Ten BYU Marriott School of Business student volunteers headed to the World Experience Summit in London with a full agenda, including setting up chairs and hosting rooms for dozens of sessions featuring CEOs and experience design professionals. By the end of the first day, though, one more item was added to the students’ itinerary: presenting a panel about their experiences in BYU Marriott’s experience design and management (ExDM) program.
“There was a lot of buzz about what they had to say,” says Mat Duerden, chair of the Department of Experience Design. “I think a lot of people interacted with the students and had a positive experience and wanted to hear more.”
According to Emily Weber, a senior from Salem, Utah, the students found that professionals at the conference were interested in the concept of studying experience design in college. “The fact that we, as students, are already learning these concepts sparked curiosity about how such a hands-on subject could be taught in a classroom setting,” Weber says.
The structure of the conference allowed the students to act on this curiosity. While the first day of the conference had a predetermined agenda, the second and third days featured the unconference, where participants could run a session of their choosing—if they got enough votes. Participants who hoped to present wrote their proposed topic on a sticky note and stuck it on a board. Attendees then placed star stickers next to the topics they were most interested in.
Jonah Brooks, a recently graduated ExDM student from Orem, decided to pitch a forum where the students could share their experiences in the program. “In my mind, we were there to be ambassadors of BYU and the program,” Brooks says. “I thought, ‘Let’s showcase BYU Marriott and what we’re doing here.’”
Brooks’s pitch was voted into a slot, and soon a group of ExDM students found themselves presenting in front of a full room of experience design professionals. “It’s one thing to network on a small scale, but it’s another thing to host an unconference,” says Brooks, who moderated the event. “We could have just sat there and said, ‘They’ve worked, they have all the experience, and therefore we have nothing to share. The way I see it is that we have a lot to share. We just have a different perspective.”
The participating students introduced themselves, shared their career goals, and fielded questions about studying experience design at BYU Marriott. When the session was finished, some professionals stayed to network and dive deeper into conversations with the students about their fields of interest.
Weber was approached by multiple professionals with experience in the healthcare industry, where she hopes to specialize, and they discussed the impact that experience designers can have in healthcare. Weber says that these opportunities to interact with professionals have helped her maximize patient care and clinician experience during her current internship at Intermountain Health Spanish Fork Hospital.
“This conference and experience really solidified the idea that not only can I add value in the unique space of healthcare but also that I’m needed,” Weber says. “It helped me to recognize the relevance of what I’ve learned and gave me the confidence that I will be ready to contribute.”
For Brooks, who will be working full-time as a customer insights analyst at Quick Quack Car Wash, the experience taught him that humility and mutual respect will be important in the workplace. “I have a lot to learn from professionals in the field, and there are also things that they can learn from me. I think that you can find little golden nuggets of truth and information from a variety of people,” Brooks says. “Everybody has something to learn from each other.”