USC MAP Webinar: User Experience (UX) Research Spotlight

Jacqueline Campagna:

Hello everybody. Welcome and thank you for joining us today for our live webinar. We are all in kind of unusual situation here, but we appreciate the opportunity to be together remotely to discuss our program with you and investing in your futures. So today we're going to be discussing our program and one of our elective courses, user experience with our professor spotlight, professor Jason Buhle.

Jacqueline Campagna:

Please be sure to occasionally refresh your browsers and turn up the volume on your device so you can hear audio. If you have questions, please note the Q&A box shown below. We'll be sure to address these questions at the end of the webinar. Please do not hesitate to ask questions here throughout the presentation. Looking to our agenda, my name is Jacqueline and I'll be the facilitator of today's webinar. We have with us our program director, Dr. Ellen Leggett and in the faculty spotlight we have Dr. Jason Buhle. Today we're going to go over the applied psychology program and curriculum share with you some career directions. Meet one of our professors, Dr. Buhle, discuss practical applications of this degree and finally go over next steps in how to apply. I'm now going to turn it over to our program director, Dr. Ellen Leggett, Dr. Leggett. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Ellen Leggett:

Thank you Jacquelyn and welcome to all of you on this webinar, we love the opportunity to talk about our program because we have six years of experience designing an online master's degree that we feel is state of the art and also unique in probably the world from what we have been told and heard from students. The background that I bring to this enterprise is a background in both psychology and business. Having earned my doctorate at Harvard, I went off and spent the past 30 years working for industry in a field that didn't exist when I was a college student. Like many of you, I was looking for a way to use psychology in the world. I wasn't really interested in sitting in an ivory tower. And I was fortunate through some unusual chance encounters to meet someone who had just started a consulting firm putting together psychologists with trial lawyers.

Ellen Leggett:

And I just the risk of joining what at that time was a startup firm in a startup industry. And had a very exciting career for over 30 years working with corporations and their legal teams at the times when companies are facing jury trials. I've loved being a jury expert, but the opportunity to come to USC and to develop this program brings together my passion for psychology, the experiences of using psychology in the real world and opportunities for students or employees with psychological background or interests to sharpen their skills and see the world that we face right now through the lens of psychology with an eye towards how we can help. This is, as I said, my seventh year in this program and it is our sixth year of having the program be online.

Ellen Leggett:

We've basically had one main premise and that is that understanding human behavior is central to issues that companies and organizations of all kinds of face, the problems of motivating employees and reaching a work force that is more global than ever and motivating consumers to stay active in what now is a global marketplace. And I think at this point in our history as a country, we're feeling the connectedness to the rest of the world in ways perhaps not experienced even before in quite the same way. The program focuses on consumer psychology and organizational psychology, both with the assumption that both are important and students don't need to identify one or the other as their major, so to speak. We require courses in both. And our hope is that by the end of the program, students actually realize that they are interwoven and inform each other in ways that are going to be what gives our students a unique viewpoint when they enter and proceed into the workforce.

Ellen Leggett:

The consumer psychology is looking at why consumers do what they do in the marketplace and building marketing plans, understanding through research what their decision making processes are. And organizational psychology is looking at employees in much the same way. How do employees perceive their work and their work environment and how does it impact the productivity and enjoyment of their work? Both of these areas, we have specific faculty that are experts in these areas and have been chosen specifically because they have both psychology background and industry experience. And I think what you'll hear from Dr. Buhle today is that the emerging field, rapidly emerging field of user experience and user experience research is applicable and draws from both consumer psychology as well as organizational psychology.

Ellen Leggett:

Career outlook for both human resources and organizational psychology as well as market research and consumer insights are on the upswing and should continue to be growing. We're hearing right now even at this unusual time in our history that HR and consumer insights continue to be areas that will be much needed. And again, as you'll hear from Dr. Buhle, we're at a time when user experience and how we all are interfacing with technology becomes even more relevant in the career outlook is bright there as well. What do we actually do in this program? I want to give you just a snapshot here. First of all, it's a very challenging accelerated degree program where the online degree can be achieved in 16 months with a program that assumes two courses per term. The program also includes an internship which for many folks who may already be in a career or working already, this becomes an opportunity to cross train often at the place that you currently work. And we also require a capstone research project.

Ellen Leggett:

As I mentioned, we are very proud of our practitioner faculty, very innovative faculty that really I think are trying to make a program that they wish they could have taken or we wish we could have taken if we were at an earlier point in our own careers and lives. But we're passionate. I think each and every one of us about the role that psychologists can play in industry. Not necessarily with a title that says psychologist, but with applying psychology tools and theories to problems and other arenas within companies. And most of our faculty, if not all, have had experience actually being in organizations doing applied work.

