Program Overview

Our Foundation Year course can open up a range of potential creative possibilities. If you have the ambition and the ability to study with the School of Digital Arts, but don’t yet have the required qualifications to study the honours degree of your choice, this program can bridge the gap.

Whatever your creative ambitions, the course is flexible enough to offer a vital launching pad. So, whether you’re looking to a future in developing games, designing websites, making films, producing special effects or working with music (to list just a few), this course can help you take the first steps towards making your mark in the creative and digital industries.

Web and User Experience Design

Whatever the purpose and whoever the user, web design marries the technical with the creative. The pioneers and leaders in this industry over the past 20 years have been both talented developers and left-field thinkers – a combination of creativity and code that has helped shape the modern digital experience.

As a Web & User Experience Design student, you will be part of a vibrant, multi-disciplinary creative community at our School of Digital Arts (SODA). With an innovative curriculum that ignores the narrow limits of any one discipline, you’ll have ample opportunity for collaborating with fellow SODA students – whether they’re studying games, photography, animation or sound design (to name a few). It’s an approach designed to mirror the real working practices within the creative industries, but it also lets you find the cross-over areas and creative directions that interest you most. And, just as you’ll learn industry practices, you’ll also use industry tools – developing your skills in an environment that has been designed, built and equipped with the latest technologies.

More than a purpose-built creative school, we also boast a globally renowned creative setting. Manchester is home to the second-largest media and creative sector in the UK, with a huge range of production companies, digital agencies and media businesses, from national broadcasters to innovative start-ups. As such, it’s not only an ideal city for your education in web and UX, but a perfect place to take your first steps as a professional. Here, you can learn from some of those at the forefront of the discipline, build your network and secure your career in the media, games or digital tech industries.