Authored By chloe.morrison

When Dr. Leslie Jensen-Inman left her teaching position at UTC a couple of years ago, she didn’t know exactly what she would do next, and she planned to keep her options open.

Within minutes of the announcement that she resigned her position, Jared Spool-a pioneer in the field of design-sent her a message that said, “We need to talk.”

And Jensen-Inman said they haven’t stopped talking since.

Jensen-Inman had been seeing that her college students needed more real-world experience than they were getting. And Spool, who works with major corporations around the country, saw that hiring managers couldn’t find the kind of talent they needed.

Center Centre requirements/preferences -Applicants must have a GED or high school diploma. -They must be at least 18 years old. -A passion for lifelong learning and examples to back it up. -Maturity, not in age, but in personality. -“Tenacity and grit.” -Work ethic.

So for the next two years, the duo made plans to create a user experience design school that’s unlike any other in the world.

They traveled the country, visiting top leaders at major companies and organizations, such as JP Morgan Chase, Bloomberg and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Earlier this month, they announced that officials at the Tennessee Higher Education Commission approved their plan for the school. Initially, those involved used the code name “Unicorn Institute,” but now, the school’s official name is Center Centre. Click here for more information about the announcement.

The school will be located downtown, and leaders hope to teach as many as 500 students in the next four or five years.

Having those students downtown might also help boost business downtown, officials said.

What is user experience design?

User experience design is a relatively new field that’s been popularized by companies such as Apple. It involves creating the experience for a customer who is interacting with a company, product or service both online and in-person.

Jensen-Inman said that she and Spool describe user experience design in part as “the idea of designing for delight.”

If the user experience for a product, application or website is good, it’s effortless, intuitive and delightful.

Jensen-Inman described it like this:

If you’re at a meeting or conference and the temperature in the room is perfect, no one says, “This temperature is absolutely perfect.” But as soon as it’s too hot or too cold, people complain because you can feel it. As soon as there’s a bad user experience, you know it. And everyone’s gotten smarter about it. My mom, who’s in her early 70s, knows when there’s a bad user experience online.

CEOs are starting to pay more attention to user design because it is a way to differentiate from a competitor, Jensen-Inman said.

The median pay for professionals in user experience design is $95,600 a year, with top pay peaking at $150,000 a year, according to CNN Money.

There are more than 150,000 user experience design job listings in the country, Jensen-Inman said.

The curriculum, school structure

The structure of the school is what makes it unique, and it’s designed to fill the gap the co-founders saw.



Jensen-Inman and Spool found that it’s often soft skills that separate being good from being great. To be successful-in addition to hard skills-designers need to have soft skills, such as how to collaborate within a professional environment.

They need to be job-ready. They need professional stamina, she said.

They need to be “unicorns.”

According to the school’s Kickstarter page, “A user experience unicorn is the ultimate generalist: a person who has the right mix of hard and soft skills.”

Hiring managers want team players, people who can write emails appropriately. They want someone who can sit through a three-hour meeting and not look like they are dying, Jensen-Inman said.

Traditional higher education doesn’t always allow for situations to learn those skills, so Jensen-Inman and Spool designed the school with a holistic approach to meet those needs.

Center Centre will offer two-year programs. Cohorts of 36 students will work with three different facilitators.

Students will go through 30 three-week courses, and each course is made up of three parts.

During the first part of a course, students will get to hear from industry experts.

“We have access to the top talent in the world,” Jensen-Inman said.

Students and facilitators will have a two-day workshop with the experts, and having them in Chattanooga also benefits the community, officials said.

And bringing industry leaders to the school will also benefit the educators. It’s professional development, which is sometimes hard to come by in higher education.

“That’s really exciting,” Center Centre designer Summer Kohlhorst said about the chance to hear from the experts. “It keeps the staff fresh. It keeps education going for everyone here.”

Jensen-Inman also said she hopes that bringing industry leaders to Chattanooga will help boost the city’s positive profile because they can see Chattanooga and spread the word of its charm, she said.

“Anyone who comes to Chattanooga falls in love; we just have to get them here,” she said. “The city is beautiful, the people are nice, and we’ve got the fastest Internet.”

The second part of the three-week courses involves individualized projects for each student.

Each project will be customized to best meet students needs.

The last part of the course is a two-week team project, in which students will work for either the school itself or local companies and nonprofits, so they get that real-world experience working with projects that aren’t theoretical.

Traditional academic environments have long courses with short projects. Center Centre has long projects with short courses.

“You’ve got this overlay of these bigger projects, so as you learn smaller bits and pieces, you can also learn how it fits into the whole process immediately,” Keith McCallie, who joined Center Centre in May, said.

Support

School leaders aren’t taking applications yet. The focus now is on the Kickstarter campaign, which can help the school get off to a strong start in the fall.

More reading -Click here for more information. -Click here for the Kickstarter page. -Click here for a short video that answers the question, “Why start a UX design school in Chattanooga?”

Leaders have already surpassed their goal to raise $21,700. As of Sunday night, with five days left in fundraising, the project received pledges for $96,489. The stretch goal, which will support efforts to bring on staff, is $112,000.

So far, the entire project has 1,084 backers, but leaders also want to get support from at least 1,500 Chattanooga backers.

This part isn’t about the money. It’s about showing that Chattanoogans back their beliefs, Jensen-Inman said.

Collectively, Chattanooga residents get a lot of attention for being innovative and creative. The city is often featured in national publications. Click here for more about a recent New York Times piece, for example.

“We are an innovative culture,” Jensen-Inman said. “We believe in education, we believe in design, but we need to show the world this. So when we say, ‘Chattanooga gets it,’ it’d be nice to have that many backers because they get it. It’s not about the bucks. It’s about the backers. [It says that] Chattanooga stands up for what they believe in.”