neil ward

Neil Ward, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Drake University, joins Gary Rozanc to discuss collaborations with students in the Art & Design, Computer Science and Journalism departments at Drake to design and develop Android Apps. Neil goes into details on logistically making the collaboration work for scheduling, matching students’ skill levels across departments, and the benefits and pitfalls of the project. Neil also discusses how this project fits into the overall design program at Drake and where UX theory would best fit into a design program.

I’m taking a different approach in the form of a round table discussion between an industry professional and interactive design educators. The reason for the departure in this episode stems from the opportunity of having two interactive design educators presenting at the annual SECAC, formerly the Southeastern College Art Conference, in the same room with an actual practicing designer at a real life agency in Columbus, Ohio. Coincidentally, at the same time, the AIGA Design Educators Community just released a draft version of their Designer of 2025 and I think it’s great to get everybody in the room at the same time and talk about the report If you’ve been listening to the podcast, it’s basically been about what I think we should be teaching and me asking professionals or educators to get their feedback. I think this format gives me a great chance to get somebody else talking about what they think should be taught and then getting interactive design educators and professionals together to say, “Yeah, these are the things we really need to target immediately!”, or “These things aren’t really relevant to us on a day to day basis.”, and follow up from the education perspective, on how do we incorporate that?