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Gary
This is another thing that I think design education really needs to step it up in and it’s something we kind of overlook in it. It’s training for interactive animations. I actually call it Micro Interactions which I explain it to my students, but to me it’s page transitions, using motion clues when they don’t fill out the form properly so it shakes, or drop-down menus. It’s all of those kind of things. You actually have a course titled Motion for Interactive Design. Can you describe what you do in that class?
RJ
Sure. So, basically it’s a class dedicated to digital animation. I’ve actually re-booted…I’m revising the curriculum to include…Animate has always been a part of it, formerly Flash. Animate has always been a part of it, creating animated narratives, creating interactive kiosk UI, but the other part of it is I want to start doing video-based work. We have a digital media program at YSU that does some video production stuff but the context to graphic design is a little bit different so I’m starting to incorporate more video in that and create some tether between let’s say outputting a Premier video and embedding that into an Animate based kiosk interface, but at any rate, it’s all dedicated to animation. And we do explore a lot of those micro-interactions as you call them and ironically I call them micro-expressions, but that’s more of a term related to the face, as opposed to design. But anyway, we explore a lot of that and really focus on user experience and how all of that is executed within an animation and design context. So, it could be as simple as a pop-up box shaking if you didn’t clear a field on a form properly, or it actually diverts a little bit into web-based advertising; making sure that you can create an animated ad that is so hyper-compressed and still maintains its resolution that it’s like, how did we even get here to begin with, but those are some of the things that we explore.
Gary
OK. And I just think it’s such a ripe area for design to take full ownership of, because even when I’ve been interviewing other past guests in this podcast, nobody really takes ownership of how the animations come about. One of the more common answers is, we kind of have an already existing house style for things, so that means all their sites are getting the same type of page transitions or whatever and then the other end is like, we just kind of find one on an existing website and then we just show that to our developers and they re-create it. And it’s like, you’re not pushing that medium. It’s one thing that I’ve started doing, when you have that very beginning intro to class, intro to Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, I’m also throwing in AfterEffects. OK, you’re going to animate a button opening; you’re going to animate a click. So they start realizing that they’re designing…you’re going to animate a modal pop-up, so I make them do those kind of things just because…
RJ
The…I’m sorry to interrupt, but the…I would encourage you and your listeners to do this: go to iBooks and download the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine iBook. That is an amazing example of where not only…it’s an inter-disciplinary solution so not only does illustration, animation and design cross over but so does user experience and development really, programming. I would love to be able to execute a project like that in my motion class where the students…and this idea of the cross-pollinated curriculum is actually something that I’ve been researching and exploring. I’d love to be able to take flat print work from some of our advanced print classes, bring them into motion and then use a variety of different software to create augmented reality solutions or even just making those pages interactive a-la iBooks, or something like that, or even for a web-based format. I really think that’s where things are going and it’s exciting for me because I can tell my students, you think you’re only relegated to a print job for the next thirty years. Well, guess what: you’re not. Your life is going to be interactive and while some of that print work will matter and is important, what you need to focus on now is converting static to interactive. Nothing will be static and I’m so excited at that prospect.
Gary
Well, I’m glad that you’ve got an entire class dedicated to that because the last time I’ve taught motion it was pre Media Queries. It was actually pre iPhone. No, iPhone had just come out, but pre Media Queries and so there was really no need to talk about…so it was just like, we’re going to make, I don’t know, title sequences and other things like that. One other thing before I ask my last question that you brought up that I thought about; I’m glad you’re thinking it as well. There is a lot of video work for creating, and I think the perfect example is creating those intro videos for Kickstarter.
For any kind of product, there’s a lot of work for that and I don’t know if necessarily that fits into…whose domain is that because I look at that as, that’s really kind of more graphic design than it really is film. I just wondered what your thoughts are on that?
RJ
No, I generally agree with that. We have a Telecommunications Program in our university and usually I would refer a project like that to one of our T-Comm students who experiences video work daily or even to other extents the digital media where they do a lot more…our Digital Media Program is very focused on artistic-driven digital media projects; it’s not for a client so to speak. In some cases it can be but nevertheless, I digress on that. I do agree that it is…I think what I’m trying to say is, and this is what I would prefer to say: a T-Comm student can make it; a Graphic Design student can make it; anyone can make the video but what’s really important is that it has the eye of a designer. I think that’s what I see when I see those videos, because I may not have…you just know it when you see it. You watch something, you feel like that person knows good design. Or you watch another video and it’ll be like, oh, that person knows nothing about design; there’s no style to it, there’s no consistency, there’s no concept or whatever. You just know it when you see it and I think that for a lot of my students that have an interest in video production but don’t have either the opportunity or even the skill capability, they’re still able to recognize good video design when they see it. And I think that, just that is a skill unto itself.
