Breaking News! Writing University Newspaper Articles to Build UX Skills and HF/E Awareness

Abstract

Hundreds of colleges and universities in the United States produce newspapers for the campus community and general public. This paper discusses how a university user experience (UX) research lab has utilized their campus newspaper to regularly publish student research findings. Publishing through this medium promotes the visibility of the human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) and UX fields, while affording undergraduate and graduate student researchers opportunities to gain practical experience using HF/E and UX methods, improve their science communication skills by presenting findings to a layperson audience, and obtain exposure to a fast-paced, collaborative environment that is common in industry. This paper also reports interview results of current and alumni HF/E student researchers who have published HF/E and UX articles through the campus newspaper. Results indicate that publishing articles effectively complements students' academic coursework that helps them apply skills learned in class and makes them more marketable job candidates.