A series of conversations helped shape a career path for experience design and management (ExDM) student Maddie Johnson. What began as simple discussions about potential majors grew through interactions with peers, professors, and industry professionals, eventually leading her to a full-time role she hadn't expected.
Johnson, from Gilbert, Arizona, began her undergraduate journey at Brigham Young University with an interest in several science-related majors. “I wanted to explore all the different options I saw,” she says. “But I realized pretty quickly that science just wasn’t for me.”
So, rerouting to business, she attended a BYU Marriott major fair, recognized the ExDM program from a conversation she had with her cousin years prior, and approached the students at the booth. “Ultimately, what helped make my decision was just the different people I talked to—they were all so passionate about ExDM,” she says. “That’s what matters to me most: the people I’m with and if I can be excited about the major.”
Johnson says she enjoys both the major’s focus on interpersonal connections and the degree’s offered flexibility. “There’s not a one-way path for careers, which at first can be scary, because there’s a lot of ambiguity. But overall, I think it’s amazing how you can choose what route you want based on the theories you learn.”
When choosing what route she wanted to take with her degree, Johnson applied a similar strategy to the one she used to enter the program: Talk to people and learn everything. “I just wanted to learn—I was curious,” she says. “In my case, there was a lot of networking to be done.”
Johnson got involved in case competitions and hackathons. She joined the early stages of BYU Marriott’s Sandbox program, where she connected with several information systems students and learned about the technical aspects of project planning. As her priorities shifted to finding an internship and gaining firsthand experience, she attended a BYU career fair and began striking up conversations. She met a project manager in the IT department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
She credits her user design classes for introducing her to the job responsibilities of a project manager, so she talked to him about his role and experience working for the Church. “He said he was actually very impressed because a lot of students don’t know what a project manager is,” Johnson says. “He contacted me after the career fair saying he wanted me to interview with them.”
Johnson landed the product management summer internship, where she helped oversee the church network manager and the 18,000 meetinghouses across the globe. “The meetinghouses have different technical needs. And we have to be able to talk to different people in different countries and understand what the needs are depending on where they live, so we can build products that help them connect easier and have a better experience with the networks,” she explains.
With the support of her supervisor, Johnson dove into opportunities to learn about and implement AI. She found that one of the challenges was that the church’s technology training materials weren’t always relatable to members and meetinghouses across the world. “So I created a new onboarding system using AI,” allowing for testing, assessing, and making improvements for technology specialists. She was invited to present her AI experience and findings at a church conference. “It ended up being a really great experience overall,” she says.
Her experience with AI led to further opportunities this last semester: A professor invited her to present on AI in front of a class, and a mutual connection referred Johnson to the Larry H. Miller Company for their new position as an AI analyst and consultant—which she starts full-time right after graduation.
“70% of my work is going to be me understanding the user—the person—I’m talking to and their experience with the product,” she says. “That’s experience design.”
And she feels prepared for the new tasks ahead: “The ExDM program is really good at teaching you how to be able to feel confident in your abilities to find a problem and create a prototype,” she explains. “And if that prototype doesn’t work, then you go and recycle it until you meet the customer’s need.”
She admits it’s been an unconventional adventure, but Johnson highlights that people can apply their skills to fields that are often seen as unrelated. “There’s no ‘traditional’ way to find a career,” she explains. “There are so many ways and so many connections you can make through BYU—and anything is learnable.”
