What the University of Minnesota is putting into practice
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities, through its College of Design, just launched the state’s first bachelor’s degree in UX Design, with classes kicking off in the fall 2025 semester. According to McLean Donnelly, professor and program director, it’s also only the second program of its kind among the 18 institutions that make up the Big Ten, one of the most storied university conferences in the United States. The program brings together coursework ranging from user research to interface prototyping, along with cognitive psychology and product strategy. The core idea is pretty straightforward: train people who can design digital products that actually make sense for the folks using them — not just for those building them behind the scenes.
With about 50 students already enrolled in the first cohort, the signal is clear that there’s pent-up demand on both the academic side and the job market, which has spent years absorbing self-taught professionals or people with degrees in adjacent fields but no specific diploma in the discipline. Part of that demand became obvious through the success of the UX minor the College of Design was already offering. Donnelly says students had been piecing together their own learning paths by combining the minor with independent studies, but now they’ll have a full four years to dive deep into the field — which represents a real competitive edge on their resumes.
Minnesota might not be the first state that comes to mind when you think about tech innovation, but the numbers tell a different story. The region has the highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies per capita in the United States, including giants in healthcare, retail, and financial services. Donnelly points out that university students are already working full-time at companies like U.S. Bank, Best Buy, Target, and Medtronic — all headquartered or with significant operations in the state. Having a major public university offering a dedicated degree in the field creates a direct pipeline between academic training and the roles these companies need to fill. It’s the kind of move that benefits students, employers, and ultimately the users of the products this new generation of designers will create.
A curriculum that goes way beyond tools
Worth noting: the program doesn’t stop at teaching tools like Figma or Adobe XD. The curriculum includes modules on digital accessibility, inclusive design, research ethics, and interaction engineering fundamentals. This multidisciplinary approach reflects a mindset shift happening globally — the UX Design professional is no longer someone who just draws pretty screens. They’re a specialist who understands human behavior, translates real needs into functional solutions, and collaborates with development, marketing, and business teams.
As Donnelly himself put it, user experience design focuses on how people interact with digital products — websites, apps, and smart technologies — combining psychology, research, technology, and design to create human-centered, friendly, and accessible experiences. The University of Minnesota program seems to have understood that developing this well-rounded profile requires an educational foundation that goes beyond the operational and dives deep into the theory and practice of human-centered design.
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Donnelly also makes an important point about the longevity of this education. According to him, the program teaches students to look at problems, find solutions, validate hypotheses, prototype, present work professionally, and receive feedback. In his words, the program teaches students how to think. Even when technology changes — and it will change — that foundation will stay relevant and allow professionals to grow alongside the market. He went so far as to call the bachelor’s degree a forever degree.
Real stories from people who’ve already walked this path
Eliana Smelansky and the transition into experience design
Eliana Smelansky’s journey is a great example of the kind of professional this new program aims to develop from day one. She graduated with a marketing degree from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota in 2022 and also completed an interdisciplinary design minor through the College of Design. After a stint in merchandising at Target, she realized she wanted something more creative and decided to do a six-month UX/UI bootcamp at the university.
Today, Smelansky works as an Experience Designer at Best Buy. She says she was thrilled when she saw the bachelor’s degree launch and even posted about it on LinkedIn, saying she would have chosen this program if it had existed when she was an undergrad. A big part of her current job involves collaboration, brainstorming concepts, and presenting to stakeholders and leadership — skills that, according to her, would have been incredibly valuable to learn in an integrated way during college rather than picking them up gradually throughout a career.
Nick Horst and landing his dream job in the gaming industry
Another example is Nick Horst, who graduated with a computer science degree from the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota in 2025. Horst added the UX minor to his education and credits that decision as key to landing his dream job. He says a class with McLean Donnelly opened his eyes to the intersection of technology and design, which is exactly where he works today.
After graduation, Horst moved to Los Angeles to work at Respawn Entertainment, a studio owned by Electronic Arts, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world. His team works on Apex Legends, a game he’d been playing since high school — a moment he describes as coming full circle. As a technical experience designer, Horst is responsible for programming everything that appears on screen whenever a new feature or functionality is released. He says that if he were a freshman today, he would have chosen the UX Design bachelor’s degree as his major or, at the very least, as part of a double major.
Why human-centered design skills are so highly valued
The job market for user experience professionals is in a period of growth that shows no signs of slowing down. Donnelly highlights that companies in tech, healthcare, retail, and finance are investing heavily in qualified designers to improve their digital interactions, and that UX roles are among the fastest-growing and highest-paying positions in the design and technology sectors. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the projected growth for web design and digital development roles is significantly higher than the average for other occupations through 2032.
