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Gary
I’m excited to have you. So, to kind of let everybody know, the listeners: both of us were Jurors on the 2016 Student Web Awards Contest. But you’ve been a part of the Contest since its inception in 2014. Can you talk about the rationale and the need for the contest?
Yana
Yeah, Gary, Absolutely. Well, before I say anything I must really know that the whole project is a brainchild of this fantastic individual, Robert Fraher, who is a Designer and an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin Stout, and we met in 2012 at the International Digital Media Association Conference while we were presenting our own work and because both of us were in academia working with web courses and web content at the time we got to discuss what was happening around and just kind of the shortage of information and the sharing that we both felt were present or non-present as the case may be in the digital design and web design area of academia. And at the time, do you remember this book called, Above The Fold?
Gary
Yep.
Yana
All right, fantastic. So, then you remember that for a few years, and I think they had the last one in 2014, Above The Fold ran this web design/digital media competition for students throughout the years of their publication. And I think they started in two thousand…don’t quote me on that, but I believe 2010 or 2011. So, that was the only avenue at the time for any such competition to exist. And that just seemed kind of lump-sided, so the need in our conversation around, well, what can we do about it? So, what would be the platform for sharing not just this Faculty presentation of student work but how can we empower students to really not just model the industry platform, because if you think about it, web design is such an applicable discipline and so where would you go to see such work on a student level? Honestly, throughout that time, other than going across the classroom to see what other people are doing or reaching out to institutions, the visibility of this work is really limited because even if you think about common publications such as Communication Arts or How Magazine, they just don’t have that level of display. You either have to get pretty sophisticated or maybe there’s some graduate work, but just for everyday student web design, you just don’t really see it unless you go scouting for portfolios.
So, on the one hand, we felt that there was this need for display of student work, just not for any given program recruitment necessarily but just seeing what happens with the landscape of this learning process. And too, from the academic standpoint, there’s always a question of, well, here we are in all these institutions and mine happens to be Liberal Arts School, and there’s a lot of conversation around undergraduate research and the importance of it and what it is and what is it in the Arts. So, in the Arts, the undergraduate research as we see it is really all about applicable work. So, when you get into the area of web design, how do you propagate and where do you make it visible and then which shape does that exist?
So, we’ve heard a lot of conversation around undergraduate research benefits, just again across the disciplines. So we talk about the student participation that includes self-realization and disciplinary knowledge and move forward their career goals. And for us practicing designers, web designers, it results in actual projects and if you have undergraduate research, well then, shouldn’t you have some form of evaluation or peer review and where does it go and who sees it, and who shares that?
So, through these conversations we decided that, well, let’s see if we can have an alternative to something: Above The Fold was very much an inspiration, something similar to Above The Fold competition, and perhaps we can look at undergraduate programs and see if we can start with the small-scale review of web design and what are people doing and how are they doing it, and what are those deliverables?
And that’s really how the whole thing originated. And I think Above The Fold really had their last competition in 2014 and that’s kind of where we started ours because it took us a couple of years to really organize the concept and figure out how we’re going to do it. And so in 2015 which was the second year of running it we had…it sort of became fairly successful through word of mouth as far as our small competition is concerned. In the second year we had eighty nine submissions from thirty four institutions across sixteen countries, which was an impressive return, but really we did a lot of outreach and publishing on various platforms; it took some doing.
Gary
OK, so I really love the whole…because again, reiterating for listeners; I was a Juror in 2016 and I never remember talking to you or Robert and coming up with…this was a way of basically, what are other Schools doing curricularly.
Yana
Yeah, exactly, and we don’t get as much…you would think that there would be some magic portal where all these unicorn faculties that teach web design get together and just telepathically share secrets, but it’s not at all the case and the lack of dialog can really be quite shocking, unless you develop personal connections: there is no hub where it exists and so that was one of the earlier goals. I know that Robert now is moving forward and trying to conceptualize this larger project called The Global Studio, which would be the next step.
Gary
And I’m glad you brought up that idea of…we don’t share our stuff. My stuff is online, but it’s not…you would kind of have to know where to look to find it, whereas there’s very few people who have an online, easy-access and I’m wondering why. Is it because not a lot of people are teaching it?
