👋 Welcome

<aside> ⭐ The following are course materials for a 2-semester portfolio class for seniors studying Interaction Design at School of Visual Arts (SVA). All graduating seniors at SVA must take a class like this to prepare their portfolio for graduation, though the curriculum and structure will vary depending on the perspectives of the instructors.

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Educators:

Barron Webster

Web: barronwebster.com

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @warronbebster

Carolyn Zhang

Web: carolynzhang.com

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @carolynz

Table of Contents

📜 Class description

<aside> ⭐ Why does every app look the same? What do I do when I disagree with my teammates? Why won’t my team ship the better design? How do I prevent people from abusing what I’ve made? Is this experience ethical? Who would use the thing I’ve designed? Does design matter?

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These questions, and this course, are about designing in the readl world. We will focus on:

1. The responsibilities, powers, and tools available to today's designers. We live in a world where 75% of people have internet access and we spend 4+ hours on phones daily. We bank, listen, make friends & enemies, talk to our families, travel, work, order food, receive news, meditate, and date through designed interfaces. We will examine creating experiences that are effective, intuitive, ethical, and (as best as possible) prevent abuse. Class assignments will be open-ended briefs meant to mimic ambiguous, real-world scenarios—you will have to identify what problems you want to solve, and figure out how to solve them.
2. How to communicate your ideas to relevant audiences. Almost nothing we interact with daily was built alone. Collaborating with others, presenting your work appropriately to different audiences, building consensus, and taking/giving feedback effectively are vitally important to succeeding as a designer (and in any other role). Through the lens of your portfolio, you’ll learn to present your work for the audiences it’s meant for — consumers, investors, engineers, interviewers, etc.

This course will involve discussion, brainstorming, prototyping, research, writing, prioritizing, designing artifacts, group work, presenting, persuading your classmates and professors, and other practices that you will engage with in the “real world.” You'll be given more agency than a typical class, and treated like professionals.

📖 Class Content

Because this is a project-based class with strong focus on in-class critique, you may not see many important topics represented in the lecture materials. We're trying to figure out the best way to translate that for broader sharing.