But what’s driving this demand isn’t just the explosion of apps and websites. Companies across virtually every industry have realized that a poorly designed digital product is expensive — in abandoned carts, support tickets, brand reputation damage, and engineering rework. As Donnelly put it in pretty practical terms: if you go to a website on your phone and it doesn’t work well, doesn’t look good, how long are you going to stick around? Those are real dollars being lost. Investing in design skills that prioritize humans has gone from being a competitive advantage to being a basic requirement for survival in the market.
Another factor fueling this demand is the arrival of generative artificial intelligence in designers’ workflows. AI-powered tools can generate visual prototypes in seconds, automate usability tests, and even suggest navigation flows based on behavioral data. Rather than making UX Design professionals obsolete, this technology has raised the bar for what’s expected of them. Now, the differentiator lies in knowing how to ask the right questions, interpreting qualitative data with empathy, conducting ethnographic research, and making design decisions that no algorithm can replicate on its own. The most sought-after design skills today involve critical thinking, facilitating collaborative workshops, visual storytelling, and the ability to translate complex insights into intuitive interfaces. It’s a deeply human skill set, and that’s precisely what makes this field so resilient in the face of automation.
The role of formal education in a market dominated by bootcamps
Professionals already working in the field echo the view that structured academic training makes a difference when tackling complex, large-scale projects. Bootcamps and short courses remain valid entry points — Eliana Smelansky herself went through one before landing her role at Best Buy — but the theoretical depth a degree program offers in areas like perception psychology, information architecture, and research methods gives professionals a foundation that stays relevant even when the tools change.
The University of Minnesota’s decision to dedicate a full four years to teaching UX Design, instead of treating it as a supplement to other programs, is significant. Donnelly points out that until now students were piecing things together on their own, combining the minor with electives and independent projects. With the bachelor’s degree, all that knowledge gets a cohesive structure with progressive complexity and internship opportunities built into the curriculum. The initiative doesn’t just validate the importance of the field — it also signals to other educational institutions around the world that there’s both space and need for dedicated programs in user experience as a standalone discipline.
What this means for those in Brazil
For anyone following the UX Design scene in Brazil, the University of Minnesota news serves as a pretty telling barometer. The Brazilian job market in this field has grown significantly in recent years, driven by the rapid digitization of banks, fintechs, healthtechs, and e-commerce platforms. Companies like Nubank, iFood, and Mercado Livre have built robust design teams and become benchmarks for applying user experience practices at scale. However, the availability of specific UX degree programs in the country is still quite limited. Most Brazilian professionals in the field come from backgrounds in graphic design, computer science, psychology, or communications, and fill in the gaps with short courses, specializations, or international certifications.
The creation of dedicated bachelor’s degrees at prestigious U.S. universities could pressure Brazilian institutions to follow the same path, which would be excellent for the maturity of the profession there. Another relevant factor is the impact artificial intelligence is having on hiring and expectations among Brazilian companies when it comes to design skills. It’s no longer enough to master wireframes and A/B tests. Recruiters are looking for professionals who can integrate AI tools into their creative process, who understand product metrics, and who can defend design decisions with concrete data in front of business stakeholders.
This more strategic and multidisciplinary profile is exactly what programs like the one at the University of Minnesota are designed to produce. For Brazilian professionals who want to stay competitive, it’s worth investing in knowledge that combines qualitative research, advanced prototyping, accessibility, and systems thinking — skills that remain hard to automate and that make a real difference in any digital product context. 🚀
UX Design as infrastructure for the digital world
What we’re seeing now is part of a larger transformation. User experience has moved beyond being an isolated department to become a mindset that runs through the entire product development chain. When a university the size of the University of Minnesota decides to create an entire program dedicated to the field — and when professionals like Smelansky and Horst demonstrate in practice the impact of these skills at companies like Best Buy and Electronic Arts — the message is clear: UX Design isn’t a passing trend, it’s essential infrastructure for the digital world.
For anyone building a career in this space, whether in the United States or Brazil, the timing couldn’t be better. Human-centered design skills are among the most sought-after and highest-paid in the tech sector. As Donnelly emphasized, behind every website and every app there’s someone designing that experience, and more and more companies are investing in it because the impact goes straight to the bottom line. Everything points to this reality intensifying over the coming years as more products, services, and experiences migrate to digital environments — and well-trained professionals will be at the center of that evolution.