Yana
Well, I think it’s a two-part problem. I think one…I’m not really sure if not enough people are teaching it. Well, first of all, let’s define what "it" is. I think that would be helpful! Because it exists in so many forms and this is where the question comes in: how do you teach web design? And so, what is your criteria and what’s the deliverable? And because there is no standardized way of approaching it, and something that we’ve talked about before, Gary, that the audience may not be aware of is this understanding of applicable discipline and industry needs. Because I would venture to guess that most programs at least if they’re associated with Graphic Design Departments, the goal in the end is to place your student, or to at least give them the tools to have the career or start the career of their desiring, and that will vary regionally. So, what might be a needed skill here in the DC area may not look the same somewhere in, I don’t know, Idaho or Alabama or someplace else.
So…and I think that creates this uneven distribution of the type of skills that are requested, required and you would assume that the baseline is the same across the court but I find even that varies. So, for instance, questions are, well, did you teach interface design? Do you prioritize front end development skills? Which tool is it important that a certain tool is associated with it? To which depth do you go? These are all questions that each Faculty makes their own choices based on all these various criteria that they review. So, I think that wide variation creates some difficulty.
Number two, I think that the platform for sharing, like you mentioned, there’s just nothing centralized. So, I’ve spoken to various Faculties and they all do it differently. Some run servers from…that are available in their institutions and so they house their own house server and that’s where everything lives. Some sort of rely on students to provide their own hosting. It could be free hosting or GitHub accounts or however they decide to handle it and so then it’s really on the side of the student and Faculty may or may not make an effort to archive work in some shape or form. And the other consideration is, well, is the work even in the shape in which a Faculty wants to present it…
Gary
Exactly…
Yana
Because these are all complicated skills and I find that the finalized piece, something that’s showable, and something that you can look at and say, OK, well I’m proud to put my Faculty name behind it and showcase it. That may or may not happen. Some programs simply can’t afford multiple levels of web design classes, or maybe historically they don’t have a way of developing it over levels, so again, it’s really just everywhere.
I did want to bring something up. This semester, and I have been lucky, since I’ve been at the American, I was brought in as this person who needs to figure out our digital side of things and so I got to make choices and continue to make these choices and try things out, and so this semester I’m teaching a beginner web design course and I decided to use CodePen as our main platform, in a way that sort of makes sharing very easy. It’s kind of like having your own Vimeo channel, really, for motion ???work so I wonder if tools such as CodePen that provide this innate sharing capability and visibility and just putting things out there, could be valuable.
Gary
A question about CodePen, because the reason I ask about CodePen is, it doesn’t…so, if you want to self-host fonts, you can’t unless you get the CodePen Pro subscription, or the same thing, and I think more importantly is, images. You can’t really put images in unless you either host them somewhere else, and you’re linking to them, or you pay for the CodePen Pro subscription. So, how do you use CodePen?
Yana
Well, this is my first semester using it beyond simply distributing tutorials. And keep in mind, I am using it for the introduction class. And it’s a test run for me so I’m still very much in the process of deciding the pros and cons of such an approach. So, personally, I do not mind my students hosting their images elsewhere and there’s so many cloud services these days, really it’s not an issue for us. And as far as font question, again at this beginner level, let’s keep in mind that depending on the program in our case, and these beginner level students haven’t yet acquired type skills advanced enough for them to make very complicated choices about their typography, so I find Google Fonts, smart choice of Google Fonts works beautifully, it pairs well with CodePen and it allows students to focus on other fundamental skills of web development that I feel take priority.
So again, at this level, I found Cloud services for images and Google Fonts for type work pretty well.
Gary
I could go off on CodePen…I like it; I like it and I just struggle with…some of the things that I want to teach, because I do want to show them how to use…because you’ve got Google Fonts and you’ve got Typekit, and Typekit, whether you’re using MyFonts or Typekit, they’re all basically the same: they use JavaScript to inject…
Gary
…but they all inject it via the at font-face CSS property so I kind of feel like if I’m going to show them how to use Google Fonts or I’m going to show them how to use Typekit, I at least want them to see how use…see how these other things are mimicking that. And so pedagogically, is it really even necessary? Probably not!