Ellen Leggett:

And lastly, we really have a contemporary approach to education. This is a program that puts you into teams. You will be doing real world projects and case studies, often even consulting projects for companies or organizations. And using data is very important in our program because this is a master of science program. Research skills are used in the program to teach you how to translate what you might know about research now, but tweak it a little bit towards applied settings and making it more useful for companies to use research. But globally relevant curriculum is something we care a lot about and have been creating some innovative ways for our students to have global experiences. And I'll tell you more about that as we go along.

Ellen Leggett:

The requirements in the program are some foundation courses that all students take. And then some required, excuse me, some elective courses and some practica. The foundation courses are both consumer and organizational psychology, a research methods in applied psychology course and a two course sequence in what we call professional seminar that is broken into some theoretical foundations in the first course. And in the second course, more applications and workplace. Actually we do workshops in the second part of that course. The required practica I've already mentioned the internship or professional development opportunity and the capstone applied research treatise.

Ellen Leggett:

From the electives, over on the right you see listed towards the bottom there, user experience, the UX research. And that's what Dr. Buhle will be talking about today. But additionally, you'll see other electives which round out the curriculum. And it really enables students to choose electives that meet their personal interests. The internship and treatise opportunities as well, provide those same experiences that you can bring whatever your personal interests are to this program and make it customized for your own interests.

Ellen Leggett:

Quickly mentioning the global relevance. We're very proud of the fact that as a master's program we have at least two ways for students to go abroad. Very rare in master's programs. I've read recently that only 5% of master's programs have international opportunities for students and one is a work experience that we make possible in the summer for students to live and work in Dublin, Ireland. The second is a spring break trip which we have a faculty members lead. It's totally optional, not tied to any course, but we have gone to Dubai. I took the first group to Dubai last year, a year ago and we expect once we have all been cleared to travel that these programs will continue. They have been well received and are fully supported by our faculty. So we look forward to being able to continue offering the summer internship in Dublin as well as spring break trips either to Dubai or some other locations.

Ellen Leggett:

I think at this point I've laid the groundwork for Dr. Buhle and I'm delighted to be able to introduce him to you. He comes to us very, very well prepared to be an expert in user experience as well as from his academics and earning his doctorate in psychology at Columbia University. Dr. Buhle, do you want to take it over for now? Thank you for being here. Can you mind tell us a little bit more about your background?

Jason Buhle:

Absolutely. And thanks for laying the groundwork so well, Dr. Leggett. Thanks everyone else for joining today. It's funny, I was reflecting when you said so many of us wish this program had been available to us before we started our careers outside of academia. I sometimes think that now every time I hear you talking about the program, I think now I'd love to take that class on consumer psychology and gosh, I'd love to take Dr. Luke's advanced quantitative methods class. So I'm really quite proud of the program, including, my slice of the program which we'll talk more about in a moment. At first Dr. Leggett noted my background is initially in academia. I spent about a decade conducting academic research and completed my PhD at Columbia. I decided I wanted to leave the academic world as my primary focus at least, and started doing consulting and educational technology, very hot topic these days.

Jason Buhle:

And learned about digital product development through that work and user experience research. And I just think it's so interesting looking back, I had never heard the term user experience research in all my time in grad school. What a difference today, all the time folks reach out to me who are working on a PhD in Columbia or elsewhere. I think it's the number one job that psychology PhD students go into after they get their PhD if they're leaving academia. And that was not at all the case years ago, really speaks to the growth in fields. Today I worked for a company called AnswerLab. We're the largest research agency. That means we just do research for other big companies, we're about 130 plus people. And we do research across the Fortune 1000. I primarily work for a few of the biggest companies, the companies that do the most user experience research out there and there's Google and Facebook, also a few other companies in other areas including Genentech, eBay, PayPal and a few others.

Jason Buhle:

And my team probably this year we're going to do, a little hard to say with everything happening with coronavirus, but I do expect we'll do more than 700 studies total. That's just the part of AnswerLab that I'm responsible for in total AnswerLab will probably do about 1000 studies this year. And with that, I'd love to jump into conversations, a little more focus on UX research itself. I imagine some of you have joined this webinar because you're already interested in UX research and others I don't know what it is. So I'm going to start with just a quick overview.

