Instructor: Richard Ting
Zune is the new social music listening experience, Last.fm scrobbles your music library, Nokia devices come with unlimited music for a year, Nutsie lets you sling your iTunes library to your mobile phone, Netflix movies will be streamed directly into LG HDTVs, and Hulu is serving up fresh TV programming directly into your web browser. Suffice it to say, media consumption habits are being disrupted and enhanced by emerging technologies everyday. As designers living in this hyper-connected world, we are well positioned to dream up digital experiences that were never before possible. This course explores the unique aspects of designing experiences for emerging media platforms which require special attention given to ubiquity, accessibility, and social connectivity. Students in this course are challenged to re-define the future of the digital music listening experience in the first half of the semester, and then challenged to re-define the future of interactive tv on the web and/or mobile for their end of semester presentations. The class follows a rigorous design methodology that teaches students how to go from idea to conceptual prototype. Students work in small project teams of 3-5. Weekly classes are divided in two sections; the first to discuss topics relevant to emerging media design such as next generation user interface design, social media theory, open API development, mobile technologies, and multi-channel content distribution. Following each week’s topic, students are expected to present their project updates with open class discussion in the form of critique sessions. Students are expected to prototype a final project so prior experience with basic electronics, physical computing, web programming, and prototyping software (Adobe Flash is helpful, but not required.) The final project requires a working prototype with supporting design documentation. Executives from the advertising, media, and consumer electronics industries are invited to class to provide guest critiques and to speak about future trends within Emerging Media.