that video to learn how to make a good paella.

That is user experience, and designing those experiences is precisely what we teach. Through a faculty specialized in each of the programme’s thematic areas, case studies, and the development of a practical project, students will receive a transdisciplinary education. The programme has a clear user-centered focus, without neglecting the business perspective.

Our educational proposal covers all the necessary aspects for you to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to carry out projects for innovative and effective digital products, services, and applications. With this training, students will gain a detailed understanding of the entire process of creating an interactive project where the business vision, user experience (UX), technology, and interface design take center stage.

Access and Admission Requirements: Students must hold a degree in Design, Engineering, Communication or Advertising. Other student profiles include junior UX/UI designers and project managers who want to deepen their knowledge of user experience design. Students without a university degree may request admission on the basis of accredited professional experience.

Elisava’s masters provide specialised and multidisciplinary advanced training that will contribute to improve your professional profile. Find the most suitable design master for you.

SHIFTA

The course methodology is practical in nature but does not overlook the theoretical principles of interaction design or the contemporary debates surrounding the ethics and aesthetics of digital culture.

To achieve this, we structure the course into thematic modules that include subjects focused on practical methods and procedures, masterclasses, and lectures by renowned professionals in the respective thematic areas, as well as specialized workshops.

These workshops are part of our innovation lab, which we call UX Avant. This lab allows us to develop more exploratory practices that foster knowledge transmission through reflection and practice. To date, we have explored topics related to music, television, e-mobility, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, professional ethics, and more.

The master’s programme also participates in thematic initiatives from Elisava Research, taking advantage of collaborative opportunities that may arise through their research projects. Specifically, our master’s programme is actively involved in developing projects linked to topics related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and social justice discussions related to gender, decoloniality, and ableism.

Finally, we aim to promote our students’ talent through an internship offer with major companies and start-ups in the sector. In recent years, we have established partnerships with HP, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Insight Center of CaixaBank, Zurich, the Web Science and Social Computing research group, Datalog, NTT Data, and Multiplica, among many others.

We also encourage our students to participate in specialized conferences and national and international awards that provide visibility to the projects developed within the master’s programme, having won several gold, silver, and bronze awards in recent editions.

Objectives

  • Understand the importance of user experience as a discipline that integrates technology, design, and interaction.
  • Provide the interdisciplinary knowledge needed to carry out a user experience design project for digital products.
  • Understand interactive technologies to leverage their social and business potential in the design and development of digital services and products.
  • Lead and manage an interaction project using agile methodologies.
  • Apply Design Thinking, Trend Forecasting, and other innovation processes to conceptualize experiences with a clear value proposition.
  • Apply key research and modeling techniques to design user-centered digital experiences.
  • Identify and implement usability principles to design intuitive, effective, and efficient services and applications.
  • Apply basic information architecture and process visualization techniques to organize experience flows.
  • Propose and implement content strategies to develop persuasive copy, execute email marketing campaigns, and manage social media.
  • Create user flows based on persuasion, optimization, and tracking techniques to convert users into customers.
  • Design the visual and interactive layer of an application from a global perspective, considering both ecosystem-specific conventions and patterns as well as the advantages of system design.
  • Implement measurement systems and interpret data to evaluate design behavior and functionality.
  • Apply new business models, foster an entrepreneurial mindset in the field, and establish new professional opportunities.
  • Build a portfolio with the projects developed in the master, showcasing the acquired skills and focusing on specific aspects for each student, such as personal branding.
Highlights

MA in Design and Management of User Experience (UX) and Digital Services programme

1 Product management and leadership

In this module, the main methodological trends in project management will be introduced, with a focus on applying the most relevant agile management frameworks. Scrum, Lean Startup, and Kanban are some of the tools that will be implemented for this purpose. Planning tools for activities, working with stakeholders and teams, as well as project negotiation and presentation, will be provided.