Gary
Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. I don’t know if you’re familiar with…have you seen the movie, The Beginners?
RJ
No, I have not. I’m familiar with it but I have not seen it.
Gary
OK, so you’re familiar with it, but the movie…when you watch the movie, I knew in a second that that movie was done by a designer and it literally was: Mike Mills was, I don’t know if you ever remember the documentary called Beautiful Losers?
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He was in it; he’s a graphic designer and he turned film-maker. And you totally knew that that film was designed! In the same way with Hillman Curtis, all his videos. He was a designer, then turned film-maker but you look at those videos and I think his videos are better than a lot of others because he’s a designer; it just brought something to it, so that’s what I agree with you totally 100%, unlike those videos for Kickstarters or whatever. What’s the best way to get a designer’s eye, a designer’s talent into the production of that? But I guess that’s another discussion for another day.
RJ
Sagmeister just came out with a film so you and I, let’s watch it separately and we’ll reconnect on a podcast and critique…
Gary
Yeah, to see if we can see the…and watch The Beginners because…and especially just the opening credits, you’re just like…this is a designer. Totally get it.
All right, so finally, the last…I’d like to talk to you about the projects that you introduced to students in your Advanced Interactive Design, so this is the fourth and final course.
From looking at your course website and some of the slides from the talks you have given, the course seems to encompass user research, OS coding and industrial design. Could you talk about this whole mish-mash?
RJ
Yeah, so the Advanced Interactive class is essentially the culmination of all of the interactive classes. The students generally operate independently, it’s very autonomous. There are very few lectures; it is a class where you work and to another extent there is some self-discovery there too, so there is essentially one project the entire semester and that is the OS project. So, a couple of years back I wanted to really dive deep into user interface and I discovered that at least at the time based on the research that I did, there wasn’t a lot of really involved projects that BFA students could do that really focused on the user experience, creating narratives and really focusing on graphic systems; like, 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, OK? And 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 which was the number one ranged university related business incubator in the entire world. And we also globally live-stream those presentations so I really put the pressure on the students to excel here. Really what it is, it’s a try-out. Basically, I invite prospective employers or internship sites to those presentations at the Business Incubator and I say, here’s the best of what I’ve got: choose who you want, whomever you’re impressed with. This is your opportunity to scout and recruit my talent. So, there’s that professional aspect to it but then there’s also the academic side and the students do that.
When they move on to Advanced Interactive, 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. And ultimately, their narrative of that process, that sequence, is based on the design of their operating system, so they’re able to take these UX principles that they’ve learned in class with static images and put them into practice within an animated context.
So, they create the non-controlled walk-through. 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. Generally they’ve been music students which is probably not ideal but the other side of that is that they’re convenient because they’re on the same floor as this classroom and they’re not designers so they’re not already skewed perceptively, so to speak. So the controllable walk-through is experienced there and then the students need to adjust their thinking; we pivot a little bit.
I want them to start thinking about the experience of their OS in a physical context, so how you interact with your phone. Are you left-handed, are you right-handed? Do you navigate with your thumb? Do you hold your phone with your left hand and use your pointer figure on your right hand and tap buttons? Do you use Siri primarily to navigate? What about physical handicaps; what about visual handicaps? We consider all of that and the students have to design their own tablet. So, effectively, their own iPad, so they design their own tablet, then they 3D model it and then we 3D print it.
Now, the 3D print is essentially split. It’s symmetrical, split in half and inside is a touch-capacitive screen about seven inches wide by five inches tall; the screen sits in there, has an HDMI connection. The HDMI connection goes right into the laptop and then we run the controlled walk-through and those same people that we tested on a laptop, we test them on the 3D printed arduino screen tablet and we measure the experience there. Then the students go back, tweak, modify, rep-print if they have to, so on, so forth, until we come to a completely realized full version of their tablet and their OS and their OS on the tablet. In some cases, in fact previously, we’ve always had it connected to a laptop but the next time Advanced Interactive Design runs, which will be next Fall, we are going to actually have micro-computers, RaspberryPi-s connected to this stuff and run it from there.
Now, the Pi-s, they don’t have to have a really robust OS; we could essentially take this OS and build it in HTML and CSS if we have to, to make sure it works, but it’s a full-on simulation of this project idealized and I’ve been very proud of this work and more importantly, I’ve been so excited that it’s been embraced by my peers and that I’ve been able to present about it at conferences like UCDA and really show off the creative capabilities of my students but also the level of imagination and perseverance that goes into a project like that in the BFA level because essentially what I just described to you could be a Masters project or a thesis, for God’s sake, but the students really enjoy it and it’s fully immersive and ultimately, I’ve found that the students enjoy the cross-pollination of projects between different levels of classes.
