Examples of specific student projects or work from specific courses.

1] Bully Nation Group Project

Students were placed in groups of five or six and asked to interrogate the question “How can design(ers) respond to a culture of bullying?” and create group projects of a complex (but open ended) nature. Students were graded both on individual contributions as well as the overall group efforts, and were tasked with giving a project brief/proposal presentation, as well as a formal final presentation. The links below represent the final presentations of two of the groups.

The Bully And The Bullied
This group imagined an exhibition placed in a middle school consisting of digital mirrors, an iPad input system, an accompanying app for smart phones, and branded takeaways.

We Are _________.
This group created a web platform upon which each group member explored a different expression of the phrase: We Are _______. The website includes all five of the individual student responses, and is meant to be a platform for others to contribute and respond.

2] Mobile App Prototype Design

Students were asked to design an app prototype for a handheld device based on a verb chosen at the beginning of the semester. In the links below the first student chose the word “learning” and the second student chose the word “relaxing.” Students created personas, wrote scenarios of use, constructed paper prototypes, conducted user testing on three different users and submitted analyses of the testing, and then designed these final prototypes.

Cycles App Prototype

Flux Prototype

3] Branding for and Creation of Service Design

Students were asked to create a service design for a targeted audience, to conduct research, create a process/flow diagram of the service, and then design branding and artifacts for that service. Student responses ranged from creating app-based technologies, to a new way to sell flowers, to a cafe that offers a relaxing vacation atmosphere. The following files represent five of the final service design presentations given in class.

Bouquet Buffet Service Design Presentation

Sprout App Service Design Presentation

Milo Cafe Service Design Presentation

Paradises Utah Realty Service Design Presentation

A Bit of Help Service Design Presentation

4] Experimental Typography: Dualism Book Project

Each student chose two brief pieces of text which, when taken together, convey some kind of dualism (i.e., good/evil, light/dark, happy/sad, loud/quiet, etc.) These pieces of text could be poems, song lyrics, bible verses, short pieces of prose, movie quotes.

The texts were analyzed and interrogated, and resulted in small hand-bound books/book-like objects, using the power of typography to convey message and experience.

Experimental Typography: Dualism Book Design Project from Liese Zahabi on Vimeo.

5] Design Seminar and Capstone Course: Final Capstone Projects in Gallery

Students spent their final semester proposing, planning, and executing a capstone project and professional portfolio. These projects and portfolios were included in the end-of-semester gallery exhibition with the work from the studio arts BFA students.

Senior Seminar and Capstone Projects: Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 from Liese Zahabi on Vimeo.