How to Apply: Admission Requirements for the MA in IxD Program

Introducing A Flexible Graduate Education in a Dynamically Evolving Discipline

The UNT M.A. with a concentration in Interaction Design, or “M.A. in IXD,” program offers courses for full- and part-time students. Students can complete an M.A. in under 16 months (if they begin in the fall semester), receive a minor, or take individual courses to augment a graduate degree in a related field. This program is NOT designated as a STEM program. Individuals and organizations interested in MA in IXD courses for professional development can also customize an educational plan or take single courses without working toward the full M.A. in IxD degree.

Application Deadlines

Spring 2025

5 p.m. CDT on Aug. 16, 2024, for U.S. and international applicants.

Fall 2025

5 p.m. CDT on March 14, 2025, for international applicants — applying earlier than this is preferred. Our review of admissions materials for Fall 2025 M.A. in IxD intake begins at 9 a.m. CST on Nov. 25, 2024.

For U.S. applicants, the deadline is 5 p.m. CDT on April 11, 2025 — applying earlier than this is preferred. Our review of admissions materials for Fall 2025 M.A. in IxD intake begins at 9 a.m. CST on Nov. 25, 2024.

Spring 2026

5 p.m. CDT Aug. 15, 2025, for U.S. and international applicants — applying earlier than this is preferred. Our review of admissions materials for Spring 2026 M.A. in IxD intake begins at 9 a.m. CDT, on June 16, 2025.

On Campus, In Denton

Please note: Most — but not all — M.A. in Design with a concentration in Interaction Design, or “MA in IxD,” students begin their studies with us at the outset of the fall semester, which requires that they are on campus at UNT’s Denton, Texas campus by (usually) the second Monday in August. This is especially true for M.A. in IxD students who have secured Teaching Assistantships as key to their enrollment agreements with us. With all that stated, we allow four to six M.A. in IxD students to begin their studies with us each January. This means finishing their degree requirements will take approximately six months longer than M.A. in IxD students who begin their studies with us in mid-August.

GRE Requirements

The M.A. in Design with a concentration in Interaction Design, or “MA in IxD,” program, does not require applicants to take the GRE.

GPA Requirements

Applicants to the M.A. in the IxD program MUST have earned an undergraduate GPA of at least 3.0 on a 4-point scale, and a 3.3 undergraduate GPA is preferred. In rare cases, students who have earned lower undergraduate GPAs have been accepted for admission into the M.A. in the IxD program if the work presented in their portfolios is assessed to be outstanding by our admissions committee. More information about the kinds of work that applicants to this program should consider including in their portfolios is described below.

What kind of background do M.A. in IxD students have?

Well-qualified applicants to the M.A. in IxD program come to us from a variety of professional and academic backgrounds, such as communication design, anthropology, computer science, information science, marketing, journalism, fashion design, merchandising, economics, business administration, business management, technical communications, sociology, architecture, sociology, and the studio arts.

Most — but not all — competitive applicants have accrued at least three years of professional experience in or around one of the aforementioned areas after earning a bachelor’s degree, and the knowledge they’ve constructed during these experiences is apparent across their entire array of application materials. Contemporary professional interaction design teams need broadly informed, evidence-based input from various types of people who work together to plan and operate human-centered approaches to designing systems, products, and services. The curriculum we have designed to facilitate our M.A. in IxD program reflects this.

The portfolios, or “archives,” of work we hope to see from applicants to the MA in IxD program naturally contain quite different assortments of material. Each application portfolio or archive is necessarily unique to the individual who has constructed it. Because of this, we suggest creating an online portfolio or archive containing some of the materials described in the next paragraph.

For some applicants, this online portfolio/archive is a website that has been designed and functionalized to showcase an individual applicant’s array of work; for others, it’s simply a link to storage space located somewhere online that allows us to view a string, or sequence, of .pdf or even MS Word documents that contain/display samples of their writing, photos of work that has been designed, diagrams or photos that depict how an individual has worked with others toward achieving a common goal, etc.

An individual applicant’s portfolio/archive or work should provide our admissions team with a strong sense of how the applicant engages in critical thinking to engage in designing, research, or scholarship, or the kinds of professionally rooted, problem-identification-and-framing-and-resolution experiences they have engaged in while working in the industry, or within a non-profit organization, or a community group, or as a volunteer, or some combination of these. Applicants to this program should remember that our admissions team pays careful attention to how materials are written, organized, and presented.

