[email protected]
Info sessions for prospective students:
Thursday, November 6, 7:30 p.m.
CCA San Francisco campus, 1111 Eighth Street (at 16th and Wisconsin)
Saturday, November 8, 2:30 p.m.
The Meeting Room, 2999 Overland Ave. #205, Los Angeles
http://www.cca.edu/design
The Graduate Program in Design at California College of the Arts is founded on the premise that design is inherently transdisciplinary. Design interweaves function, beauty, and communication, often manifesting itself in complex systems that combine 2D, 3D, time-based work, and interaction design.
We seek applicants with a grounding in craft and a desire to develop as sophisticated, transdisciplinary designers. Our aim is to grow skilled design practitioners into agile, strategic, and visionary design directors as well as imaginative and productive collaborators. Our curriculum includes a unique mix of studio and seminar courses, which focus on critical methods and strategies, including formal and human-centered research, ethics and entrepreneurship, futurism, and a variety of topic-oriented and multidisciplinary studios.
Interaction design is an overarching theme in our program. Traditionally limited to the domains of engineering, computer science, and cognitive psychology, it has arrived rather recently in the world of design. Interaction design is not exclusively—or even primarily—about screens or controllers. Rather, as we frame it, it plays an essential role in the design of objects, spaces, environments, and visual media.
Selected Faculty
WENDY JU holds a PhD from the Center for Design Research at Stanford University. She is the founder of Ambidextrous Magazine, Stanford’s journal of design. Her current research in the areas of physical interaction design and ubiquitous computing investigates how implicit interactions can enable novel and natural interfaces through the intentional management of attention and initiative.
“Interaction design is the design of things with dynamic response.”
BRENDA LAUREL, program chair, has worked in interactive media since 1976. Before coming to CCA she chaired the Graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design, and she was a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. Drawing on her research in gender and technology at Interval Research, she cofounded the software company Purple Moon to create interactive media for girls. Her books include Computers as Theatre and Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. She holds an MFA and a PhD in theater from Ohio State University.
“Interaction designers consider people in relation to designed objects or environments as dynamic systems. Design facilitates the emergence of experiences ranging from productivity to social connection, discovery, and delight.”
SCOTT NAZARIAN is a principal at frog design in San Francisco, where he focuses primarily on the challenges surrounding human-computer interaction. He works with Samsung, Intel, HP, Adobe, and other high-profile clients to define the space of user experience across a range of products, services, and systems.
“Humans are a poetic lot and often need help aligning their perceptions amid a rapidly evolving technology landscape. Designers are the arbiters of this understanding.”
COLIN OWEN earned his BA in architecture at Rice University and his MSID at Art Center College of Design. He also teaches in CCA’s undergraduate Industrial Design Program. He has worked with a diverse set of clients over the course of his career, including Nokia, NASA, Nike, Wireless Generation, BioDesign, and Terrazign.
“The function of interaction design is to direct attention via media and objects. More than any other division of design, it moves across and is dependent upon a diverse set of methods and media.”
For more information go to: http://www.cca.edu/design