Jason Buhle:

UX research is the study of users, people who are using a product or service and also potential users. Before we build a product or service or make changes to a product or service. We want to make sure we really understand the folks out there who might use it and we want to make sure that we're building something that's going to meet real needs hence the focus of the skills. We see research existing on a spectrum. Now a lot of people, even today in some companies, this is still the case. If we talk about user experience research, they'll think of highly evaluative work. They'll think of, well, can people go from step one to step two on this website? Can people find the button on this locker system like those Amazon locker systems, you can go to pick up a package, whatever it might be.

Jason Buhle:

That is absolutely a big part of our work. Really important for those of you who've been using software for a long time and you might remember just how difficult software was some years ago. So much easier if you think today and that's because of user experience research. The same time, huge focus and really growing folks in our field is on the more strategic end of research. Research that's done even before you build or think about how to build a product or service. Increasingly we're seeing that strategic research is also being demanded by the C-suite, by upper level folks in these companies who really want to make sure that all of their decisions are informed by the deep user centric approach. So that might mean that you're thinking about building a say of looking at my history, some technology for the classroom. Well you go into lots of different classrooms, all kinds of different schools, schools in urban environments, rural environments. You really should really understand that environment and that situation before you even figure out what you're going to build for sure before you build a blueprint of how you're going to build it.

Jason Buhle:

I think one of the things that also really distinguishes user experience research from some other forms of applied insights research is our focus on observing, observing users and potential users very carefully and really trying to understand their mind, how they think about the world, not just by asking them. That's going to be important too, but really trying to use more thoughtful methods to more comprehensively construct and understanding of their outlook. So then we can analyze the situation and make the best decisions for them. I just want to be really clear about that because some people think, "Oh you just ask them what they want, write it down and pass it on. That's not an interesting job for me." That is not at all what we do. The focus is really on figuring out those needs in a way that's more accurate but often a little more circuitous. It takes a little, a lot more preparation and thought.

Jason Buhle:

Also, a lot of people, they think of the user experience research. They'll say, "Oh, that's a tech job. And I'm not interested in tech, so it's a job for me." Well, it is certainly true that user experience research really got it start and it's still most dominant in the technology sector, but it's rapidly growing. I find when I go do conferences or meet ups, meet folks and I'm always amazed at all the different places that user experience is growing into. Last year I met a guy, he was one of my favorites, I met a guy who works for a construction company, real big construction company. He said, "I don't study websites or apps, I study how people did holes." But you bring all of these same skills, all of this approach to that kind of work and really figure out how to help people build holes better, more efficiently and more safely and so on.

Ellen Leggett:

Can you talk a little bit more about the kind of careers that I mean you've mentioned it, but why would a student think that UX research is for them?

Jason Buhle:

Yeah, absolutely. Now of course, part of the MAPP process will be that voyage of discovery. You have to care from a lot of different professionals applying psychology in a lot of different areas. And I think a lot of students come in thinking that they're interested in one thing and learn about other opportunities and shift their focus. Some things that I think lead people to decide on UX research over the course of their MAPP careers is well, if you really are interested in people and behavior, it's a great thing. Now of course all applied psychology fields do incorporate that focus to some degree, but I think that's particularly a focus of UX research, that careful study of people, careful study of their behavior and here's the kind of person who can get really, really into something that other people say, "Oh, that's such a small thing, that's not interesting."

Jason Buhle:

But you say, "Wow, I love that diving deeper, diving deeper experience. I really want to understand in detail how people experience that process and how they think about it. Always a great fit for you." Also, I think something that really sets user experience research aside from some of the other areas of applied psychology is not all jobs, not all roles are like this, but the vast majority sit on product teams. So you'll be sitting next to a designer, next to a product manager next to a data scientist or maybe three of each of those roles working together to actually build things, build things that people will use or make a difference in their lives. For me, that was something that I really loved when I left academia and started building things and seeing you could build a site or put a new feature on an app, ship it out in days. You could see that thousands, tens of thousands of people are using it, making a difference in their lives. That's really a lot of fun.

Jason Buhle:

I'll also say that it's a very dynamic and exciting place to be right now. Like I said, I had never even heard of it when I finished my PhD back in 2011 and now it's the first opportunity, the first kind of job that most PhD students are thinking about as they're thinking about leaving academia, I've seen tremendous growth. I mentioned I work very closely with Facebook. Well, I started working close with them about three and a half years ago. At that time they had 150 researchers on staff. I know now that upwards of 600 and that's in addition to the hundreds of studies they do with us and other agencies, I'm seeing similar growth. A lot of these big tech companies at the same time as we're seeing penetrations all kinds of new areas particularly financial services really expanded the focus on UX.

