User Experience (UX) Design
User experience design is the discipline concerned with making digital products, services, and environments genuinely usable, useful, and satisfying for the people who interact with them. It sits at the intersection of psychology, design, and technology, asking how human beings actually behave when they encounter interfaces and systems, and how those systems can be designed to support rather than frustrate their goals. As digital products have become central to how people work, communicate, shop, learn, and seek healthcare, the demand for skilled UX designers who can put people at the centre of the design process has grown substantially.
At Edinburgh Napier University, this programme is offered on a part-time basis and includes a sandwich placement year, a year abroad, and work placement opportunities, making it an exceptionally rich structural offering for students who need flexibility but also want depth of professional experience. Edinburgh's strong technology and creative industries sector provides a stimulating professional context, and Napier's well-established relationships with industry employers mean the teaching is connected to real UX practice. You will study user research methods, information architecture, prototyping, interaction design, usability testing, accessibility, and the psychology of perception and behaviour, developing the full toolkit of a professional UX designer.
The part-time mode means you can apply your learning directly in a professional context as you study.
UX design graduates are in demand across the technology, digital agency, public sector, and financial services industries, and in any organisation that takes seriously the experience it creates for its users. Roles in UX design, interaction design, service design, user research, and product design are common destinations. The combination of a placement year, a year abroad, and work placements makes graduates from this programme distinctive in the job market.
Postgraduate study in human-computer interaction, design, or digital innovation is available for those who want to develop research expertise or move into more senior design leadership roles.