Yana
Well, I wonder…and that’s something I also struggle with. Let’s remember there’s probably not one single universal answer to this, right? And time will tell, in some ways! So, I would say that working with fonts is important but there will be tools out there probably every year that will introduce one method or another of implementing those. So, to me the technical handling of the font, whether it’s through Fontface or simply linking Google Fonts; well, those are two fundamental techniques as long as there’s some understanding of either. I would rather focus on some other fundamentals of CSS and I feel that at least for my beginner class, I’m letting it be and really prioritizing other methods, but it’ll be interesting. Next semester I’m going to teach the next level to it so that’s when we’re going to come up against the question of, where does that go from there?
Gary
What is the name of this course, by the way?
Yana
All right, so it is Emerging and Digital Media 1 that we really treat as a Web Design 1. Now there was a very strong consideration behind naming it what it is and I know that it sounds nothing like web design! And our philosophy on naming the course was that, well, today it’s web design depending on the needs of our area and how our students are placed and where they’re getting hired and who knows, maybe two years from now, it will be developing for mobile super-phone unicorn! You just…web design is a core skill but we also wanted to leave some room for interpretation of what exactly that means so we didn’t want to name it HTML and CSS Development 1. Simply because media always transfers and we just want to know what’s next.
Gary
Yeah, and we did the same thing. We originally had a couple of courses called Design and Technology Print, Design and Technology Screen, and I was like, well why don’t we just drop the hyphen Screen and the hyphen Print and Design and Technology: it’s pretty universal. I don’t…whatever technology is in the future, so just change them to Design and Technology 1 and Design and Technology 2 and you can kind of move forward. I think everybody’s struggling with that universality in naming conventions.
Yana
Yeah, absolutely, and you do, on the one hand, you kinda want to have a personality to your course titles too, and not to mention that there’s an academic schedule that only allows you to change things so often! Probably just for your brand, whatever, the program is branded, it’s also useful to think, although longer term.
Gary
Well, you know, I think that’s funny that you mention the title having the personality of the course, where I find students ignore the titles; they just say, that’s the branding class, that’s the web class, that’s the motion class. They self-title it themselves.
Yana
They really do and this is a good question; I’m sure if we had a student in on this discussion they’d probably just say, oh who cares? We just need to know where the credits go and just title it very simply. But I think it’s a similar question as to this universal design paradigm of well, do you educate your client? And so, well, do you educate your audience and do you really follow the change you want to see in the world? I know this sounds like a very high-end concept but I think using language is important and I think the way you think and talk about topics you want to introduce will also set the tone, so I feel that yeah, if my courses is only about training vocational skills, that maybe I’ll name it HTML and CSS 1; but it’s not, it’s so much more than that. It’s a conversation about design thinking in media and how the media changes and is just more than simply a technical formula.
Gary
I’m going to jump back to some previous questions that I had written down and they’re in regards to the Student Web Awards, but we were having conversations during the judging of it, because the work, I don’t remember the ratio, but a lot of work was pre-existing templates…
Gary
…from Squarespace or WordPress and they were modified but at the time, I kinda looked at them, I just kinda dismissed them as, well, this isn’t a design. But I had a conversation on this podcast with Lauren Meranda; she’s an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Judson University, it’s right outside of Chicago, and she’s like full on, she’s like, yeah, I’m teaching them WordPress and she’s…regionally, it makes sense, there’s a lot of freelance work for people to build, to really manipulate a WordPress template in Chicago.
Yana
Yeah, and you know, I agree, I think there’s always going to be a market for that type of work and I think it gets a little murkier when you enter this concept into something like a competition evaluation because in the end of the day, if you’re paid to modify a template, no one’s really going to question your methods so long as in the end, your client receives the deliverable they were hoping for.
And in the competition you’re really trying to assess and evaluate skills that are visible…and I remember these conversations of ours, I think they’re still very much…well, we still need to talk about them and for me anyway, it’s not so much the problem of using templates or not using templates; I think it’s the problem of recognition where contributions are. In the same way, so if you think about the template as a team project: let’s for a second dismiss the notion that that’s a pre-made anything. Let’s for a second assume that instead of thinking of it as a template we think of it as a team effort and yet we’re only evaluating one participant and so just like with team evaluation, we want to ask, well that’s very great, there are all these virtues of the project which would be the template, but where does the individual contribution come in? And where’s it visible for this individual to make their mark on this particular expression of the project? So I try to think of template use by anyone from that angle.
Gary
But also, if you can touch a little bit…outside of the context of the competition, but isn’t it general…I’m wondering if maybe I should introduce how to manipulate WordPress templates or Squarespace templates or whatever CMS du jour as a curriculum.