Jason Buhle:

So it's an exciting time to be in this field. Also challenging because the field is changing, it's evolving rapidly. We're bringing in new methods. So if that sounds stimulating and exciting to you then I think UX research is a great choice. And lastly, I'll mention that I do think relative to some of the other options in applied psychology, UX research is particularly lucrative. Seeing that entry level position typically folks are running really at a minimum in the '60s. And I'm seeing some people, even actual real physicians really are quite a bit higher than that and after, so if you're lucky enough to get into some of these top, top companies a Google, a Facebook and Amazon. People are even making an excess of $110,000 just in their base salary.

Jason Buhle:

And that's tops. I don't want to give anyone the illusion that you can just walk right into a job like that. But we're very lucky here at MAPP. We have some alums who are quite successful in their user experience. Researchers really new, relatively new still to our program. We have two alums at Google. We also have alums at Blizzard and in my own company AnswerLab. At Morgan Stanley, I actually just heard last night from one of our online students that she has an interview to work at Microsoft, so fingers crossed for her. So definitely a lot of opportunities out just to get some of those great positions. And I do see the demand is just increasing quite rapidly in the field all the time. I hear from my clients that they just can't sell roles. They just have empty roles because they can't find anybody to put into them.

Ellen Leggett:

Wow. That's great.

Jason Buhle:

So definitely there's a lot of opportunities [inaudible 00:25:01].

Ellen Leggett:

That's great to hear. Dr. Buhle, you did mention though that PhD students in psychology are gravitating towards this area, but I assume, and I just want to hear you say that there are opportunities for master's level folks.

Jason Buhle:

Oh yeah, absolutely. It's an interesting thing in our field I think because it's still relatively new growing so rapidly. A few years ago, especially, you had people coming from every direction and people kind of hacking their way into this field, just figuring out how to do this stuff on their own and then suddenly they were getting jobs and you had a lot of people coming over from other areas, applied insights, market research. That's still happens to a degree. But I've seen a lot of changes in the last few years and now increasingly folks are entering this field with a master's degree. I think it's the most common route in. I think that's going to continue to increasingly be the case. You do have a lot of folks also coming in with a PhD, particularly certain companies, the Googles and the Facebooks, the Twitters, they really like those PhDs, but they still the majority of the researchers I believe do not have PhDs and they hire a lot from the master's programs.

Jason Buhle:

What they're not really doing much of is hiring folks who only have a bachelor's degree a little bit, but you have to have a pretty exceptional bachelor's degree experience to get in one of those companies certainly. And as I said, I think that there really has been a shift and I think that shift is going to continue in coming years towards folks entering this field with some formal training. There are really only a handful of programs that provide training in this area. And I'm really pleased that MAPP is now one of those. I want to talk a little bit about if you are out there thinking, "Hey, I really want to go to UX research and I'm trying to decide this is the program for me or I want to pursue another program." I want to tell you why I think master is your best choice.

Jason Buhle:

First there's this growing focus in our field on grounding our research in academic theory and especially psychological theory. It's probably something to do with their being so many PhDs in the field. But also I think it's a sign of the field maturing and it's wanting to get away from this a lot of one off studies and really trying to build a more comprehensive body of knowledge. And hear in MAPP I think we provide that through the coursework that is required as well as through the independent projects that you'll do in a way that other programs are out really aren't. Another thing that really stands out about MAPP in comparison to some of those other programs is the quantitative skills that get developed. You talk to MAPP graduates over and over again they'll tell you, "Dr. Luke's class changed my life."

Jason Buhle:

And I think it was really setting that from the stuff that Dr. Luke teaches is that those techniques that come from other areas of applied insights research that they've really grown. There's a lot of interest in them in growing interest in user experience research but mostly will have no training in them. So you would really stand out by being able to say, "Hey, I know how to do [inaudible 00:28:16]. I can do MaxDiff no problem in a way that these other graduates in these other programs wouldn't be able to." I also want to call out that something that really I didn't fully appreciate about MAPP when I first became involved. And I really think it's one of the greatest strengths is our dedicated courses and faculty. You look at a lot of other programs and I encourage you to do this.

Jason Buhle:

If you aren't going to any of the programs, look closely, you'll see that a lot of those classes, they're just classes that were plucked there already existed. They were plucked into that program. Wasn't the faculty too. Our faculty are teaching other things and actually a lot of them are researchers. Just recently I talked to one of my clients at Google, there's a lot of hiring at entry level there for Google. And he said he went to a competitor program and he said it was great, but my main faculty advisor, he was a researcher. So this is very much theory driven. It was very much academic driven. So that's stuff I can't really apply to my job, he was really struck when I told him what the kind of applied experience that we give our students. And a great example of that is that all of our students are required to do an internship.

