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briefs

Operating System Project

An assignment by R.J. Thompson, discovered while listening to episode 51 of the DesignEduToday podcast. This project fills an entire semester in Graphic & Interactive Design at Youngstown State University.

Thompson describes the project at 15 minutes into the podcast:

I wanted a project that they could really sink their teeth into, completely wrap their head around and by the end of the semester, fully explain and articulate every design decision that they made. So, the OS project actually starts in Intermediate Interactive, it’s the last project in that class and it’s a five week long project where all they do is they design a universal operating system for smart-phones, tablets, desktops and laptops and video game consoles.

They effectively invent this concept and they use Photoshop and Illustrator to design the user interfaces for all of them.There are some specific caveats on what screens I want to see. Then they put all of that work into a presentation and we present it at the Youngstown Business Incubator. And we also globally live-stream those presentations so I really put the pressure on the students to excel here.

Here’s the live stream where students present their concepts (static mockups):

The Live Stream of the 2016 presentation

That’s only the first part. The project goes on:

They have to create a few different prototypes of their OS project. So generally, students create what I call a non-controlled walk-through. So they use Adobe Animate and they use the work that they had done previously with the OS project and they create a non-controlled walk-through of their operating systems, so boot up, type in your log-in, welcome screen loads, desktop loads, open a program, articulate a task in that program, close it and then shut down the OS. That’s the whole sequence and it could take a minute, it could take five minutes; it’s really up to student and what their narrative is.

Some of the non-controlled walk-throughs

The next step:

The non-controlled walk through leads to a controllable walk-through where we use Adobe XD and in some cases we use InVision. I leave that up to the students to determine which tool is best for them, but effectively they create a clickable walk-through, so we sit people down in front of an operating…an OS project and say, OK, here’s your task: you need to turn it on, log in, open a program, close the program and then close the OS. So, we bring in people to test.

Ometsys OS Controlled Walkthrough

Links

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briefs

Kinetic exercise for public broadcasting

An assignment found in a 1981 program of the Communication Design course, by Hans-Ulrich Allemann, at Philadelphia College of Art:

A kinetic exercise assignment of minimum five, maximum ten steps, for a Television station identification, using the existing Public Broadcasting System logo with a number twelve, the number of the Philadephia TV channel (1st-semester assignment).

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briefs

Motion Design Poetry

A motion design assignment by Chris Pullman, published in 2014 on his website, given at the Graphic Design Masters Program at Yale.

One of the projects I assign, near the end of the semester, involves the visualization of poetry. I offer my students four or five audio files of poets reading their own poems. I ask them to listen to them all, then select one to work with.

He points out the objective of this assigment:

The objective is to shift the designer’s thinking from “composition” (getting all the elements into just the right spot and freezing them) to “choreography” (planning the path and behavior of multiple elements within the same time space).

Two examples are published on his website.

Categories
ideas

Participate in Wiki Loves Monuments

Students produce photos in order to participate in “Wiki Loves Monuments“, an annual international photographic competition held during the month of September.

Students will have to identify historical monuments and heritage sites in their surroundings, take photographs, and upload them to Wikimedia Commons.

Winners of the 2019 Switzerland edition. See Wikipedia for credits.

The list of sites is specific to each participating country. A list of participating countries can be found on this page.

For Switzerland, the participants have to take photos among this list of cultural properties.

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briefs ideas

A music app for seniors

An idea for a UX design assignment that emerged while listening to the Wireframe podcast Episode 2 of Season 3, where Miriam Johnson asks:

Now, imagine this: you’re tasked with designing a music app that is specifically for seniors, and you had no idea how to do that, and you’d never done anything like it before.

Miriam Johnson, at 10:50

The podcast features an interview with Sophie Kim, a product designer at Studio Red, about how she worked on an app called Octave, where the typical user is 65 years old and passionate about classical music.

Categories
ideas

Movie poster group photo

Students have the task to create an archetypical “Movie poster group photo”. They form groups, and select a movie genre they will be working in (comedy, sci-fi, thriller, super heroes…). They will chose a setting, costumes, accessoires…

They may need to use effects such as green-screen backgrounds, projected background, artificial smoke.

They will need to apply postproduction to match the tone and atmosphere of the chosen genre.

Finally, the photograph needs to be combined with typography and movie poster credits.

Some examples of different group photo styles:

Categories
briefs

reverse-engineer an interface

In this assignments, students have to reverse-engineer a digital interface, such as an app, a website, or a digital terminal (e.g. an ATM).

They need to :

  • Identify a workflow they will analyse and reverse-engineer.
  • Select the screens they will work on.
  • Re-create the screens, using an interface design software.
  • Create wireframes.
  • Create a raw sketch.
  • Create a basic style guide / pattern library / interface inventory.

Some write-ups of similar exercises:

  • Wireframes by Alexis Gilardi
  • Wireframes by Andasha Wardhana
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briefs

sketchnote a TED talk

Produce visual notes for a conference or talk. This is a common exercice in classes and workshops that teach “The Art of Visual Notetaking“.

A typical assignment is the TED Talk by Margaret Gould Stewart, How giant websites design for you.

Writeups:

  • Sketchnotes by Juliana Gregori
  • Sketchnotes by Alexis Gilardi
Categories
briefs

a page from another world

An assignment by Golan Levin and Claire Hentschker, at CMU School of Art, in 2018:

Students were asked to write code which generates “a page from another world”: a composition of asemic writing, to be rendered by a computer-controlled Axidraw plotter.

Links

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briefs

designing an election campaign

In a class at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), by instructor Gary Rozanc, students received the following assignment:

You will be designing an election campaign for a Baltimore City Councilman.

The project is conducted by teams of four. Steps included:

  • Researching political campaigns at the local level
  • Conducting an interview with a councilman who is running for election.
  • Creating a Project Brief & Production Schedule.
  • Give a 10 to 12 minute presentation on why your design decisions are the best choices for the client.
  • Submitting final campaign files.