Yana
OK, so, I have very strong personal opinions on that, and my strong personal opinions are, I’m a purist, in the sense where I believe, at least for my curriculum, so the way our curriculum is structured also probably is useful to know is that we have two levels of web design and those two levels is where we introduce all the skills we possibly can and then once students are gone through those two classes, they’re kind of on their own.
So, I believe that introducing WordPress as a concept is valuable in that probably somewhere, even though I haven’t done that personally, it may be valuable for us as a program to do somewhere in the second level of second web design course, but in the end of the day, if somebody doesn’t have the basics, they just going to kind of scrape by, in my opinion, and try to fill in the blanks without knowing what they’re doing and some might be more successful at it than others, just by sheer luck alone. I don’t really like taking that approach; I feel that with strong basics, an individual may venture out on their own and that has happened and maybe do an independent study or just simply go out there and get more help but they have the skills to take on, so to speak, WordPress and be able to function under its constraints with knowledge that they have, versus introducing it in a formulaic method in the classroom that only allows people to understand that little dimension of modifying the templates as opposed to really understanding how the whole system works.
Gary
OK, so, another question, this is a discussion we had during the judging: entries from the students had to be functioning HTML and CSS, so, in order to have a submission, students had to have pretty strong front end development skills. At the time, we also discussed what was the value of clickable prototypes built in InVision and so now they’re prototyping software is starting to pretty much become ubiquitous. Have you re-thought how you feel about the value of prototypes. Or, not even re-thought, because we never really came to terms with those.
Yana
No, yeah, we haven’t. So, I keep questioning that both for the classes that I teach and for the future of the competition too. And I think there is great value in simply…and by the way, just for the record, I love InVision: we use it for our mobile design classes all the time because it just simply takes the learning curve for any meaningful programming for anything native, for the iOS platform is so high and yet all you really need to have is a prototype in order to communicate your designs. So, in a way, similar applies to the web design and prototyping. I think the bigger question is: how do you categorize it? Because for me, someone who is well-versed in beautiful interfaces, useable interfaces, but uses prototyping software to compile them rather than develop them, isn’t just…not necessarily is a fully interactive designer; they might be…almost feel like Graphic Designers now are expected to understand usability; they’re expected to understand interface, so for me it falls under the umbrella of visual design.
And personally, again, a bit of a purist there, but I feel that interactive design must represent knowledge and the technical know-how and technical skill. But however, I do think that there’s nothing wrong with including visual designers or at least visual design category in something like web design competitions, because it’s not a front end web design competition! A student web design competition. So, I think if the context is set clearly and if the categories are understood correctly, that could be a very powerful way for someone to express the ideas on usability and UX design without having to develop anything. But the boundaries just need to be made clear.
Gary
Yeah, then that perfectly segues into my next question. Personally, I’m now fully in the camp that interactive design students need to know HTML and CSS and I equate it to, it’s like print designers need to understand paper and ink and how ink is applied to the paper. So, since you’ve already shared a little bit about what your philosophy is on HTML and CSS, do you have what you think is the ideal amount that a visual designer should know?
Yana
Well, OK, I might have slightly higher expectations, I think a visual designer, well OK, but let me ask you this. Visual designer or interactive designer?
Gary
Um…no. Visual designer. So, I’m coming at it from this, as I stumble around with this. So, from the perspective of somebody, a junior designer working in an interactive design firm where there are part of a team that includes the front end developers.
Yana
Well, first of all, just FYI and I’m sure you have similar experiences, I hear from former students all the time who went on to work in teams with developers who say, any time somebody understands they can at least prototype the very basic page navigation and layout, that’s just such a huge bonus. You know, and they’re actually finding themselves acquiring a little more responsibilities in that area. So, my personal philosophy is that a visual designer should know enough of HTML and CSS if they want to have anything to do with web design. Now, if they’re never going to touch a web page or the like, then I guess it doesn’t matter, but if they want to have anything to do with that, in my opinion they should have enough skills to execute a simple functioning website with basic navigation, with basic structure, with the ability to go from one place to the next, with a display of the content in text and image, not necessarily rich content, but the basic content that they need to handle.