Jason Buhle:

So more than one. When you apply for jobs, people are going to really want to know what have you done? Some of those key points. Our internships give you the chance to build those proof points. That's something also with some of these other programs just don't provide, it's not part of the coursework and they don't have time for it. I think that that's also a real strength of the MAPP experience. And finally not to toot my own horn too much, but I do think that our UX research course is very strong, many students say that it completely changed their direction. They're so excited to learn about UX research and that the applied nature of the course helps them to build the skill that they'll use as UX researchers in a very clear and comprehensive way.

Jason Buhle:

We focus a lot on doing actual projects in the course and creating professional deliverables. We actually we don't just have you do assignments, we have you do them, present them to the whole class, you get feedback from all of us, including of course me and sometimes guests I bring in and then you go back and iterate and you make them even better. So by the end, every deliverable you created is something you can be really proud of and something that when you apply for jobs and they say, "Okay, show me an example of a study you ran." For example, if you were to be so lucky to get an interview at Google. They would ask me to come in and present the study that you've done. You'll have that study ready to go and they'll have been polished over the course of multiple iterations and a lot of employees.

Jason Buhle:

So I think that really can give you a launchpad that will take you through the application process and the interview process. And I've heard from my students who are out there in jobs that it allowed them to actually get a lot of traction in their jobs. And show the value of user experience research and show how it can be done. So I'm very proud of that. And of course, happy to talk more about the details of the course and field more broadly in the Q&A.

Ellen Leggett:

Great, Dr Buhle. And I know that you, you said that the faculty and the MAPP program all have contributions. You mentioned Dr. Luke Dale and I just want to point out in this picture here, this is the picture at graduation last year of every one of the faculty members in our program. And the students also report that the UX course interfaces with or builds upon other courses in ways that just strengthens their confidence as they go out into the job market, whether they're continuing or pivoting in their career. Thank you Dr. Buhle. We've really appreciated your insights and I think I'm going to turn it back over to Jacquelyn at this time.

Jacqueline Campagna:

Thank you, Dr. Leggett and professor Buhle for your great insights. If you're ready to apply we do accept applications throughout the year as we have start days in spring, summer and fall. Currently we are now accepting applications for these summer 2020 term where classes begin Monday, May 18th and then fall 2020 classes starts September seven. For the admissions requirements, we will require of course a completed application, bachelor's degree from an accredited institution with at least a 3.0 cumulative GPA, all official transcripts, DRA scores, statement of purpose, professional resume and finally three letters of recommendation. The application deadline for summer term is April 14th if you're considering a fall start. That application deadline is August 5th. And definitely feel free to contact us further to discuss the program and enrollment process. My contact information is going to be listed below. Again, my name is Jacqueline Campagna and I'm the senior enrollment advisor for this program.

Jacqueline Campagna:

We also have Serena Diep and she is our academic advisor. Great resource as well. We do have several questions come through so I'm going to open it up to some questions and one of the first questions that came up I think is an important one. Given the situation with COVID and everything that's going on. Ellena or professor Buhle, do you want to discuss the dynamic of online learning and how it's different with this program and what college students are maybe experiencing now with them transitioning to the online platform that they're working with now?

Ellen Leggett:

Yes. I'm very happy to comment on that. I know that many students in the country, college students, high school students as well have been immediately thrust into what is being called an online learning environment. But I feel that the experience that may be possible in a short-term emergency situation bears little resemblance to what might be encountered in our program where our courses have had five years of experience being taught online. One of the main differences is that there's an awful lot of reliance upon Zoom at this point because it's the fastest way for professors around the country to quickly pivot and teach the same course that they might've had on campus to an audience that's remote. Zoom is not the way that our courses are delivered. That requires everyone being able to log on at the same time no matter where you are in the country.

Ellen Leggett:

Our program is very different in that Moodle, which is a learning management system. Some of you may have encountered that in college or high school. Moodle is highly programmed on a day to day basis for students with discussion boards, materials to review, videos to watch. Some of our lessons are programmed in ways that are like, you are visiting a website and you click and different things are revealed and different activities are available to you. And that can all be completed on your own time with you sitting at home in California, doing it at the end of a Workday or in New York doing it whenever you have the opportunity.

Ellen Leggett:

The Zoom, what we call live sessions are very short. They exist in every program because we do think it's important for you to have face to face opportunities with the faculty and the students. And generally they're every couple of weeks, not every week. I'd say an average for a 15-week class. You might have five sessions that are one hour long on Zoom. That's the primary difference I think that we've been at this for a long time. Professors have been working to get their courses to be as interactive and as engaging as possible and to facilitate what we call asynchronous learning, meaning that students can do a lot of the work at their own time in their own time zone, which is state of the art for really good distance learning.

