IA and UX in Education
Getting to Excellent: The 10th Academics & Practitioners Roundtable at the 2025 Information Architecture Conference
In the beginning, there were no courses or degrees in IA or UX. There were simply people borrowing, adapting, or inventing user-centered design methods as a way to make systems work better for people. These pioneers were guided by the training and skills they’d acquired doing other things: academic (e.g. library science, cognition) technical (computer science, graphic design), and practical (marketing, human factors).
As time passed, the field of UX practice persisted and courses and degree programs emerged, often organized around an earlier academic or practical area. Undergraduate and master degrees can now be had in HCI, UX, IA, and KM in schools around the world. But what constitutes “good, better, and best” in teaching UX and IA? What outcomes do students and schools want, and what works to get there?
Participants in past IA Roundtables have observed that there is a huge gap between “okay” and “excellent” in UX practice and education. This is an issue for:
- Growth of UX fields as disciplines
- Effectiveness of UX education to career and real-world outcomes
-Quality and relevance of academic UX research
An investigation into how UX is taught in colleges and universities will lead to an understanding of the current UX educational ecosystem and help us put our hands on the indicators and drivers of “doing better.”
Join a dynamic group of UX adventurers, thought leaders, and community members for this lively and highly participatory exploration of what comprises an excellent UX education. The outcomes will include:
- Identification of the factors that comprise an excellent UX education
- A vision for helping academics and practitioners improve UX education and outcomes
- A framework for conducting field research and the outline of a research grant application
Ideas you can develop and apply in your own teaching and practice
FORMAT AND OUTCOMES
- Lightning talks to ground ourselves in frameworks, perspectives, and experiences around IA/UX education (we will reach out to registrants in advance to provide the opportunity to present lightning talks)
- Hands-on exercises to define and explore the topic
- Team working sessions to co-create shareable artifacts that support wider conversations about excellence in IA/UX education
- A poster summarizing our recommendations, which will be presented at the IA Conference Poster Night to widen the discussion