So, for instance, anything they can do with…well, I’m going to give you this example: bear with me. Say, PowerPoint. If you were to prototype something with a very basic software, nothing like InVision even, just PowerPoint, they should be able to execute that with HTML and CSS. And here is why I think that. I think because even if they never have to touch it again, understanding of this building blocks is just such a fundamental knowledge that allows you familiarity with the medium. And it allows you the appreciation of the craft.
And frankly, just confirms your commitment. I think it’s almost akin to having a plumber who never knows the materials of what plumbing is made out of. They may not manufacture plumbing parts, but they should certainly know about the materials and kind of logic and the physics that goes into it and so I tend to think of it in the same way with web design and front end development is that no, you don’t have to know all the latest and greatest techniques but I feel like it’s absolutely necessary to know the building blocks to understand your medium.
Gary
Have you started messing around with the CSS Grid Spec yet?
Yana
I have; I have not taught it yet. I think the Grid is…well, it’s fantastic. I think it does require you thinking very differently; it’s almost in some bizarre ways going back to where you seriously consider a visual layout before you do any development. And what about you, do you find that your students…have you introduced to it, what the reception there was like?
Gary
No, I haven’t done it yet and that’s why I asked if you did. Basically right now, the work I’m doing is I do a flipped classroom, so for homework, the students conduct a bunch of screencasts that I put together on HTML and CSS and right now, for them to mock…do simple grids, simple layouts, I show them both Floats and Flexbox and I’m now thinking like I should probably…not probably…I need to re-do those and just go with Grid and Flexbox but I just haven’t done it yet so I was just curious!
Yana
Yeah, so here’s my thought on that, since I have the luxury of having two levels of web design class to spread this over. My thought was, you know what, I’m going to go with traditional positioning for the level and CSS Flexbox for the second. Now, I have pointed out Flexbox is this phenomenon and a little bit more of an advanced concept that exists, because I just think that depending on what it is you’re designing, I think completely abandoning the old positioning model may not be the wisest thing to do, even if it ends up never being used, I feel like it’s a concept that needs to be learned. I will, however, say that I’m having a bit of anxiety introducing Floats and I’ll tell you why, actually. I’d be curious to know your opinion on that. Can we geek out for a second here?
Gary
Yeah.
Yana
All right, great. So, we just talked about this positioning in Floats, for instance, and of course Float is the property that’s used with static positioning to move elements on the page. So, I found that I can teach my entire intro class with inline block display property and bypass Float almost absolutely except when it comes to wrapping the images. And I thought to myself: well, wait a minute; that doesn’t seem right. I mean, Floats have been traditionally just such a robust feature to work with and I feel like they should know about it a little bit more and so I’ve been trying to look up articles and opinions as to well, pros and cons of each, and Floats seemed to lose out every time. Except from the fact that they were just historically so implemented everywhere.
Gary
Yeah, and I’ve come across the same material as you is that it’s…again, basically with HTML and CSS there’s no one way to do something and everything has a purpose, but that said, it’s a universal fix-all, yeah, it would make sense that inline block would fix the clear fix issue where it’s not…the parents not clearing the child when you’re putting down backgrounds. I think, doesn’t the inline block avoid that?
Yana
Pretty much. There are specific cases where I can make a case for using the floats but they’re pretty specific and they really…you have to get a little more complex in your design on the first level of what design will allow you to get. But again, it would be one of those bizarre scenarios where, yeah, but if you leave it out completely from teaching it, then you’re essentially glazing over about a decade of development! And if somebody discovered these recipes or references as they go on to build upon their skills they will be at a disadvantage.
Gary
Yeah, but also at the same time, I wrestle with the idea that students need…do they need to be to front end developers? No. Do they need to have the amount of skill that a front end developer needs? No. But I think they need to be able to have their stuff in the browser to look at it, to evaluate it, because the scale of when you make something in Sketch or XD is goofy; it’s like a poster.
Yana
Yeah, it really is.
Gary
When you look at it on the screen, and then when you look at it printed full size on the wall it’s different and I know, but students, when they see it designed on a screen, they think oh well, it’s going to be viewed on a screen, it’s designed on a screen; there’s no scale issue. So I want them to know enough HTML and CSS to just throw some things in the browser so that they can go…oh, OK, yeah, my design choices, my visual design choices are going to work. And so, what’s the quickest way to get them to do that? The inline block would probably be quicker than Floats!