Jacqueline Campagna:

Great. Thank you so much Dr. Leggett. Another great question that came through when we were discussing earlier the internship, the practicum portion of the program. Can you elaborate a little bit more on cross training at your current place of work within this requirement?

Ellen Leggett:

Sure, sure. When we have students in our online master's program, many of them are choosing to be an online student because they have a full-time job. And the term internship doesn't quite fit for people who are already working and are in need in fact of continuing with their full time job. Thus, what we have worked very hard to do is create opportunities for students working with their manager, working with HR to identify in their own organization, someone who is doing work that they would like to learn more about that might align with what they're learning in the MAPP program. For example, I was just talking to a student who works in customer service and she's one of the people that answers the phone when you call a company and needs to talk to someone about a problem.

Ellen Leggett:

And she's been in that role advancing. She does training in that role. She's a good person in that role, but she is now more interested in consumer insights and marketing. So in her company there is a marketing department, she has had no contact with the marketing department until now. And she identified someone in the marketing department by going and talking to them, expressing her interest, telling them about her master's degree and also talking to HR and to her current manager. And they created a situation where every week she is spending one day a week or and doing some projects in the marketing department. Thus, she is still at her same place of work. She's still doing her regular job, but there's an organizational commitment to helping her expand her skills and contribute to what is being done in marketing.

Ellen Leggett:

And these situations are very prevalent. Students have carved out opportunities to do something in UX or in organization learning and development if they're not in that department already. And sometimes they've even found big projects that have been on the back burner in their own department with no one having time to do it. And they agree that this could be a professional development opportunity for the MAPP student. And since all of the internships are approved by me and the faculty, we work with students to help get these situations set up. But generally students are remarkably creative. They know what they want, they know their organizations and they go and talk to people and we encourage that and usually endorse it when they've worked out something that sounds meaningful to them.

Jacqueline Campagna:

That's great. Thank you, Dr. Leggett on that topic as we're talking about the practicum, what are some examples of treatise topics students have used in the past?

Ellen Leggett:

Oh my goodness. Students do such interesting things in their opportunity to do a research project. There are, I'll just give you some ideas of what is being done right now that I'm aware of. I have one student who's interested in the role that being tired at work plays in performance and she's doing a survey asking people about whether they feel tired at work, what their habits are for sleeping, how many cups of coffee they need during the day. And she's trying to assess whether companies should be more sensitive to time of work hours and making opportunities available for employees to take more breaks. I have a student who's also doing a survey in both her home, which is South Korea and in the US and she's looking at the role of autonomy in work satisfaction.

Ellen Leggett:

I also have a student who is interested in the consumer opportunities that exist when they are purchasing online. Like, what are factors that lead consumers to abandon their shopping cart, which is a big problem. Those are just a few top of mind ones right now. Dr. Buhle, have you worked with any students on projects that you want to mention?

Jason Buhle:

Well I'm actually still just getting started in my first round of treatise projects. I don't have the breadth of experience that you do. From some of the projects that I've heard that students working on now I think there's some interesting ones that touch on UX. One set of students are currently working on project to try to optimize a automatic checkout experience. So a physical device that you interact with that's not operated by a person checking out your products. Another student I know is I think still contemplating a project that will look at differences in how folks from different cultures interact with technology. Something, I have a little bit of a background in another potential interesting study.

Ellen Leggett:

I should say that students often do consulting projects for their treatise as well. If you are, again, some of these can be born through observing what your own company needs and developing an employee survey to sort of to understand for example, how an employee workforce feels about the corporate headquarters having just moved or plan to reorganize the office space. And students do, do consulting projects in our online program that are also sourced by the faculty and we make these available to students by application so that they can get experience with actual clients.

Jacqueline Campagna:

Great. Thank you both so much. That was really, really, really helpful. Another great question that actually just came in. Considering that this program is 100% online, how does interaction between professors and students work? Are there times such as office hours and which professors may be available?

Ellen Leggett:

That's a great question and we are very excited to talk about this because our faculty considers that mentoring is one of our main jobs. And we've actually done a survey, a study of what makes an ideal community for our students and faculty. And one of the things we've found from students was that they feel most connected to our program when they develop a relationship with faculty members. Faculty put themselves out there for students through many different ways. One is office hours, but it doesn't really work the way it does when you're on a college campus and you just walk in. Most of us have an app called Calendly where we make our hours available online and students click and can put themselves into a time slot for a video conference call using Zoom or a phone call. Additionally, we encourage students to email us all the time. I'm going to let Dr. Buhle tell you how he interacts with his students.

