News

License to Design: Elevator Pitch 2013

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:00:15 -0700

License to Design
The Elevator Pitch is an activity that the Junior Industrial Design class participates every year. Professionals are invited to act as a panel of judges and critique each student as he or she stand up for no more than two minutes and "pitch" themselves, ideas, philosophy, passion etc. and how it relates to their self branding and design objectives.

Senior ID Collaboration with Geography and Archeology departments

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:58:50 -0800

ID Senior Project: Spring 2013
The Industrial Design senior class is working on a project in collaboration with the Geography and Archeology departments to commercialize remote sensing UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) for surveying terrain. We've broken down the different aspects of the project to allow every student to be involved in the process. There are four groups; user experience, packaging, launch & recovery and documentation.
The user experience group analyzes our main clients from the geography department as well as other potential users of this product. Their job is to create a design brief that supplies the other groups with in depth information on the user's needs and wants as well as establish our overall goals.
The Packaging group is concerned with the internal components of the UAV, using the Skywalker x8 as a basis. They are working with members of the Engineering department to understand the inner workings and find new ways of composing them to make it easier for the user to put together. They are constructing the packaging and developing the schematics in such a way that a person without any knowledge on the subject could put it together.
The Launch & Recovery group is looking at the overall process of using the UAV. How it's carried, how it's stored, how it's launched, how the vehicle is recovered and how the information is then retrieved from the vehicle. They are developing add on features that can improve these different aspects of the user experience.
The Documentation group follows each groups activity, ensuring that everything is photographed and recorded. Additionally they are in charge of promoting the project to the community and creating a brand image for the commercialization of the UAV. This is taking on the creative Marketing aspect of designing a new product.

BRIGHT IIDeAs: Students Designing for Students

Fri, 2 Nov 2012 10:23:28 -0700

Who better to design our informal learning spaces but students themselves?
We are pleased to have our Junior Interior Design Studio embarking on a campus project to remodel an existing academic corridor. Nine student teams, from Professor Ottolia’s class, have an opportunity to research, plan and design an informal learning space from a student’s perspective. This wide passage way is the perfect in-between space for socializing, teaching, learning and collaboration. It serves as a major corridor from the College of the Arts Offices (to the south), to the Beach Hut (to the north) and the Library (in the west).
The project description is to redesign the corridor to provide a place where students can socialize and study. It should be a place that inspires collaboration and creativity, as well as, where students and faculty can gather before and after class. The project goal being to develop a design solution with a strong connection to the exterior areas and entryways: the Quad, Beach Hut, MacIntosh and Education Buildings.
As students, we find that informal places outside the classroom are great places to collaborate with classmates and faculty. The informality of certain spaces is ideal for teaching and mentoring and an alternative for students who would usually head home after class or to the library. With comfortable seating, places to spread out their work and electrical outlets for mobile devices, individuals, pairs, small groups and teams can begin and extend their classroom conversations.
Stay tuned for the next phase of our project, following the research…

BFA Grads Awarded 2012 Calibre Awards, FORM Magazine

Mon, 1 Oct 2012 11:18:54 -0700

BFA Class of 2012 grads, Yuriana Stransky and Kandy Chang
were published in the September/October issue of FORM (LA AIA Magazine, http://www.formmag.net/) for IIDA Scholarships that they were awarded at the 2012 Calibre Awards.

Design 360A Students Create Engaging Campus Installations

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 10:51:57 -0700

http://www.daily49er.com/yarn-ties-design-students-to-the-environment-1.2769896#.UJv-bLR970B
Yarn Ties Design Students to the Environment
By Anglea Ratzlaff
Daily 49er
The friendship has been all tied up with yarn, connecting the trees that line the brick pathway and making students stop to reevaluate their surroundings.
Some bikes got tangled in the yarn while other passer-bys voluntarily walked into the design, viewing the trees through lines created by the red and white strands of yarn.
“Everybody walks through [the friendship walk],” Ryan Mora, a senior design major who helped create the project for class, said. “We wanted to emphasize the beauty of that spot with the design.”
The yarn tactic worked, attracting about eighty percent of the people who walked by, according to Mora.
“A lot of people came up to us,” he said. “People would stop texting and take pictures of it.”
The class project was constructed on Sept. 19. Four groups in the class were required to design in an outside environment and present in class what they found, assistant design professor Heather Barker said.
“One of the critical components in my class is that they have to make sure people interact with the design,” she said. “Design is often see by many as ‘fluff’ … [However,] it’s really crucial.”
Classmates Mora and senior design major Alana Johnson got together with a group of five to complete the project. The prompt allowed for a lot of freedom among the groups.
According to Baker, different groups created political designs, touching on issues like the corruption of oil companies and the dwindling number of local parks. However, Mora’s group took a simpler route, using only one material.
“They had one of the strongest designs,” Baker said. “You can make such a bigger impact with a much smaller move.”
Johnson said the design was intentionally simple.
“The class is based in outside environment and how can you change it,” she said. “[The design] was very minimal, but it had a big impact.”
Johnson, who is also the arts commissioner for Associated Students, Inc., said she has been designing ever since she was young.  Aside from redesigning rooms in her own home, Johnson worked on renovating the ASI office during the summer.
“I was able to design new offices,” she said. “For now, it’s just having that experience and building up my portfolio.”
Even though the class promotes designing in an outside environment, Johnson said that the skill sets learned could help her efforts to become a product or set designer, which requires “a space to be built within a space.”
Mora, who became interested in pursing a career as an architect in 2008, also said the project helped open his eyes to other facets in the field.
“I started to think about how it affects the environment,” he said. “When walking around the city … people don’t realize how important it is to have that structure.”
Mora said the class not only focuses on the outside environment, but it also explores cultural structure and communication of design. The next class project will require students to make a new design for a Disney amusement park located in a foreign country with different cultural structure, Mora said.
“Design is so important,” he said. “Design in general is based on psychology.”