So, if I had one project that went from Advanced…I’m sorry, from Intro to Intermediate to Advanced to motion, they would have effectively two years of a project under their belt and they could….in a greater sense that’s a simulation of what it’s like to work as an in-house graphic designer where you’re seeing the same brand every day for years on end, so the experience is completely different than doing a one-off two week project. So, that’s effectively what Advanced Interactive is. And ideally, those students, now that they have 3D printing in their skill-set, they can take that with them to a prospective employer and 3D printing is so new…it’s not new but it’s new to academia in the respect that some employers don’t have any idea of how to use 3D printing in their practice so our students could go to those people and say, well, I could 3D print this solution and save you a ton of money and go from there, so the innovation is intact.
Gary
You know, one follow-up question to all that and…OK, so this is what I’ve been telling my students. For example I’m doing in our Advanced Interface Design course, even though we don’t have a beginning interface design course, so this is just a second…but we’re doing a ton of user research. I literally am sending them out into the community and I’m saying OK, you have to make these observations; we’re coming back, we’re doing analysis, these observations, we’ve pinpointed a problem and now that they’ve pinpointed a problem, they’re going to start creating personas and so they have all of this stuff. But what they show in their portfolio is just the end product. And employers don’t really care about that end product because it’s no different than the fifteen hundred other end products that they see from somebody else. They don’t document that research, so how do you get the students to document all of that stuff for their portfolio that you just talked about.
RJ
Right, so I’m so glad you asked this because I can address how our portfolios are executed. So, our Seniors, in their last semester, they have to choose a Design Faculty member to work with one on one, who will assist them in executing their portfolio at its highest possible quality. This is called Senior Project. Now, when I teach Senior Project I teach…and I do this individually, so I could have three students a semester; I could have ten, I could have one. Right now, I have one and with this particular student, I’m emphasizing that, your portfolio work is so good and there’s so much professional experience because, as an aside she’s a non-traditional student so she’s got a number of years of employment under her belt, but nevertheless, her portfolio tells an incredible story and the way that we’re setting her book up, the projects are going to be their own little booklets, so I try not to…I encourage my students to have no more than fourteen pieces in their portfolio and depending on the project, less than…I think ten to eleven is a good but it depends on the quality of work.
So, if you have above average work, fourteen might be enough to tell the entire story of your capabilities. If you have excellent work, you could probably pare that down to ten or eleven. But with this student, I recommended each project you have should be its own little four page booklet, eight and a half by eleven and then when you collect them together, it makes one big book and it’s all fit on tabloids so she can print it out at a moment’s notice and it’s customizable, etcetera. etcetera, etcetera. So, in that format, she can really show her design methodology, her creative process and do it effectively. My peers, and this is completely their prerogative, where I prefer my students have an unconventional approach to their portfolios, which by virtue distinguishes them against everyone else in a positive way, so if everyone has leather-bound books and then my student has a hand-crafted book from nothing, she’s going to stand out as a consequence.
But my peers, they teach the class in their way and I’m not going to criticize that, but their books generally omit a good portion of the creative process and instead that creative process is in a separate book that can be given to the employers during the interview, so they would go through their entire book and be like, here’s my book, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah; If you would like to see some of the solutions I came up with or some other ideas I had for this project that you mentioned, here we go and then they whip that out and that’s another presentation tool. But different strokes for different folks, so to speak.
Gary
Yeah, but you know, my last guest on this podcast, Tim Hykes, my last guest, his episode isn’t live yet but he literally said that before he went and interviewed at Google, they sent him an article about what they expect to see in a portfolio and the number one thing is the process. Because all the work looks the same.
RJ
Yes, exactly. I’m so glad you said that because this is something I say frequently. I can teach anyone how to use Adobe Creative Suite. It’s not that hard to learn. I can teach anyone how to use it, any age. And I’ve taught classes to senior citizens and I know this for a fact: even those that have never really even touched a computer, they can pick it up, but I can’t teach people how to be creative. I can give them the steps that might charge their thinking and I can point them in directions but ultimately, we work in a creative sort of industry; we definitely work in a creative industry and I can’t teach people how to think. You’re either creative or you’re not. If you are, then you stand a higher chance of getting those better jobs. If you’re not, then you may be a print production specialist for your entire career and that’s OK; some people can’t handle the pressure of a high stress, high pressure creative sort of position. But I would much rather show more process than final solutions.
