What is ACC UX Applied Lab?
The ACC UX Applied Lab is the capstone project for students in the Austin Community College User Experience Design program.
The goal of the course is to give final semester students the experience of working with a client (project sponsor) on compelling, real-world user experience and interaction design problems.
A team of two to five students will work with a client over four months to analyze and address a problem specified by that client. Ideal projects should require assessing the user interaction requirements for a website, software application, mobile app, or other user-facing system.
Students will use their UX skills including user requirements analysis, user research, interaction and user interface design, prototyping, and digital product evaluation.
In projects for the ACC UX capstone project, students demonstrate UX skills by participating in a team design process, meeting deadlines, and delivering and evaluating product assets. They research, design and prototype an improved or novel user experience, and evaluate that design or prototype with prospective users. Throughout the course, students will bridge the gap between academic and professional practices.
The course is a semester-long group project offered once a year during the Spring semester, and projects are lined up in the fall term.
If you would like to work with an energetic, well-trained team of students who can help you explore a new digital product, website, interaction ideas, evaluate users’ experiences, or overhaul the user experience of existing products or systems, please submit a proposal for a course project.
Ideal projects/clients
Ideal clients and projects come from the Austin area, and we’re happy to accept proposals from organizations located elsewhere if they can support remote teams.
Our goal is to provide students with experience working on projects with public institutions, government entities, non-profit and research institutions. (We are not yet accepting enterprise company, start-up, or for-profit company projects. Please reach out about hiring interns or mentoring students!)
Student teams will kick off the projects by meeting with their clients in mid-January. Clients should support their student team by:
- Facilitating UX requirements analysis — e.g., by providing system access, facilitating meetings with stakeholders, or helping to recruit user’s of your website or services for usability testing.
- Attending regular meetings — weekly or twice-monthly meetings to answer further questions and provide input during the research, design, and evaluation phases.
- Providing point of contacts — people who can provide feedback, address student questions, make connections within the client, and do this in a rapid and attentive manner.
- Providing feedback — to ACC faculty about student performance, project effectiveness, and how we can improve this in future iterations.
ACC Faculty will provide students with regular mentorship and guidance on projects during scheduled ACC UX Lab working hours, after establishing milestones, deliverables or expected outcomes with client stakeholders. (*Client stakeholders or team members are also welcome to meet and work with students during ACC UX Lab hours.) Students will present their project outcomes in a project report and final presentation in May. Clients are invited to attend in person or remotely.
Students can work on projects which are pre-launch/alpha/beta, provided that adequate student access can be provided during the duration of the course and students can write a project report and present their work to fellow students, members of ACC community, and use case studies of their work process in their professional portfolios. (Exceptions for non-disclosure of specific IP can be made upon request prior to the semester/project start.)
Examples of projects our students can work with you on:
- Provide insight into who your user-customers, their needs, and current tasks are. User Research can help you to align and confirm your assumptions about user-customers and their expectations of your product or service. (For example: Before you spend time and money building a new app, user research can reduce the risk of building the wrong thing.)
- Evaluate how effectively your user-customers can use your current website or digital product. (For example: Can they find the information they’re looking for? Can they complete the tasks they need to? Do they find value in your website, app, or digital product?)
- Recommending changes to your website or digital product based on evaluations with your customers. (For example: User-customers can’t find the information they’re looking for, we can recommend a better way to organize the information on your site.)
- Designing those changes for your website, app or digital product (For example: navigation redesigns, content strategy, system or process flow updates, effective and on-brand visual design.)
Some recent ACC UX Lab student work can be found on our website.
Student outcomes are not guaranteed, so clients should be prepared in case the output they receive is not ready for use. That said, the students and faculty will do their best to make sure that expectations are set and achieved to the best of their ability.
Project proposal submission
Interested organizations should contact Professor David Schlossberg with their UX project ideas.
Contact information
David Schlossberg
Professor, UX Design
FAQs
What skills will the students know or use in this project?
By this point in their education, students should be able to do any reasonable user experience design task including:
- Evaluating user interfaces and interactions
- Conducting research including usability tests and interviews
- Designing user interfaces and visual designs
- Creating information architectures and navigation systems
Students will not be able to build or implement any solutions, but they will be able to deliver designs that are usable by developers for implementation.
How much time should clients commit to working with the students?
While it will vary week by week, two to four hours a week should be enough to address student needs including:
- Weekly meetings with the project team
- Answering questions and providing feedback when asked
- Enabling the students with access to stakeholders, customers/users, and resources
Will this cost us anything?
There’s no payment to ACC required to participate in this program, and students are not expected to be compensated. Clients will need to support students in this project, but that’s expected to only be a couple of hours per week.
We have a project idea but we’re not sure if it’s a good fit.
Submit it anyways! We’re happy to work with you and turn that idea into a project that our students can succeed at.
What if we need confidentiality agreements or NDAs?
Generally we avoid projects that have confidentiality agreements or NDA requirements. Students need to be able to share this work in their portfolio and with potential employers so we may not be able to accept these kinds of projects. That said, we’re happy to discuss specific needs to see if we can find an accommodation that works for everyone.
What is the timeline for these projects?
Students will complete the project over 10 to 12 weeks. You should expect their work to be complete around April or May.
What if we’re unhappy with the students or their work?
Unfortunately we can’t guarantee that students’ work will meet your expectations or be completed by the end of their work. That said, we’ll work closely with you to make sure that the outcomes you set (jointly with the students) can be accomplished in the time they have, and we’ll regularly check in to make sure they’re on track to complete them.
If there are specific students or incidents that need to be addressed, please inform your faculty contact as soon as possible so we can address it.