Yana
It would be, it would be. If the speed is your concern then definitely. I would say, if speed takes priority over…which is not to say it’s a bad thing, but just let’s take a hypothetical scenario and say the speed takes priority over foundation understanding of how everything works on a very basic level, I would say, why not a framework? You’d sort of bypass all of that, really, and you just rely on the framework. So they’re all just different levels on which to build.
Gary
Yeah, that’s true and that’s probably where frameworks are actually useful; it’s just that once you do have basic understanding when you’re now just going into speed of regular workaday life, design workflow, that’s where they come in useful. Can you talk…so, you’re lucky, you have two web design courses. I think the first one’s Digital and Emerging Media Design…
Yana
One.
Gary
And then Experience Design, Interactive Media; is that the second course or is that a third course…
Yana
No. Digital and Emerging Media Design has a second level which has the title number two assigned to it. And then we get to the Experience Design Interactive Media, which currently I’m teaching as a true UX introduction, so we go over a very set UX process including design research, planning personas to a high degree; flow-charting, wire-framing, paper prototyping and it’s currently taught from the perspective of mobile design. Now, I don’t necessarily think it will always be a mobile design but mobile design has served us well in the past because in a way it’s a really good topic to look at when you think about flexibility of what context is.
I find that it gives more of a perspective for students to understand temporal spatial attention, just contextual placement, much, much better. And so in the past when mobile design was still fairly new, I taught it around the medium or so but these I feel like I’m structuring this course around topics more, so it’s a lot more idea and topic-centric and a couple of areas that we explore is sustainability and social issues. And so really it’s becoming much more user research focus than it is a media focus.
Gary
Yeah, that’s pretty much how I do it. When they walk into class, I don’t say they’re going to build an app, I don’t say they’re going to build a website; it’s like, OK, you’re going to go out and do research; you’re going to go out into the community, you’re going to do research. OK, you’ve found a problem. Now, you’re going to make something to solve that problem. And they always lean towards, oh, we’re going to make an app to solve it.
Yana
Oh, you found…yeah! I know, and it’s very, very difficult. In fact, I find that’s the biggest stumbling block. So, I have a list of words to avoid during our discussions fairly early on, so you know nobody’s allowed to say, well our app will do this. So, instead, you have to talk about it in human terms and really just understand what the solution is outside of the button or the feature; you match the features to your needs really, so we talk about defining the needs and coming up with meeting the needs in a way that isn’t technology dependent.
Gary
I almost did back-flips, because one student, she really took it to heart and so she was like, just trying to get information about bus stops and where to go next and stuff like that and this was in the inner harbor of Baltimore and so she was like, I need to solve that problem, it’s just too hard to navigate. And so of course everybody else who had problems with the transportation system, wanted to make an app and she was like…but she…it’s an interactive kiosk billboard for the bus stop. The only one who broke outside of the app and I was like, oh, thank you!
Yana
Well yeah, and I think that’s important too, to understand that mobile doesn’t mean an app. I mean, mobile really refers to the context of where you are and how things are used. Mobile could be a little card you pull out of your pocket while you’re walking around. And so, thinking of experience from that perspective seems to really resonate. If it was the student of yours, I’d be also doing back-flips on that!
Gary
One out of seventeen!
Yana
Oh, one out of seventeen! Well, I wonder if it would make for an interesting experiment, you introduce a project in a course like this that is completely done outside of a mobile device but yet has to be mobile, right? Or maybe it’s a physical…you have to be careful because at that point you’re really going to the area of industrial design or object design.
Gary
But that would be fantastic if you had more than one chance of teaching UX in a four year program. But if you’ve only got one shot, one class, three credits at UX, what do you do?
Yana
No, OK, so I’m of dual mind there because on the one hand you have a really big responsibility to your students to give them the skills and the language and the tools to succeed in whatever they do after that class, so for most that means job placement. But on the other hand, taking no risks and no experimentation will move us no further.
Gary
That is true.
Yana
So, I’m kind of a big mind of, you know what? Some years it’s worth the risk to devote a semester to an experiment and see what happens, as opposed to hear after year repeating a pattern. Because at least then, you’re giving yourself a chance to stumble upon a discovery that may have not otherwise happened.
I have to say, for me personally, I tend to gauge…sort of rid the room and see what students I have and what their strengths are and whether or not a more structured approach or more freedom would benefit. It’s a judgment call, right? And so of course I’m taking the responsibility of making that choice and making that decision based on my personal bias alone! But that’s a part of my job is to make those calls and see how they end up.
