MSc User Experience and Interaction Design

This programme is designed to transform you into a skilled UX professional through a deeply practical, human-centred curriculum that bridges design theory with hands-on creation and evaluation. You'll have access to our specialist facilities in the School of Computing, Engineering and Built Environment, which includes our User Experience Lab, interaction design studios, and prototyping workshops equipped with industry-standard technology for creating and testing digital experiences. Your learning is powered by professional design tools and culminates in substantial projects where you will research, design, prototype, and evaluate interactive systems, preparing you for a career shaping the future of digital products and services.

Here’s how you’ll gain practical, industry-relevant experience:

• Industry-Standard Design Tools: You'll gain proficiency in essential professional software including Figma and Adobe XD for interface design, Miro for collaborative ideation, and UserTesting.com for remote user research, ensuring you're workflow-ready for modern design teams.

• GCU UX Projects: A key feature is the series of practical design sprints where you'll tackle real-world briefs, applying the full UX lifecycle from user research and journey mapping to prototyping and usability testing.

• User Experience Laboratory: You'll conduct usability tests in our dedicated observation lab, equipped with eye-tracking technology (Tobii), screen recording software, and session recording tools for analysing user behaviour.

• Prototyping Workshop: You'll use our maker space with 3D printers, Arduino kits, and electronics equipment for creating tangible interfaces and exploring physical computing concepts.

• Interaction Design Studio: You'll work in our collaborative design studios equipped with smartboards and presentation technology for ideation sessions, design critiques, and client presentations.

• Mobile and Wearable Tech Lab: You'll have access to device testing rigs, sensor kits, and wearable technology for designing and testing context-aware applications.

• Digital Accessibility Suite: You'll use our specialised software (e.g., JAWS, NVDA) and testing protocols for evaluating digital products against WCAG guidelines and designing inclusive experiences.

• Industry Collaboration: The programme maintains strong links with Scotland's tech and digital design sector, providing opportunities for live client projects and networking with potential employers.

After completing the MSc UXID, many graduates move into roles like User Experience Designer, Interaction Design Developer, Usability Specialist, or UX Researcher. You’ll graduate not just with a portfolio of design work, but also with critical understanding of user psychology, interaction theory, and evaluation methods—making you highly competitive. Because graduates tackle both creative and technical challenges, this degree opens doors in tech companies, government, startups, advertising, and manufacturing.

Progression & Future Opportunities:
Here’s how GCU supports you and what outcomes you can anticipate:

• Which university services will help students to employ:

  • GCU offers a career-focused curriculum: guest lectures from industry professionals, project work that reflects real-world UX challenges, workshops in prototyping and usability evaluation, and a final research or design project built to showcase your skills. (GCU MSc UXID Overview)

  • There’s also scholarship support (a £4,000 scholarship for the MSc UXID) which both helps reduce financial pressures and can connect you more closely with faculty and possibly with industry via sponsored areas. 

• Employment stats and salary figures:

  • While there isn’t public data specific to UXID yet, broader data from GCU’s computing and software development-adjacent courses show median graduate earnings of £27,000 to £30,000 at about 15 months after graduation. For example, graduates in software engineering/software development from GCU report roughly £28,000 to £30,000 in that timeframe. 

  • Computing graduates more generally from GCU (across various computing courses) show similar 15-month earnings around £27,000 with variation depending on the role, experience, and sector. 

• University-industry partnerships (specific):

  • The MSc UXID programme was developed with strong awareness of what industry needs in UX and interaction design. It emphasises applied usability evaluation, behaviour theory, and user psychology—areas consistently in demand from design consultancies, tech firms, government digital services, and product development teams. 

  • Students get exposure to real project work, often via guest lectures and collaborative assignments, which helps build contacts in the industry and understand current tool-sets and practices.

• Long-term accreditation value:

  • This is a taught postgraduate degree with academic rigour; it may not carry a formal engineering/chartered body accreditation (like engineering degrees), but it offers strong credibility, especially for employers in design, digital, interactive media, usability, and user research.

  • Because UX and interaction design span art, computing, psychology, and product, the broad, multidisciplinary foundations you gain provide flexibility—so you can shift into related roles or grow into leadership positions in UX, product management, or design research.

• Graduation outcomes:
  By the time you complete MSc UXID, you’ll have:
    • Built a portfolio of UX/user-interaction/design work that demonstrates both creative direction and usability evaluation,
    • Gained strong analytical skills (user research, evaluation, behavioural theory), prototyping, interface design, and awareness of emerging tech and societal impact,
    • Developed communication and collaboration skills through group projects and possibly industry interaction—so you can hit the ground running in a UX or interaction design role, or enter UX research roles with credibility.

Further Academic Progression:
After finishing the MSc UXID, you have several strong options if you want to go further:

• You could move into PhD research in HCI, interaction design, user behaviour, UX evaluation, or related fields—especially given GCU’s growing strength in applied research in user experience and digital design.

• Alternatively, you might specialize via shorter certificate courses or workshops (e.g. in UX research methods, accessibility, human-robot interaction, AR/VR experiences) if there’s a niche you particularly enjoy.

• You could also combine this degree with professional UX-certifications or memberships (for instance, Interaction Design Foundation, UXPA, Nielsen Norman) to strengthen your professional profile.