Creatio Center for Technology, Media, and Design Bachelor of Science in Human-Centered Design

My name is Jenni French Cyrek, and I teach in the User Experience program at Northwest University.

I’m so excited to be a part of the new User Experience program at Creatio. I’ve gotten to be a part of that from the ground up. I work in user experience and consumer tech, and so when I heard that Northwest University was starting a program, I was so excited to reach out and learn more. It’s just been a privilege and an honor to help get the program started—Creatio’s User Experience program—and to watch it grow.

I’m a creative person, and even as a kid I loved to sit around and daydream and imagine what things could be, what we could make, and how we could make the world a better place. What’s exciting about user experience is I get to do that daydreaming for a living, with lots of other really talented people who like to daydream too—and then make those daydreams into reality.

User experience is all about thinking, how can we make products, services, and technology great for real people and real needs in a way that people can use every day? That’s what I do.

A lot of people invested in me when I was a student and early in my career. By serving as an adjunct faculty in the NU Creatio program, I get to pay that forward—or pay it back. I get to invest in my students by sharing what I’ve learned, sharing my skills, teaching the craft, and also imbuing that service mindset—that we’re here to serve the needs of others. I get to do that on a personal level as well as on the professional level in the classroom.

One thing that is really exciting about being adjunct faculty is that I spend my day working in UX and applying the principles that I then turn around and teach in the classroom. Last week, I was giving a lecture on value proposition and the value proposition canvas. This is a technique to help draw great ideas out of a team and put them into a framework. As I was talking to my students about the ideas and the book that we were studying, and the way we were using it, I was able to refer back to what I had done on the job earlier that morning—the meetings I was in, the way we could use that same tool that I was teaching in a lesson that evening to help move my program and my business forward as well.

The NU community is just special. It’s such a warm place that’s filled with the love of God, with passion for Christ, as well as a quest for knowledge and learning. I’ve really enjoyed teaching here and being part of that community, and getting to know and build into our students every day.

For someone who’s interested in user experience design—and especially user experience design at Northwest—the main thing I would emphasize is develop a lifelong love of learning and giving back.

When I look back on my career before I re-entered the classroom as an instructor, I think about the things that I did in my first role out of college. That job didn’t exist when I started college. And when I think about the role and the work and the products and the technology I’m working on today, those didn’t exist when I had that first job.

Technology is a fast-paced industry. It’s always changing. It’s always growing. User experience professionals help make sure that that technology is refined for the real people who are going to use it. And to do that, we need to keep growing and learning to make it better—and to make ourselves better over time.