Gary
Can you talk a little bit about…or a lot…about…so you’ve got Digital and Emerging Media Design 1 and 2. Can you talk about what they learn across both of those and where do you split it up?
Yana
So, I would say the biggest…so the first level out of the sequence of those two courses is really where the big paradigm shift occurs from practical systematized production design to more of a conceptualized UX process research. So, in the first level and as I mentioned, right now it’s mobile-oriented, but really doesn’t have to be, it’s really all about UX process, really just involved research and the second level as it stands now serves as a capstone class, so we take a look at all of the skills we’ve accumulated thus far, and my the way my students also of course take print courses so they’re going to have this pool of skills by the time their Senior semester comes around to draw upon. And so the model for the course is the same in terms of research approach and methodologies but the topic and the media that gets explored in that capstone is individualized per student.
Gary
So, your emerging media…your Digital and Emerging Media Design 2 is the capstone course?
Yana
As it stands right now, correct.
Gary
Oh, that’s interesting.
Yana
Yeah and again, we sort of left it out there to see what would be the useful skills to introduce and that’s always up for debate and what we found was that, we don’t really have any space to implement portfolio design in a capstone right now, so we wish we had an extra course; we talked about it forever, it might still happen that it’s just kind of a one credit throughout the entire program where we supervised portfolio creation. But it hasn’t happened yet and we just simply don’t have credits to spare. So, in that course ended up being a good spot, again because it happens in the last semester for both capstone and portfolio development, so I always, when I teach it, which is most of the time, I always make sure to take at least half of the semester and I always make sure online, strong online portfolio; we do these four exit interviews in that class.
Do that’s something I have not mentioned before but our design program actually does require for each graphic design major senior to have an exit interview, where they do the full presentation of their work much like they would at their job interview and so we work towards that because we want them to come out being ready as much as we possibly can.
Gary
Yeah. I have a follow-up question about portfolios. Online portfolios. And I’ve been really thinking about that lately and the impetus for thinking about it was, I had a student who…we’re educators; people are asking…I get all kinds of people asking me, hey, I’m looking for a junior designer, I’m looking for an intern, can you suggest anybody and this one person asked me for somebody who did branding across media like print, web and I had this perfect person in mind and I know she’s worked for a couple of different start-ups and so she’d been on the ground floor of the branding across the things and so when I went to recommend her, she didn’t have a portfolio with updated work.
Yana
Well and that’s why you allocate some space for them on one of the courses!
Gary
So then…so that made me think about it: but where? Because I think at the senior level it’s kind of already too late because they need this for internships, don’t they?
Yana
Yes, yes. So, here’s how I handle it personally. Even though this is the course where we officially…and by the way, while I say portfolio, I don’t mean they just make online portfolio in that course: they already have one. So, that course is for bettering what they have and preparing because of course the portfolio presentation they do during in-person interviews has nothing…in a way it has everything to do with their online portfolio: it’s a branding system really, but they don’t show their websites because the format of a website is meant to be experienced very differently, so they prepare whole different presentation for in-person interviews. It has the same projects, obviously same rhetoric and philosophy but it’s not the same format. Neither in my opinion it should be. So, what happens in our program, the first time I request that students create a portfolio it all happens at a three hundred level course in the Digital and Emerging Media 2.
So, I simply make it a two week project to introduce them to free platforms. They don’t develop a website for their portfolio. In my opinion that’s really an overkill and there is no need for it and I’d rather than invest energies in developing a project rather than portfolio shell, unless there is something about their development skills that they absolutely must showcase. But even so, I just…I just don’t see they need. So, at that level, at three hundred level course is the first time I ask them to package five of their projects and two of them have to come from my class. And this is when we talk about, what do the images look like and how do you talk about your work and what’s interesting about your work. And then the same happens in the Experience Design 1 in the Fall; it’s not so much a part of the class.
We allocate some weeks to kind of guide people through it; at that point they already have had or…some platform that they have chosen and they stick to it or they switch it, and then as a Faculty of Graphic Design Department, we then do full reviews of all of our Majors and we have little evaluation packets that we fill out and send it to them so that by the time they come in their final semester in the Spring, they already have all this language.
