DES 303 Syllabus

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Image by Mark Lombardi

Course Description

The advanced exploration of digital processes for art and design, with a focus on interactivity, motion, sound, and AI-driven content creation in the virtual realm. 2.0 units. Prerequisite: DES 202 and DES 203.

Overview

This course approaches digital design as a time-based and interactive practice, exploring how narrative, motion, sound, and computational processes can organize experience, direct attention, and shape cultural meaning. Students will investigate a single theme across multiple formats, moving from language and image into motion, sound, interface, and code-based interactive systems. Through these transformations, students will study how meaning shifts and is reshaped as it moves between media, platforms, and modes of participation.

In response to a rapidly evolving technological landscape, the course embraces digital tools (such as AI-assisted generation and experimental platforms for creation and distribution) as opportunities for expanding the scope of design practice. Students will be encouraged to treat these technologies not only as instruments but as collaborators. By engaging critically with these tools, students will explore how emerging technologies can reconfigure both the process and the possibilities of design.

Over the semester, students will produce a body of work that answers these questions in practice. Final projects will synthesize narrative, motion, sound, and interactivity into a functioning interface object that operates both as a creative artifact and a reflection on designing in an increasingly complex media landscape.

Learning Objectives

Apply HTML/CSS, wireframing, and UI/UX principles to create user-centered digital experiences.
Integrate motion graphics, music, and sound effects into screen-based and physical environments.
Analyze and evaluate online, platform-based, and virtual environment design.
Create short-form video, motion, and interactive content for web and social media using AI tools.
Use advanced prompt writing to generate and integrate AI-driven visuals, audio, and narration into cohesive design projects.

Course Notes

Grading system: letter grades.

Teaching Methodologies

This course is structured as a studio-based environment. Students are expected to participate actively in group discussions and critiques, learning both from their own work and from the perspectives of their peers.

The course will have several components:
· Talks: Presentations that frame the critical use of digital tools, survey historical and contemporary precedents, and introduce conceptual approaches to time-based and interactive design.

· Tutorials: Hands-on workshops where students will build technical skills in motion, sound, interactivity, and AI-assisted design, applying them directly to ongoing projects.

· Homework Assignments: Weekly tasks that build on the skills introduced in talks and/or tutorials.

· Final Project: A culminating project that synthesizes the semester’s work. Weekly assignments are designed to scaffold this project, allowing students to iteratively refine a single theme throughout the semester.

Teaching tools:

· In addition to Brightspace, the course will have a dedicated website where students can download PDFs of talks, tutorials, and assignment briefs, as well as access other reference materials.