One thing to consider though is that while I believe my students are capable of interviewing with the Googles and Twitters of the world, most of them do not stray away from Ohio. All of the employers that they’re approaching are interested in those final solutions, sad as that may be. I do have one student who works for…her name’s Keeley, she works for Web Page FX in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They have been ranked the number one place to work in the entire State for I think a couple of years now and they’re the type of high level design agency that invests in thinking and not just solutions, so I think that, sad as it may be, those agencies that fully invest in that thinking and the creative process are not…they’re a bit of a unicorn.
Gary
Yeah. Well, you know, it’s as simple as teaching the students or…I teach them, I do this all the time: you gotta tailor your portfolio to who you’re applying to. By simply looking online and seeing how the studio displays its own work, you mimic that, so if they do focus heavily on the visual, you do the visual, but you also still need to break open…hey, there’s process behind this, but it’s a little bit more subtle but if the place is doing full-on case studies, you need to have case studies ready!
RJ
Oh my God! And don’t even get me started about graphic designers and writing! That’s a whole other podcast!
Gary
We don’t do enough! All right, RJ. So, before I let you go, is there anything that you are working on personally that you would like to share or is there something that we forgot to cover?
RJ
Again, I have a very cross-pollinated mentality between my teaching and scholarship, so I do a ton of grant writing, for project-based grants and I try very hard to bring unique and innovative programs and projects to my students via the grant process. For the past three years, I’ve been involved in re-branding the City of Youngstown and I’ve had a lot of successes as a result of that. I’ve been awarded a one hundred thousand dollar implementation grant from the City to fully implement the re-branding platform across the board. I just recently found out that I received an award from the Ohio Economic Development Association for my work in re-branding Youngstown and I’ve actually just written a few grants that propose that…essentially, I want to write a book on how to re-brand a city or more specifically cities in revival.
So, cities that are suffering from poor economic development or I want to talk about how design can be used as an agent for cultural, community and economic change and development and I think that is the most incredible expression of design as a catalyst for change I can think of, when it’s changing entire communities and by virtue of that, changing people’s lives. I’ve been fortunate enough to have my students interested and engaged in this re-branding process and many of them, for the past year and a half at least, have created a number of different works for the City of Youngstown. We’re sitting on thirty different ad campaigns; they’re producing video; we’re doing podcasts and I think that…and I would put this to your listeners: find something that can really involve everyone, that’s as inclusive as possible and really try to revitalize the place where you live, work, play or learn if you can, because it’s like the weather: it’s the one thing that everyone can relate to so that’s one thing that I’ve got going on now.
And even that tumbled into a way-finding signage program for the City that I got some grants for. I’m so busy all the time with a number of different granted projects that things are always exciting and always changing and it’s just…it’s just great to see how design can change a community. It’s really quite remarkable. And I would encourage folks to check out cityofyou.org to see what we’re up to and to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter which are all available via that website and hopefully I get a grant that will allow me to produce a publication that I can then tour on in terms of conferences and get the word out and empower people through fully articulating this model that I’ve built into re-branding their own communities and really kick-starting things. So that’s what I’m up to.
Gary
Again, from this podcast, that is the one of the common threads from every single episode is that most of the people that I’ve interviewed have said they want to see real world projects in their portfolio, not student exercises. And so then it comes down to…I have two kind of issues with that: I don’t want to give work away for free, that whole idea of pro bono. So, your grant solves that! Because it’s not pro bono now. And the second one, and I think this is more of a bigger struggle for me where I only have two interactive courses. My students that are in this beginning class, they couldn’t produce anything viable anyway, because it’s so early in the curriculum. Is that fair to say or am I overlooking something?
RJ
No, that’s completely fair to say. I’ve found, especially with the City of You project, some of the best learning experiences for my students that have come from that project have occurred outside of the classroom. More to that point: the students that get those unique learning experiences outside of the classroom are also the students that…they have a bigger world view; they’re the types of students that would say, well, hey RJ, I just spent three hours in class with you but I guess I’ll spend another two because we’re going to go to this printing company and see our work being offset printed a million times, or whatever, so the students that go above and beyond are generally the ones that get the most out of it.
Again, coming back full circle: the more you put in, the more you get out of it and some students are willing to do that outside of class and those are also the students that are going to have better careers quicker, they’re going to be leaders in the industry and those things, and ambition, frankly comes naturally to them and so I would say, in your case, find a really good project and find a few students and really incentivize them outside of…do the work in class but do the work outside of class and I think yeah, it’ll be more hardship on you as Faculty but nothing happens until someone gets excited and sometimes that just doesn’t occur in the classroom.
It’s like students need to see something truly real and then it just kind of clicks into place and then they’re like…oh…OK, this is a huge six color offset printer and there’s my work. I get it now. I could actually have a great career starting now as a Sophomore if I put all of myself into it. Which is again, easier said than done.