Teaching UX: designing programs to train the next generation of UX experts

This experience report describes core values and approaches to teaching and developing programs in User Experience (UX). What binds these values and approaches together is a deep engagement with ongoing trends and best practices in the field of UX over the past several decades. Examples offered are contextually embedded, yet each expression is consistent with underlying core competencies gleaned from a ten-plus year history of teaching and practicing UX design, information architecture and information design, visual rhetoric, ethics, and usability in the technical communication classroom. The best practices we articulate below are applicable in the context of corporate training, team building and preparation, and consulting, in addition to academic contexts.