Visual Design

Responsive Web Design (RWD) is the approach that suggests that website design and development should enable each site to respond automatically to a user’s behavior and environment—that is, whether that person is using a laptop, iPad, Android phone or other device, viewing in portrait or landscape mode, and so on.1 In the case of public displays, recent work also considers the viewer’s distance from the screen within the context of RWD.2

Technology has changed almost every aspect of the way we live and work, including our approach to healthcare. Medical providers, clinical facilities and payers are increasingly adopting technology that can help them achieve the goals of higher-quality care at lower cost. Health informatics is a rapidly growing field, fusing the knowledge of technology with the desire to improve patient care. As the field grows, a competitive health informatics salary can be part of a fulfilling career.

The definition of “product designer” as a professional role can be a bit ambiguous. Job titles naturally change over the years as technology and culture change, and because creative professionals such as designers typically want to stand from their peers.1 The title “product designer” is one that has risen in popularity in recent years. Because the job responsibilities of a product designer can overlap those of similar roles such as a user experience (UX) or user interface (UI) designer, even people who work alongside them may not be sure exactly what the job of product designer entails.

If you’re wondering how to become a UX designer after years working in another field, Kent State University alum Brian Parsons, MS ’18, has one piece of advice: “Take on any roles you can with a UX-related title in them, even if it’s volunteering.”

Kent State online Master of Science in User Experience Design (UXD) student Kendra Jobes, MS ’19 candidate, has always wanted her work to make an impact on people. When her undergraduate degree in design led to an initial user experience job after college, she quickly learned that she enjoyed developing and using the artistic and technical skill set required for a UX role.

Nobody likes a 404 page. It’s never the page you were trying to find, and it’s usually not your fault that you ended up there. Standard error messages can be inscrutable, and the typically austere 404 page itself can disconnect the user from the overall site experience, which can sour them to your site and even your brand. So how do you create a 404 page that is dynamic, that easily redirects the user back to the content they want and that’s even a little bit fun?

On Saturday, January 13, 2018, a terrifying message populated the screens of over a million smartphones in Honolulu, Hawaii. It read: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” As the world now knows, this turned out to be a false alarm. An investigation into the incident found that the message was sent by mistake when a state employee hit the wrong button during an internal drill.1

The experience one has when interacting with technology is fundamentally human. Our digital lives—from navigating a tablet to paying at a bank kiosk—have become so ubiquitous, interwoven and essential to the way we interact with the world and others, that it’s almost hard to remember what life was like before these technologies existed. Simply put, we depend on technology to move our lives forward. It plays a critical role in our individual storylines as well as our collective narrative.

When studying user experience (UX) online, there’s almost no greater source of knowledge than Andrew Shipka.

Today, when a person explains that they work as a user experience (UX) designer, chances are that more people understand what that means than they would have a decade earlier.1 As technology and innovation become more and more interwoven into the fabric of business, UX design is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous function.