 2 Product strategy

The goal of this module is to learn methods and processes for developing an appropriate product strategy, defining objectives, and establishing success metrics. Different methodologies for conceptualization, user research, modeling, and competitive analysis will be covered.

 3 User experience (UX)

The goal of this module is to master the key concepts that ensure a rich user experience. It dives deep into factors such as interaction design, information architecture, accessibility, navigation flows, and usability. The focus will be on applied tasks that lead to the development of concrete outcomes (e.g., wireframes or prototypes) that advance product development and validate these results.

 4 Graphic interface design

The goal of this module is to synthesize the architecture, usability, and strategy of a web project through its graphical interface design. The focus will be on key aspects of interactive visual communication, and students will be introduced to including interactive and navigation elements across multiple devices. Work will begin with visual conceptualization through sketching and progress to mockups and the definition of asset libraries and design systems.

 5 Programming languages

The goal of this module is to learn the communication protocols typical of web projects, as well as deepen knowledge in HTML and CSS languages. The module includes an introduction to the most widely used languages such as HTML5 and CSS3. Special attention will be given to the most common development frameworks and coding issues that affect the development of projects for multiple devices.

 6 Business and conversion

This module introduces students to conversion rate optimization (CRO) methodologies and tools, which involve measuring and analyzing the performance of an online presence, such as a website. Students will work on obtaining different types of metrics and data to optimize results using market-available tools.

The goal of this module is to delve into key concepts related to UX and strategy. For most web projects, it is crucial to first ensure their suitability and then their survival from a business perspective. Understanding in detail the market environment, the value proposition to be offered to users, the business model, the objectives, and KPIs to be measured, and communicating this through UX, visual design, and memorable copy. With all this knowledge, we will be able to ensure the highest possible conversion for our project.

 7 Tools

This module covers a variety of content management tools (CMS), each specialized for a specific purpose (social, commercial, communication). The course will focus on the use of Drupal, WordPress, and other next-generation content management systems, exploring their installation, configuration, and extension with modules and plugins. Special attention will also be given to web measurement tools.

 8 Programming languages, API’s and mash-up

The goal of this module is for the student to understand the development dynamics in client/server environments and be able to work with languages like JavaScript and PHP, as well as manage data using mySQL databases. This module aims to provide the essential concepts for web application development, enabling the student to develop most common services on their own and collaborate with specialized professionals in larger, more complex projects. A central goal is to learn how to work with various tools and code libraries to customize and integrate them into their own projects. The course will cover the APIs of the most popular web services and mashup creation. The approach will be hands-on with a technical focus aimed at design professionals.

 9 Creativity, brand and business strategy

The goal is to equip students with the ability to identify and synthesize the focus of an interactive product and connect it to the broader context: cultural, technological, and economic. This line of connection allows students to establish a roadmap for deploying any project. Topics such as business model definition, product communication, content strategy, reputation management, and legal aspects related to digital businesses will be covered.

 10 Final project

In each of the postgraduate programmes that make up the master’s degree, students will carry out a project to apply the knowledge acquired during the course. The main goal of the two projects is to help the student consolidate a high-quality portfolio that will allow them to present themselves professionally in the industry.
If you want to know more about the Master in Design and Management of User Experience (UX) and Digital Services, you download the brochure here:
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Do you want to know more about the Masters’ School?

Each academic year, students with very diverse professional and cultural profiles of more than 80 nationalities from all over the world attend their master’s or postgraduate training at Elisava. We want to promote connections and networks among students beyond the context of each master’s degree to promote the exchange of knowledge through very diverse projects: we organize interdisciplinary workshops and conferences; transdisciplinary projects with students from several master’s degrees; collaborations with companies, institutions and NGOs…

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Masters’ Scholarships

Do you want to study the MA in Design and Management of User Experience (UX) and Digital Services, you at Elisava? In this section you will be able to check all the information on the annual call for scholarships, which recognize, reward and disseminate the talent and excellence of future master’s students.

Elisava Masters’ Scholarships