Bringing User Experience Design to Bear on STEM Education: A Narrative Literature Review

Abstract

This narrative review addresses emerging application of user experience (UX) design principles within education contexts, particularly science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education settings. In this review, “UX design” is employed as an umbrella term to describe design philosophies, approaches, and tools that have originated within technology product design-related fields, namely user-centered design and human-computer interaction. UX design implies commitment to user-focused approaches to product development; UX design commonly includes construction and use of specific design tools (e.g., personas, scenarios, and usage models) that synthesize and contextualize product users’ goals, needs, wants, and behaviors in memorable and empathic ways. This review not only explores implementation of UX design tools and frameworks within education settings, but also examines the methods that have used to develop and implement UX design tools from data generated with students and faculty. Findings reveal that, although nascent, current scholarship provides evidence to support use of UX design tools and approaches to promote instructional innovation and the transfer of research to promote institutional change. To advance these purposes, STEM scholarship should focus on providing methodological detail and evidence of assessment of outcomes related to UX implementation. The results further suggest that future work in this area should explore novel approaches for representing UX design tools contextually within STEM settings.