Jason Buhle:

Yeah, absolutely. So focusing specifically on my class, a lot of different ways of interacting and some are structured and built into the course and some we developed as needed for each student. So one of the things that I really focus on in my class is getting a lot of individual personalized feedback. I'm very proud of the number of students who said, "I've never in my life received this level of feedback on my work in the class." I just think it's absolutely essential so we can help each students advance as much as possible and really make those assignments deliverables that you can share as you move into the job market. That's one of the primary ways of interacting. Also in the online systems we use, well most of us I think all of us have a certain number of in-person classes in my class we have five of those, five one hour classes throughout the semester.

Jason Buhle:

And then there we have live interactions mediated by Zoom, but that's a lot less of course than you'd have in a typical in person class. So we have lots of, instead there's lots of interactions on the discussion boards, all of that feedback that I provide, I structure into my assignments. Like I said, a lot of them are iterative and with all my assignments I, in addition to the assignment itself, I have students submit a cover letter where they talk to me about how they did the assignment and what they learned from it and why they made certain choices. So there's sort of that meta conversation as well. It's the kind of thing that might just happen naturally in class. But we build it in a systematic way. I build it in my online class.

Jason Buhle:

And then for other interactions outside of the structured class interactions I don't tend to hold office hours because I find this particularly on my students, people have really different schedules. At this last semester I had a student who was in Germany, students all across the country, some people are working full-time jobs and those hours can vary quite a bit. So because of all of that, just do it all ad hoc and I really encourage students to connect as much as possible. It's great to, I try to meet with every student one-on-one at least once and some of them quite a few times over the course of the semester. And I'd say one of the things I think that's really great about MAPP for me and I think that a lot of our faculty would agree with this is I'm interested, I'm invested in this program for a number of reasons. But one is I really want to make the contribution to my field, my applied field, and I love having colleagues now in my field that are MAPP graduates and I want to grow that number.

Jason Buhle:

I want to have lots more. And in part because of that motivation I've continued to have relationships with lots of MAPP graduates. I learned a lot from them as they go through their careers, whether in UX or in other areas. As I mentioned, I was just chatting by email last night with a student and giving her some coaching as she moves into this next interview opportunity she has. I'd say probably every week I interact with at least one if not more MAPP alum or alum of my course that I assume might still be in the MAPP program as well. So I think that a longer term relationship in MAPP is also that really defines our program and it's a huge advantage for our program.

Ellen Leggett:

And Dr. Buhle thank you for that. I think I should have mentioned earlier that one of the things that maybe is different in our program is that classes are small even online. We have an upper limit of about 20 to 23 students in a class. So that there is no sense that you're anonymous at all, faculty know who you are. You know each other. And we find that we get to know the online students really well even through the discussion boards which are all typing, but people type a lot and are very open and sharing so that the relationships surprisingly are quite robust and small classes help but also faculty members who really want to be connected to students. And invite students connection for mentoring. As you can see with Dr. Buhle is a key part of our program. And I think that what Dr. Buhle said is indicative of how most professors are. I know for myself I am in constant contact with alums. Alums are very supportive of this program and of the students.

Jacqueline Campagna:

Great. Thank you both so much. Oh, sorry.

Ellen Leggett:

I was just reading-

Jacqueline Campagna:

Another great question that came in... Oh, I'm sorry. I'll let you go ahead.

Ellen Leggett:

I'll have you go ahead.

Jacqueline Campagna:

Another great question that came through it was mentioned earlier that some of the companies students have had the opportunity to work for, does USC have any partnerships with any of these companies or different types of companies?

Ellen Leggett:

We have partnerships, but perhaps not in the way that might be intended by that question. We are constantly in touch with companies. Certainly Dr. Buhle himself works at AnswerLab and is able to bring the best of AnswerLab to our students. We every year are looking for more companies to partner with for projects for us students. And that's the primary way that we have partnerships.

Jacqueline Campagna:

Right. Thank you-

Jason Buhle:

Yeah. It might be worth noting too that I've often spoken to folks in other companies outside of AnswerLab who have really robust internship programs and they'll say what we love is getting all those great MAPP interns and they see that MAPP interns as a core part of their annual internship classes. So they're many people, it's maybe not a formal partnership, but they have a long relationship with MAPP and they're coming back over and over again because they want to get those terrific interns.

