ixd@cca

Projects

Mar 4

During the last five years, I was Chair of the Interaction Design Program at CCA.

During my tenure, I developed a strategy for CCA’s Interaction Design Undergraduate Program, this is some of the plan I put together and what I set out to do.

An opportunity I couldn’t possibly pass up happened with the City and County of San Francisco so I left my Chairship just as some of the changes I was making have started to come to fruition. However, the program is in the safe and capable hands of my mentor and friend, Erin Malone. And I will continue to be involved at CCA.

ixd@cca

Our program is committed to designing a better future.

We believe we can shape a future that is inclusive, diverse, vibrant and just.

We believe tech done ethically and responsibly can be a force for empowering and enabling human connection.

We are creating complex systems today that will determine what the world tomorrow will look like. And we need change who has a seat at the table when these ideas, products, and services are being created and elevate the voices of the people who these systems will harm or help.

Emphasize exploring emerging technologies

Continually engage with the industry and keep current with cultural and technology trends that will affect our students. This will involve:

Forward-thinking projects for our students in the framework of longer-term, deeper project work that is tied to specific subject matter contexts. This will result in projects that will attract more industry and place CCA as a thought leader in design for the future

An emphasis on partnerships and long-term “labs” that are centered on looking at broad questions facing the design and tech industries.

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Focus on professional skills

We want the students to have early exposure to studio culture and the opportunity to work with industry partners and in focused, rigorous projects. We are working to integrate our courses so they are closer to the way Design is practiced in industry. We believe this will give our students an edge in an ever crowded and unpredictable job market.

Give students the skills for entering the professional workforce. Possessing the appropriate technical skills, and feeling prepared with high-quality portfolios and sufficient confidence during interviews.

Time management, including letting go of following a process or ideas (protracted user research, lengthy ideation) when time is too short

Dealing with ambiguity — of a design brief, project goals, user needs, priorities of needs or features, etc.

Collaborating effectively - will be part of Junior review evaluations

Projects that lead to portfolio - Practical examples of digital design assets such as traditional wireframes or other artifacts that relate to contemporary digital platforms.

Seek Socioeconomic Diversity

We attract some of the top talent in Silicon Valley to teach at CCA.

We are proud that our program is one of the only tech design programs that have a majority of female faculty. This is unique and rare among Interaction design programs. We also have the only women of color in the leadership of a tech/design program in the country.

We want students to see that despite what representations they see in the media that people of color, women and those of socioeconomic diversity are currently working in this industry and making an impact and we are need of more in this industry.

2+2 with one or more community colleges.

It is a goal of the program to actively seek to increase our domestic student population, second-degree seekers, and provide an on-ramp to students of socioeconomic and racial diversity into careers in tech and design and this is a part of that goal.

Flexibility to accommodate inbound transfers

We are considering offering our core classes in fall and spring and de sequencing the programs so we can successfully accommodate inbound Spring transfers from other programs and other colleges.

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I hope to see the efforts continue. In the meantime, the video below shows the results of the second and third Design for____ Series from the program.