Now, it hasn’t been necessarily handled in a robust way through classes but they have worked on it, they’ve thought on it, they have feedback on their pieces; they sort of know what to embark on and so that’s when in their final semester they really make a push to package it as well as they can.
Gary
All right, so I just kinda noticed the time. So, just one more follow-up…well, not a follow-up question, it’s a general blanket question I want to ask you. If we haven’t already covered it, if you could do whatever you wanted, what kind of courses or projects would you like to see interactive design programs include?
Yana
Well, I would love to see a lot more collaboration than currently happens, preferably inter-disciplinary. There is so much…I mean, there’s always so much talk about this undergraduate research and the inter-disciplinary boundaries, but the truth is, every time something like that wants to happen there are questions of well, how are the credits distributed and do the students, can they use those courses, and there are so many bureaucratic systems in place that may not compel a student to engage in something like this but imagine how amazing it would be to see more computer scientists working with designers; that would be my absolute Holy Grail to see a course that is production oriented that can really serve up a deliverable that’s functional and considered and perspective can inform each other.
Gary
Yeah, and that’s the Holy Grail, how do you make the…you know, logistically is it really that hard or is it more just reaching across the aisle and just simply asking and building that relationship?
Yana
I suppose it differs by institution. So, depending on institutional policies, I think we’re run kind of like in the same…it’s the same old question: how much of something is personal responsibility and how much of something is a legislative responsibility, right? So, I feel like historically these types of initiative have been placed in that personal responsibility arena, with some support as far as simply allocating time and classroom meetings and space in students’ schedules and credit allocation have to come from legislative prioritization.
Gary
James Madison, JMU, they have something really unique there that I would like to see other places do is they have a Center, I can’t remember the name of it any more, but it’s essentially a Center that has its own building. The Center also has its own course prefix and numbers, so…and they also put out an annual or I don’t know how…the cycle for it, but they also put out a call, constantly asking for collaborative classes and so because of the way…so it has its own classrooms so there’s no complaining about, oh we don’t have the space for it because they have their own; they say, we’re running this many classes a semester, so they’ve already go the schedule worked out and because of the credit, being its own number, it doesn’t…they’ve figured out so it’s easily adaptable into other people’s programs as it can count for this or it can count for that by just simple paperwork. And so it then…so they cleared all the logistical hurdles and people can just collaborate and make whatever class they want, whatever natural pairing seems to make sense and so being…and you know what? It’s now gotten to the point where there’s people, they have more submissions for course offerings than they can actually facilitate each semester now because they set up a…they set something up for it.
Yana
Yeah, and I think you’re absolutely right, it’s a sort of build it and they will come scenario, where if you prioritize and…prioritize its values and really create the space and conditions for it, it will happen. I’m actually optimistic, I’m optimistic though, I think there’s a possibility there, so for us, I’m actually excited we’re in the conversation with Computer Science Department because we keep running the situations where more and more students double major now and so even for something like UX versus there are Development courses, there’s so much cross-over that we’re hoping we’ll spend next year having discussions of well, so how can we really merge some of these needs and how can we make it a little more acceptable across the board?
Now, the scenario that you’re describing was this platform would have been ideal. I don’t know how far we are from it. And maybe that’s a model to look into and see if it’s adaptable, that would be really amazing.</dd>
Gary
Yeah, I’ll have to dig up the name for it later on…
Yana
Yeah, please.
Gary
…put it in the show notes. All right, so Yana, before I let you go, is there anything that you are personally working on that you’d like to share or something you’d like to promote or anything you want to add?
Yana
Well absolutely, I would absolutely love to promote the Student Web Design Awards for next year which…yeah, we’ve taken a break in 2017 but we’ll be back full force in 2018 with more categories and a renewed and revitalized competition so I want to encourage everyone of your listeners to look into it and consider applying and make those web design projects as much as we can!
Gary
So that’s the Student Web…what’s the URL? For people that won’t look!
Yana
Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s studentwebawards.net.
Gary
OK, and roughly, I know you’re still on the planning process, but when should they start looking for that call for entries?
Yana
Yeah, absolutely. So, usually in March. In March. February or March; typically I would say in March is a good time to look at the call and the submissions are usually open all the way up until end of May, beginning of June.
Gary
OK, so everybody, all the listeners, look out for that because that’s a great place to get students to start really valuing this stuff.