Ellen Leggett:

Yeah, that's very well said. We have many companies and organizations that seek our students and we have long relationships with them, but I don't know how one would define that. It's not a formal partnership, but it's certainly a supportive relationship. We also have a professional advisory council that I meet with. In fact, Dr. Buhle started out on that I believe, where we have senior leaders, faculty generally on where there are new directions and opportunities for the program. I see a question that-

Jacqueline Campagna:

Great.

Ellen Leggett:

Jacqueline, I don't know if you see it, but I see a question. Is UX research similar or in the same field as human factors? And I think that actually is a good question. Do you want to tackle that Jason?

Jason Buhle:

Sure thing. Yeah. Definitely there is overlap in factors. It is a longer standing field with deep academic roots and a lot of folks, that is one of the entryways into UX research. Now, good number of my clients have human factors, degrees and some even have human factors titles. A lot of times the title change based on the traditions of that company or preference of that company. And they might be doing the exact same work whether the title says human factors or UX researcher just at a different company. I'd say that there are some differences. Human factors is very much focused on the evaluative side of the work. Less of that more strategic discovery focused. In the work it's more closely aligned with a certain structured and engineering oriented approach. It tends to be looking at in real life experiences and hardware. More so than digital experiences or other kinds of service environments. How do you proceed through the store, for example, is a very much a UX question probably wouldn't be tackled it then if someone called themselves a human factors researcher in the same way.

Jason Buhle:

So in some I'd say definitely overlap. But I think UX is probably in many ways a broader field as well as a more emerging and still defining its self-discipline.

Ellen Leggett:

Also human factors is very focused on accidents and a lot of accident analysis for operator error versus some other elements that are involved in understanding industrial accidents as a big focus of human factors.

Jacqueline Campagna:

Awesome. Great. I think we have time for at least one more question. One that came through. Have any alum gotten into the entertainment industry with this degree, like film, television, et cetera?

Ellen Leggett:

With the MAPP degree generally, oh, absolutely. We're well-represented, especially being out here on the West Coast and in Los Angeles, we have alums working in both the, what I would call the organizational HR side of these organizations as well as the consumer audience testing side. I mean I just yesterday got an email from an alum who's at Amazon studios in consumer insights saying they're hiring. Do I have any students? I've just last week placed an alum with another alum at Universal Music group in learning and development and organizational development. I'd say we've had long history of students going to Disney and basically all the studios. We have students right now doing internships at Ticketmaster and internships at Legendary Studios. There is a big path from our program into the entertainment industry generally.

Jason Buhle:

Yeah. I can add that if you're also interested in UX research that's a great area of opportunity. Certainly all entertainment companies are becoming tech companies right now. Some sense, probably all companies are becoming tech companies, but much more so and much sooner in the entertainment industry. And gosh, if you look at what's happening right now across the world we see that actually businesses is growing very rapidly for a lot of those entertainment companies. They're all trying to figure out how to improve their online and digital experiences in particular. So business have been very, very busy for me in recent weeks because there's such a demand for these user experience research services that we offer. And I think MAPP with our traditional connection to entertainment gaming industry, so strong here in LA and have a lot of strong roots there, we're really well positioned to split that going forward.

Jacqueline Campagna:

Right. Okay. I think we actually have time for one final question. One that came in our qualitative psychology skills ever used in this field.

Ellen Leggett:

I'm going to turn that over to you, Dr. Buhle.

Jason Buhle:

Yeah, absolutely. I would say that UX research is probably about 80% qualitative and about 20% quantitative. In my class we focus primarily on the qualitative side, both because it's more dominant in the field and also because you'll get so much great quant training in your other courses in MAPP but they're both really strong and important. And no matter what job you do and how you conduct your research in this field, you'll be working alongside people who are doing [inaudible 00:59:40] or quants. And many folks are taking these methods approach.

Ellen Leggett:

We value both in the MAPP program. And I think that we've traditionally had strong quantitative skills and our students who have gone off into consumer insights have succeeded because they've been well trained in quantitative skills. But we also have qualitative in the program. Every student designs and conducts their own focus group and writes it up for a presentation. And certainly Dr. Buhle's class takes the qualitative approach in a very deliberate way in order to round out what students can be exposed to in the program.

Jacqueline Campagna:

Awesome. So we're at that hour mark. A lot of really, really great questions came in. If we didn't get to your question, we will be sure to contact you directly to get those addressed. But definitely want to thank you all for joining and Dr. Leggett, Dr. Buhle, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today and sharing all of this great information.

Ellen Leggett:

You're very welcome. I look forward to having the opportunity to perhaps get to know any of you. You can certainly reach out for more information directly to us and we wish you all health and safety and congratulations on thinking about the future and your own education.