🦆 Interaction Nerds by UXA | S24.06
The Design for Fun Issue: XHACKS 2024 Designing for the Children of Tomorrow, Design of Educational Games, the duo that brought color to iMessage, and fun design challenges!
👋 Announcements — XHACKS 2025: Designing for the Children of Tomorrow!
UXA is stoked to announce the theme of our third XHacks: Design for the Children of Tomorrow. 🌅 With only the sky as the limit, how will you design for joy, education, and innovation for the next generation? 👶
XHacks is Carnegie Mellon University’s annual design hackathon. In past years, we’ve brought over 200 students from all academic disciplines at CMU for a weekend-long event to challenge themselves to design innovative and exciting products. Fill out the interest form below to get updates! 👀
🍎 Campus Compass — 05-418/05-818 Design of Educational Games
Written & edited by: 🕺 Arin Pantja
Are you interested in designing meaningful and educational experiences through games, or how different frameworks can be utilized to create games? Read on to learn more about the design of educational games. 🕹️
🤔 What is 05-418/05-818 Design of Educational Games?
Creating a game that is both fun and educational has its own challenges, but the potential of digital games to improve education is enormous. To tackle this, students will combine processes and principles from game design and instructional design, and learn how to evaluate their games for fun, learning, and the integration of the two. Students will also learn by doing through a design process to create educational games — digital or non-digital.
🧐 What do you do in 05-418/05-818 Design of Educational Games?
During most weeks, there will be a lecture and a course meeting devoted to student game presentations, discussion of homework assignments, and groupwork. Students will get hands-on through assignments and projects, and have check-ins with their course instructors.
🤔 Who should take 05-418/05-818 Design of Educational Games?
The intended audience includes graduate and advanced undergraduate students in HCI, CS, ETC, Design, and students interested in education or psychology research. Students must have successfully completed 1 course in HCI, Game Design, Computer Science, or Cognitive/Education psychology, or must have instructor permission to enroll.
💓 Editor’s Pick — The Duo that added Color to iMessage!
Written & edited by: 🥸 Kaitlyn Ng
Did you know the top of the ice cream cone emoji 🍦 is a reused poop emoji 💩? Emojis act as a bridge between human and digital interaction, conveying emotions that may be harder to express with just plain text. Learn how these familiar icons were born out of pure friendship and joy! 😄❤️🎉
In 2008, Angela Guzman was an Apple intern from The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) assigned to create the first set of Apple Emojis. Over the course of three months, she learned the ropes of icon design while developing her lifelong friendship with Raymond Sepulveda, her mentor (both pictured above).
🛠️ Learning Craftsmanship
💍 Designing the hard stuff first
Angela first designed the engagement ring emoji due to its challenging textures like the faceted gem and metal.
🔎 Focusing on the details
As Angela got quicker and better at designing the emojis, she still always made sure to check the details, always zooming in and out of her screen to stare at every pixel. Woodgrain direction, fruit freckles, leather stitching, were all small details she deemed significant.
🫂 Human Connection Intertwining with Design
👗 Taking inspiration from human experiences
The dress emoji’s turquoise color and brown waist band were based on the color palette and proportions of a dress Angela’s sister had created in real life!
🤩 Filling a workspace with laughter and joy
As Angela and Raymond connected over their shared background, their time spent designing together was filled with laughter and tears of joy, all the while developing a successful set of now-universal emojis. Even now, Raymond remains a great friend and mentor to Angela.
👯 “Magic happens when design leads to friendship, and that friendship leads back to design. For every emoji made, I learned something new. For every emoji made, Raymond and I became better friends. The better friends we became, the better designer I became. In this case, friendship and design happened one emoji at a time. And that’s a story worth sharing.”
— Angela Guzman
🎭 Resource — Fun Design Challenges to Ignite Your Creativity!
Written & edited by: 🧸 Ahana Banerjee
Ever hit a roadblock in your creative journey? We've all been there. But fear not! Sometimes all it takes is a little inspiration to get those creative juices flowing again. These projects challenge designers to experiment with different mediums, sources of inspiration, and processes to get those creative juices flowing again 🌟
🦁 🏢 Unexpected pop culture inspiration: Take a shot at exploring cities through iconic movie creatures, just like Josephine Ohl did. It's a fun way to infuse creativity into your designs and break free from the ordinary!
🥤🥔 A product label that uses brand materials: Emulate Wake Coulter's innovative approach by experimenting with unconventional materials (his was potatoes! ) Let your designs stand out by thinking outside the box!
✉️ 🗣️ Postcards with a message: Take a cue from Aly Dodds and design postcards to advocate for important causes. Design your own impactful messages and let your creativity make a difference.
🎼 🖌️ A reinterpretation of a classic work: Do you have a favorite old album cover? Are you a fan of any classical painters? Like Chelsea Majuri, experiment with different redesigns into classical texts with creative reinterpretations. It's a chance to blend classic themes with your unique design flair.
🎁 Fun — Cheerful Local Package Designs to Make Souvenirs Stand Out
Written & edited by: 🚐 Sherry Chen
Are you traveling for Spring Break? 🛫 Maybe you just like gifting and souvenirs. Check out this book Cheerful Local Package Designs to Make Souvenirs Stand Out.
Can’t find these packages? Even the book would be a great gift! You can find it here:
🤔 Who’s behind the scenes?
The editors behind this week’s issue are 🥸 Kaitlyn Ng, 🧸 Ahana Banerjee, 🕺 Arin Pantja, 🍳 Evelyn Lui, 🚐 Sherry Chen, and 🦝 Caleb Sun.
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