Important: Our M.A. in IxD program is not a mere certificate program or a “check-the-box” kind of graduate experience: if an individual isn’t willing to put thoughtful, diligent effort into preparing an array of application materials, that individual is likely not a good fit for our M.A. in IxD program.

Visit UNT Apply Now to Begin

To get started, visit UNT Apply Now for instructions.

You may be directed to the Apply Texas website to create an account and begin your application process. At that time, you must submit an application fee and your official undergraduate transcripts. The application fee cannot be waived for any applicant under any circumstances, and these official transcripts must be submitted via the Apply Texas process.

Note: Please do not send your transcripts or application fee to anyone in the Department of Design or our College of Visual Arts and Design.

At some point during the Apply Texas application process, you will be presented with the following prompt: “Please select among the following concentrations for the M.A. in Design. If you wish to change your concentration later, please speak with your graduate advisor as soon as you can.” Respond to this prompt by selecting “Design, MA” with “Interaction Design [INAD-SMA]” appearing directly underneath it.

Submitting Your Portfolio, Your Resumé, and Your Statement of Intent

Please email the required materials — described below — to UNT CVAD's Department of Design at cvad.design@unt.edu for departmental review.

Large files may require WeTransfer, DropBox or other file-sharing services. Please use the subject line: "M.A. in IxD Application."

Your Statement of Intent

Write between 400 and 700 well-crafted words that articulate what you hope to achieve by taking courses in or earning a degree from the M.A. in IxD program. This document must be original, non-plagiarized, well-structured, and crafted of readable and compelling prose from one line to the next.

Be leery of using ChatGPT or other AI long language generators to write this document: our admissions faculty has read hundreds of these and has become quite adept at differentiating mediocre to “pretty good” prose generated solely by AI from uniquely inspired, “a real human being wrote THAT language.” Additionally, avoid using surface-level rationales like the following to explain why you wish to pursue the kind of study we facilitate in our M.A. in IxD program:

“the job market in my sector went flat, so I decided it was time to go to grad school…,” or, “I have realized after X years of struggling to land, much less hold, a decent UX/Ix-related job—because I had a crummy undergrad experience—that I needed to go to grad school,” or, “Getting into grad school is my failsafe if I don’t get hired into X position at ____?____ Inc.”

We want to know and understand how you’ll use the knowledge you’ll construct in a program like ours to advance not only your own well-being but the lives and careers of others as you position yourself to, as necessary, lead, manage, and collaborate on projects that will involve the design and development of interactive systems, products, services, and experiences. How do you hope to use what you learned while studying with us to invent your future self?

Your Résumé or Curriculum Vitae

This document should be a well-written and well-designed concise, one- to two-page document that reports your professional and educational history — with an emphasis on the former rather than the latter — including your responsibilities and leadership experience, and that lists a domain name/URL that will allow us to review your portfolio of work. Résumés or vitae that do not include viable email addresses and phone numbers will cause an applicant’s materials to be disqualified. Resumés and vitae that are poorly written, i.e., that fail to use descriptive language effectively, that merely report rather than articulate and analyze, and that are poorly designed can cause an applicant to be negatively assessed.

Your Portfolio of Work

Include samples of your work — no more than 10 pieces. In this context, a “piece” may be a set of pages from a website or an app, a set of wireframes, an information architecture diagram, a set of photos documenting an exhibit space, a short — less than 45-second, less-than-4K resolution — video or two or three, a set of architectural drawings, a set of photos depicting package design work, a group of illustrations, an animated short — less than 45-seconds, a set of drawings depicting an apparel line, a set of renderings depicting a residential or commercial interior, etc. — and/or examples of academic or professional writing (published or non-published articles, reviews, case studies, or research reports, but if you have published work, we prefer reading these) of no more than five documents. An online archive of your work is preferred. However, a collection of examples presented in PDF form is also acceptable.

Important: Please do not contact any members of the UNT M.A. in IxD faculty for advice regarding what to include or not include in your portfolio of work. Your decisions regarding what to include and what to leave out regarding your portfolio affect our admissions decisions, and we cannot give anyone an unfair advantage in the M.A. in IxD admissions process under any circumstances.