School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts

Don Norman, the author of The Design of Everyday Things, once said, “everything is designed.” Our world is surrounded by many physical and digital products, each with its own purpose. The study of design emphasizes making advancements to products and keeping in mind the ease of users' experience. User experience design provides a way to improve products while also creating better usability. This article will provide an overview of user experience and its different applications, along with a review of an educational application called Simbrain. Simbrain was used to teach a summer program called Frontier of Science at the University of Northern Colorado in Summer 2022.  Experiences from this program will be described here.