To demonstrate areas of innovation in my curriculum development over the years, I have selected the below projects.

I believe that design as a field of research should be an experience where students can learn more about themselves and the world around them, so they are better prepared for the futures they will build for themselves and others. User experience is a key component of the content my students study and create within my department. For students to become better at analyzing and designing user experiences they need to become better acquainted with the various ways in which we communicate as a society and how we present messages through content, media, and interaction.

One of the projects that I teach in Web 126 (Technical Interface Skills), “Project #4 – Alternative Interface Design”, requires students to visit the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art on campus. Students develop an interface that would either be used as a static kiosk display next to a work of art in the museum or as a tour guide tool that visitors would take with them as they walk around the museum. This project provides an alternative real-world application for students to design interactive displays while taking into consideration the stakeholder needs (the museum) and the user needs (the museum guests). For many of the students, this is the first time that they have either visited the museum on campus or gone to an art museum at all. Looking at the artwork not only helps them to develop this project, but to add to their visual vocabulary by looking at masterful works of visual design. Web 126 Project #4 – Alternative Interface Design

Another project that I am including is from Web 233 (Visual Storytelling). The assignment, “Foley Production”, shows a project that involves getting outside of the classroom and getting familiar with some of the technological resources on campus within the CoLab. The CoLab offers faculty, staff, and students the opportunity to check out a four-microphone kit that can be used for projects like making a multi-person podcast. I have students get into groups to record foley sound effects to pair with animated shorts that I provide for them. Audio is an often-overlooked field within digital media production, so I use
this opportunity to teach students about all the post-production that goes into media projects as well as give them a chance to hone their skills for story building through an audial format. Students work in groups to analyze the visual sequences, develop solutions for making various sound effects, coordinate to make their sound recordings, and work with the equipment and software to capture everything on a multi-track session for later editing. I first developed this project when I was invited to be a program presenter as part of the Early College Partnerships & Outreach’s “Women in Gaming” High School Conference back in 2023. As a presenter I ran four twenty-minute demonstrations where I taught 8 th grade girls how to record foley sound effects. After seeing the success of the mini demonstrations, I decided to incorporate the material into Web 233, which I had just acquired from a retiring faculty member. Web 233 Foley Production assignment