ExDM graduates are business school graduates who specialize in experience design, fluent across organizational functions and capable of connecting design decisions to financial, operational, and strategic outcomes. Integration is both a skill and a mindset: students learn to speak the language of every business function, apply core business competencies directly to design problems, and sustain the intellectual curiosity that makes them effective across the full breadth of organizational life. This integration reflects BYU's aim of intellectual enlargement, developing students who think broadly, reason rigorously, and bring that capacity to bear in service of others, not merely in pursuit of professional advancement.

ExDM students are trained design researchers. Research is not a preliminary step they complete before the real work begins; it is a discipline they practice throughout the design process, sharpening creative decisions by grounding them in what stakeholders actually need. Three capabilities define this PLO: deep stakeholder understanding through empathic inquiry; rigorous collection, analysis, and interpretation of qualitative and quantitative data; and the communication of findings in ways that connect evidence to defensible design decisions. Data and creativity are not in tension: better stakeholder understanding produces more focused, more effective design. Research in ExDM is also a practice of intellectual humility and truth-seeking, values central to BYU's educational mission and to the Christlike character students are developing alongside their professional competence.

ExDM designers work through a disciplined process, guided by theory, and grounded in the foundational principles that make experiences both aesthetically coherent and functionally effective. That process applies across the full range of what experience design encompasses, from efficient transactions that respect people's time and needs to transformative engagements that change how they think, feel, or act. Process gives structure to creativity: students move from understanding context through ideation, prototyping, and testing with method and intention at every stage. Theory gives design decisions their defensibility: students learn to match validated frameworks to identified needs rather than defaulting to intuition or habit. And foundational design principles give their work professional quality, ensuring that what they create is not just thoughtful but well-crafted. Students develop across three dimensions: reading the human, organizational, and systemic context that defines the design problem; executing the full design process with discipline-specific fluency; and advocating for design choices in ways that connect creative decisions to business outcomes. Designing well is an act of service: ExDM graduates are trained to design not only for client satisfaction but for human flourishing, consistent with BYU's educational mission.

Implementation is where design ambition meets organizational reality, where character matters as much as competence. This PLO develops the leadership, project management, and stakeholder navigation skills that transform strong proposals into delivered experiences. The Christlike leadership framework defines not just how students manage but how they show up: in service to colleagues and clients, accountable to design intent, and honest when constraints require adaptation. ExDM graduates are practitioners who can get things done without losing sight of what they set out to create. Leadership in ExDM is inseparable from character: students are not only trained to manage projects and people effectively but to do so as a form of discipleship, modeling the integrity, accountability, and care for others that defines Christlike professional practice.

ExDM graduates design and evaluate from the same foundation. The documents students produce throughout the design process are intentionally built to serve two purposes: they guide design decisions as the work unfolds, and they anchor evaluation once the experience is delivered. This is not an accident of good practice; it is a professional discipline ExDM students learn explicitly. By building evaluation into the design process from the start, students ensure that measurement is always grounded in design intent rather than imposed after the fact. They develop the ability to assess experiences at the micro level, including specific interactions and touchpoints, and at the macro level, including overall outcomes and organizational ROX, and to communicate findings with the precision and honesty that earns organizational trust. Honest evaluation is itself a moral practice: ExDM graduates are trained to report what the evidence actually shows, a commitment to truth that reflects both rigorous intellectual standards and the integrity BYU's mission asks of its graduates.