🦆 Interaction Nerds by UXA | F23.06
The Career Corner: Design of Education Games, Design-Driven Business with Felix Lee, the Success Blueprint for a UX Freelancer, and Portfolio Resources!
👋 Announcements — Intern Panel & Redhawk + Talk!
Happy week… (I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t know what number week it is now). We’ve got some exciting events lined up, so get ready!
Intern Panel is tomorrow (Wednesday) 10/4 in Tepper 2700 at 5pm. We’ll have a panel of 4 incredible interns sharing their knowledge and answering any questions you may have.
We’re launching our first Redhawk+Talk event this Friday 10/6 at 2-3 in Scaife’s Redhawk. Come chat with other UXA members and talk about HCI hot takes 🔥
🍎 Campus Compass — Design of Educational Games
Written & edited by: 😈 Sophie McGrady
👾 Digital games can be extremely interactive and engaging sources of fun. But can they also be educational? If a digital game promotes learning, can it still be fun? There is a lot of potential in using digital games to improve education, but there are challenges to making sure a game is both fun and educational. Design of Educational Games takes a closer look at these challenges with the goal of helping students design games that can promote both learning and fun.
🤔 What is Design of Educational Games 05-418?
In Design of Educational Games, you will tackle the challenge of creating a game that is both fun and educational by combining processes and principles from game design and instructional design.
🧐 What do you do in Design of Educational Games?
The structure of Design of Educational Games is made up of lectures and course meetings that are used for student presentations, discussions, and hands-on work. Lecture meetings will focus on discussing course readings while hands-on meetings will allow you to work on assignments and projects as well as gain feedback from course instructors. Assignments and projects will help you learn a design process and create both digital and non-digital educational games.
😯 Who should take Design of Educational Games?
This course is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in HCII, CS, ETC, Design, and students interested in education or psychology research. Students should have completed one course in HCI, game design, computer science, or cognitive/educational psychology, or they must have instructor permission before taking this course.
🌀 Interview — Building a successful design-driven business with Felix Lee from ADPList
Written & edited by: 🕺 Arin Pantja
💡 Felix Lee is a the co-founder and CEO at ADPList – a global community of mentors and learners with the goal to democratizing mentorship for all. Read on to learn more about his backstory, values, and approaches to building a successful design-driven business.
🍀 Editor’s Pick — The Success Blueprint for a UX Freelancer
Written & edited by: 🧸 Ahana Banerjee
💡 Freelancing in the UX space is just like being the captain of your design ship. You have full freedom to choose your projects, set your schedule, and promote your career according to your unique vision. Whether you're redesigning websites, creating user-friendly apps, or solving design challenges, freelancing is an exciting journey where you get to navigate your course! 🚀✨
🎯 Resource — Setting up your portfolio!
Written & edited by: 🕺 Arin Pantja
Documenting and showing your work can be just as important as the work itself. One way to do this is by creating an online portfolio! Here are some extra resources to guide you when setting up an online portfolio
💡 Seek out some inspiration for your portfolios!
It can be eye opening to look at how others have presented their work – first impressions matter!
Cofolios (curated collection of portfolios of student designers from different universities)
Awwwards (a great range of different types of approaches to a portfolio)
🌐 Portfolio hosting platforms you could use
Here is a non exhuastive list of websites you can look into for hosting portfolios. Keep in mind the pros and cons to using each of the platforms too!
Adobe Portfolio (free with an Adobe Creative Cloud Subscription)
Webflow (provides a free CMS plan for students, higher learning curve but great for managing lots of content)
Framer (lots of cool motion & interaction effects, usage patterns similar to Figma)
Squarespace (50% off your 1st full year, clean and tidy templates to use)
Cargo (great experimental site that allows for a lot of creative experimentation!)
✏️ Tips on writing case studies
One of the core elements of effectively presenting case studies is storytelling. Check out some good examples below!
How Spotify organizes work in Figma to improve collaboration
🥊 Final takeaway
Building a portfolio can feel overwhelming, but remember that it’s not a sprint but a marathon! Even if you’re not fully satisfied with your portfolio in the beginning, it’s a site that you can continuously build on and add to over time.
On another note, keep an eye out for career prep related events UXA will be hosting over the next few weeks!
🙈 Cool - Yehwan Song, Anti-User-Friendly
🤔 Who’s behind the scenes?
Thanks for reading this week’s Interaction Nerds by CMU UXA! The editors behind this week’s issue are 😊 Eunice Lee, 🥸 Kaitlyn Ng, 😈 Sophie McGrady, 🧸 Ahana Banerjee, 🕺 Arin Pantja, 🐳 Alana Wu, and 🦝 Caleb Sun.
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