School of Design
Faculty Research & Creative Activity
Instructor Jay Margalus, adjunct Rudy Ristich, and their students received a $40,000 sponsorship to collaborate on a
yearly hardware project where they design and develop over 1,700 custom game platforms for the local hacker event Thotcon.
The
School of Design Talks series invites leading designers who have created innovative responses to the personal, local, and global challenges of the 21st century. Design Incubation Colloquium 5.1 was one of the many recent events held at CDM as part of the series.
21st Century Learning Analytics, a project of the
Technology for Social Good Research and Design Lab, brings together design, data mining, and learning analytics to create new tools for educators understand and visualize data.
Highlighted Projects
Dr. Sheena Erete and her students in the
Technology for Social Good Research and Design Lab are working with resource-strained communities in Chicago to design technologies that support community-led efforts to address issues such as violence, civic engagement, and STEM education. Her research will lead to the design and development of technologies that support community development by amplifying local community assets and initiatives.
The Virtual and Augmented Design (VAD) Lab hosts classes and projects to research and develop experimental games on emerging platforms. Lab director, Brian Schrank, Ph.D., is currently leading AR project development with Apple pushing the affordances of ARKit on iPhone. The current VR game project explores deformable virtual surfaces via hand and foot trackers.
Creative Areas
Digital imaging, illustration, and montage, combining digital and traditional Japanese image making processes.
Digital and tabletop game design, accessible game creation, play and the feminine, interactive fiction, game history, zine-making, witchcraft.
Games studies, queer studies, gender and media, design research.
Social computing, community informatics, designing technologies for local communities to address social issues, facilitate civic engagement, and encourage prosocial behavior.
Game development, interactive media, multimedia.
Design, Human Computer Interaction.
Media art, creative coding, user interface design, embodied interfaces, network media, open source software tools for the arts.
Game development, hardware, data analysis.
Design, interactive media.
Collaborative technologies, interactive media, information systems.
Design of technology tools, learning, design thinking, data dashboards and visualizations, online social learning networks, learning analytics, design patterns, experience design.
UX design, design futures, design fiction, augmented reality, academia and industry collaboration.
Transmedia storytelling, design, virtual reality, filmmaking, photography.
Game design, virtual reality, augmented reality, physical games, folk games, art games, games and the avant-garde, serious games, political games, experimental games, indie games, game criticism.
Information experience design, information architecture, usability, augmented reality, usable security, secure design, creative code, programming.
Interactive fiction, exploring culture and metaphor with play.
Design, education, game development.
Design, creative coding, graphics, photography, visualization, 3D modeling/animation, emerging and experimental media, critical social theory, research design, educational research.
Design, multi-media installation, art and documentary cinema, photography, photomontage
Graphics, animation, design, branding, typography.