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User Experience and Web Design
Certificate Program

User Experience and Web Design

Intuitive design

Establish Candidacy View Individual Courses

Certificate Description

Designing for your users

UCSC Silicon Valley Extension's newly revised User Experience and Web Design certificate program teaches you to anticipate user needs and design the look and feel of new products that are intuitive and easy to use. Learn customer analytics and behavior by working with a design team of peers. Explore different areas of focus to integrate your creativity with the most effective, best practices in the industry.

Areas of focus

  • User experience design
  • Visual design
  • Design implementation

User Experience and Web Design certificate program objectives

  • Understand the iterative and user-centered design process with the spiral model.
  • Use the user-centered design strategies and methods to create highly effective, pleasurable, and usable products while meeting business goals and objectives.
  • Understand and apply the design principles to create effective user interfaces for mobile devices and products that incorporate wearable technology.
  • Be able to implement a design prototype using various prototyping tools.
  • Be able to evaluate the user interface through user research and heuristic evaluation.
  • Learn and apply the visual design principles to create engaging user interfaces.
  • Be able to use HTML/CSS/JavaScript to prototype websites or single page web applications.
     

     

Future of Product Development, Virtual Reality & Wearable Technology

Eric Dorf, B.F.A., D.M.B.A., senior UX designer at Google and instructor, discuss designing for new surfaces and experiences—the evolution of the product designer, designing for new surfaces/experiences, how to be aware of new trends, and skill sets and design for integrated experiences. (Oct. 7, 2021)

Estimated Cost (You pay only for courses you enroll in): $6,000 | International Tuition Cost
Required Credits: Total Required: 7–10 courses/17 units: Take all three core courses from Part A (8 units); choose one from Part B (3 units), 2-3 elective courses (minimum 4 units); and the Capstone course (2 units). End with a certificate of completion review.
Duration: A full-time student can complete the certificate in 9–12 months.

Courses

Course Units Fall Winter Spring Summer
1. Core Course(s): Part A - All Required
Designing with Cascading Style Sheets: Advanced 2.0
HTML5 Advanced and Javascript APIs 3.0 + +
Visual Design for Digital Media 3.0
2. Core Course(s): Part B - One Required or Take Both & Other Part B Course Will Count as an Elective)
Mobile Interface Design 3.0
User Experience Design Fundamentals 3.0
3. Electives:
Adobe Creative Suite 3.0
Adobe Illustrator, Introduction 1.5
Adobe Photoshop 3.0
Designing a UX or Visual Design Portfolio 2.0
Designing User Experience for AR, Smart Things, Virtual Reality, and Wearable Technology 3.0
Designing with Cascading Style Sheets: Fundamentals 2.0
HTML5 Fundamentals 2.0
Introduction to Web Programming: JavaScript and PHP 2.0
Mobile Interface Design 3.0
User Experience Design, Advanced 3.0
User Experience Design Fundamentals 3.0
4. Capstone Course: Required
Capstone User Experience Project 2.0
5. Completion Review:
User Experience and Web Design Certificate Completion Fee None

Certificate Inquiry Form

Contact Us
Speak to a student services representative.

Call (408) 861-3860

Envelope extension@ucsc.edu

Requisite Knowledge

Please review the course descriptions to ensure that you have taken necessary prerequisites or meet the requirements through job experience or previous education. Before you begin the program, it’s recommended that you take Adobe Illustrator, Introduction and Adobe Photoshop or have the equivalent knowledge and experience.

Advisory Board

Min Wu, chair

Certificate Program Chair

MIN WU, PhD, is the technical lead in front-end design and development at Cloud Lending Solutions. He is founding owner of Skill Trellis, LLC and worked eight years as principal interaction designer at Oracle. He has a master’s degree in Information Security and a doctorate in Security and Usability from MIT.

Certificate Program Advisory Committee

ARIN BHOWMICK, MA-Human-Computer Interaction
Chief Design Officer
IBM Products

REJ SIDHARTHAN, MA-DES, Interaction
CEO & UX Strategist
Freshdesign

WILLY LAI, BA
Chief Design Officer
Haggleland

Establish Candidacy

Establish candidacy in a certificate or specialization

Once you create your student account, you can establish candidacy in a certificate or specialization program any time during your studies.

The benefits of enrolling early
  • Lock in your certificate requirements.This means that even if program requirements change, the requirements to complete your certificate will remain the same for you
  • Receive program updates
  • Set your intention
  • It’s free

To complete a program, you must enroll in the certificate program before enrolling in the Certificate Completion Review.

You have five years to complete all necessary courses in a certificate program or three years to finish up a specialization program.

All the necessary units in a certificate must be completed within this window.* The clock begins on the first day of your first course in the certificate program. For example, if you started a course on Sept. 5, 2017, you would have to complete all of the required units in this certificate by Sept. 4, 2022.

Note:

Enrolling in a certificate program does not trigger the beginning of the five-year window. It begins the first day of the first course that applies to a certificate program. The Certificate Completion Review process does not have to occur within the five-year timeframe.

For more information: How do I get my certificate or specialization?

* Students participating in a special program, such as workforce, international, Personal Financial Planning, or curriculum partner programs (Udacity, Microfacturing Institutes) may have a shorter completion requirement.

Establish Candidacy

Grade Requirements

Please note that only letter grades of C- or higher may be applied to a certificate, and in some programs, students may have more stringent requirements. Students in most employer- and government-sponsored payment programs, such as workforce development, as well as international students on F-1 visas, need to maintain a B average to meet their requirements. Personal Financial Planning students have additional grade requirements for individual courses to attain a certificate.

See Grading and Credits Policy for further information.

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