This course aims to provide students with the critical thinking and practical skills for creating effective and compelling interfaces. We will dissect what a compelling user experience is and discuss and apply design methods for creating one. Throughout this 14-week course we will examine a wide range of examples of interfaces with a focus on understanding the attributes of a successful interface and applying proven research, mapping and testing techniques. The class format will include lectures, case studies, student presentations, discussions of readings and in-class design exercises. The format is very hands-on with assignments that focus on problems that are typical of those a UX designer will encounter in the professional world.
Category Archives: Summer 2025
Immersive Experiences (IMNY-UT 282)
This course is designed to provide students with hands-on experience working with interactive and emerging applications for creating immersive experiences, with a focus on designing for virtual reality headsets. The class will also touch on related technologies, methods, and fields including experience design, virtual painting, augmented reality, interactive installation, and 360 video/audio. The course materials will also include readings and discussions on prior art/relevant critical texts.
Intro to Game Development (GAMES-UT 120)
Introduction to Game Development is a practical course that introduces students to the methods, tools and principles used in developing digital games. Over the course of the semester, students will work alone to create a two digital prototypes or ‘sketches’, before building on them to produce a final polished game, using the lessons learned in the earlier prototypes. This is a hands-on, primarily lab-based course, and so the focus is on learning by doing rather than on reading and discussion.
Intermediate Game Development (GAMES-UT 121)
This course reflects the various skills and disciplines that are brought together in modern game development: game design, programming, asset creation, and critical analysis. Classroom lectures and lab time will all be used to bring these different educational vectors together into a coherent whole; the workshop will be organized around a single, long-term, hands-on, game creation project. At the completion of this course, the student will be able to: 1) Describe typical work practice in game development. 2) Demonstrate competency through actual implementation of code and assets. 3) Work with a game engine, and understand the basics of how to build a game in the engine.
Urban Arts Workshop: New York (OART-UT 1925)
Urban Arts Workshop–New York is composed of lectures, presentations, screenings, readings, discussions, and visits from painters, photographers, filmmakers, writers, designers, architects, planners, restaurateurs, curators and critics designed to expose students to the key concepts and fundamental theories of urban studies, public art and the urban-inspired works of many great artists and writers based in New York City and around the world. Outside of class time, students will do readings, conduct research, watch movies, post reactions and do various assignments that engage the core course subject matter and themes. Each class will explore another form of urban art, including discussions about and encounters with graffiti, street photography, sculpture, installation art, architecture, music, dance, performance, theater, fashion, urban sound projects, large-scale projections, poetry, essays and short stories with an aim to understand how such art forms came into being and how they express a distinctly urban message to the inhabitants and visitors of New York City and cities across the planet. The instructor seeks to combine the critical and theoretical with the experiential and personal in order to lead students to a deeper and more fruitful relationship with cities, the arts and themselves. Further exploration will be conducted into the phenomenon of connectivity in the 21st century city providing a deeper perspective on globalism, the networked environment, and emerging technology’s role in the future of art, culture and urban living. Field trips may include: The Whitney, The High Line and Hudson Yards, Tiny Island, MoMA, Guggenheim, PS1, Museum of the City of New York, The New Museum, Transit Museum, Noguchi Museum, Governors Island and others based upon availability. Students will need a MetroCard for traveling around the city as well as approximately $50.00 to cover meals and museum tickets (this price varies depending on course itinerary).
Producing Essentials (OART-UT 1006)
The role of the creative producer in the entertainment industry is integral to bringing a project to fruition. This introductory course covers both the creative and physical production time-line and provides students with an understanding of the producer’s role through a semester-long team-based pitch project, which culminates in written and verbal pitch presentations. Students are encouraged to work on a project that best suits their area of interest: feature film, episodic/streaming, theatre, performance, podcasts, VR/AR or individualized multi-media. The course focuses on the dynamics of producing, including producer skill sets, tasks and responsibilities necessary to effectively and efficiently develop a project.
Internship (IMNY-UT 901)
Intro to Digital Tools (OART-UT 823)
This course will explore the three main Adobe imaging products – Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Structured as a dynamic exploration of design ideas and the adobe landscape, we’ll look at and explore the traditional design tools and methods along with many of the changes and enhancements AI is bringing to the digital design toolkit. Through a series of short exercises we will look at graphic design and layout using Illustrator and InDesign adding the image enhancement techniques in Photoshop. In the short exercises we’ll look at basic design concepts using typography, shapes and images to create layouts that are clear, simple and intuitive. More complex exercises will challenge your abilities to use images and typography to best express your goals in a variety of formats. You’ll also complete a small project of your own for the end of the class. Class time will be divided between work in class sessions, lectures, and feedback/critique sessions. This course is not intended to completely cover the software but will give you an understanding of which digital tool will best deliver your fresh ideas to the page. The majority of the class focuses on creating images, logos, books and magazines, but we cover the options of converting for screen output. We’ll incorporate some Adobe apps to augment the desktop and tablet applications. Depending on schedules, we will visit a gallery or museum during the semester. Students should have access to the Adobe Creative Suite through the NYU license.