Meeting & Agendas

Gail welcomed all attendees, and each person introduced themselves. Members Present: Stephanie Cain, Lead UXUI Designer, McGarrah Jessee Erica Cruz, User Experience Designer, Optum Chad Currie, Creative Director, Slide UX Lauren Golembiewski, CEO, Voxable James Hyland, UX Designer, National Instruments Alexis Puchek, Principal Designer, frog Stephanie Schuchmacher, Mgr. of User Experience, Lifesize Dina Williams, Product Designer, Funsize Latife Yardim, Sr. User Experience Designer, Comcast Members unable to attend: Heather Hupperich, Experience Designer, T3 Michael Stewart, UX Design Lead, IBM Peter Perceval, Sr. Designer, IBM ACC Faculty/Staff Present: Tom Nevill, Dean, Arts & Digital Media Gail Bayeta, Dept. Chair, Visual Communication Marc Bonasso, Faculty, Visual Communication- User Experience Design Molly McClurg, Faculty, Visual Communication- User Experience Design Jennifer Jones, Instructional Associate and Adjunct Faculty Alida McCullough, Administrative Assistant Kimberly Aland, Program Specialist, Visual Communication

Gail explained the importance of the advisory committee to our program, guiding curriculum so that it is relevant and current for students who will be seeking employment after they complete a two year AAS or certificate. She thanked committee members for sharing their time and expertise with the Visual Communication Dept., as well as serving on ACAP reviews and other events. Molly McClurg, Marc Bonasso, and Tom Nevill reiterated their thanks.

Vice Chair Erica Cruz chaired the meeting, since committee chair Michael Stewart was teaching and unable to attend. She presented the minutes from the August 2017 meeting, which had also been emailed to committee members. Action: After a brief review, Alexis Puchek moved to approve the minutes. James Hyland seconded the motion. All were in favor.

Student Survey: Information gathered from a student survey was shared with the committee, including data regarding current employment and the level of education already completed, as well as preferred class format (classroom, online, or hybrid). Molly said that we will continue to survey students, and also survey alumni in the future. VisCom Strategy: Departmental goals are as follows. 1. Increase awareness of the Visual Communication Dept. 2. Increase engagement between students and the department. 3. Improve course accessibility to students. 4. Increase student employability. Diversity Data: Alexis Puchek asked if diversity information was available. Molly said that info had not been gathered in the survey. Dean Tom Nevill said that he would be able to gather that info, and Molly agreed that we should look at increasing diversity. Lauren noted that although the majority of students polled preferred to attend classroom classes, she wondered about the preference of people who are NOT enrolled, as she feels that there is a generational shift toward distance learning. Molly agreed that we should figure out a way to explore that. Tom mentioned that distance learning is the fastest growing part of the Arts & Digital Media area of study, and there will be a standard for such courses in place by 2020.

Degree Plan Changes- Curriculum Development New courses approved by the committee and being introduced in Fall 2018 include: UX Tools Design Ideation Interaction Design Portfolio Design New courses to be introduced in Spring 2019 are: • Product Design • Applied UX Lab Current course descriptions and program maps were included in the materials provided to committee members. ACAP Results and Gaps identified In February 2018, seven UXUI industry professionals, including six members of the current advisory committee, met with members of ACC’s instructional design staff to conduct an Austin Competency Analysis Profile (ACAP) review of skills needed for several targeted job titles in the user experience design area, and identify gaps in the current curriculum. Job titles included: Information Architect, Interaction Designer, User Experience Designer, User Interface Designer, Design Researcher, User Researcher, Research Coordinator, Product Designer, Content Strategist, Web Designer, App Designer, Mobile / App Designer. Molly’s report: It was a gruelingly long day with a lot of details, and I want to go through this to show you how insightful the outcome of the meeting was. It wasn’t just something to go into a file somewhere and be looked at again in three years. We really took it and tore it apart. We took the competencies that came out of the ACAP and compared them to all the competencies for every class that we’re teaching right now in the UX/UI program. We asked a) what do they say we should be teaching, b) what are we teaching now, and c) where are the gaps. Gail explained that a competency is all the little things needed to do a particular job, to create a product or provide a service. Each course is built on competencies, which a student should attain by completing a course. There was no mention of coding, only one competency that mentioned being able to prototype using HTML 5. That was the only time it came up in the ACAP, so just noting that since it’s a big part of our upcoming discussion. Gaps identified by ACAP Marc stated that the goal is to provide foundational level UX education, helping students to get a broad set of concepts and techniques for the UX profession, to qualify them for internships and entry level jobs. Gaps identified: - Business/Enterprise - Information Architecture/Information Design/Content Strategy To close those gaps Marc Bonasso presented a couple of concepts for new courses for discussion. Possible New Course: Design and the Enterprise • Prerequisite: none • Team taught with the Management (Business) Department • Also open to Management and Computer Science students • General Business knowledge • Design & Development in the Product Life Cycle • Development Methodologies (e.g. Agile) Discussion/Suggestions: Possible New Course: Design and Software • Prerequisite: none • Team taught with the Computer Science (CS) Department • Open to Design and Computer Science students • Collaborative Projects • Structural Design of Shared Information • Organizing, Labeling, Searching and Navigating Systems • Design of software products and experiences to support usability and discoverability • Creating consistent well organized content • Delivering what users need when they need it Discussion/suggestions: There was overall agreement the content proposed was valuable and needs a class of its own, but that the name should better describe the content. Comments and questions: Name should be like “information architecture” “content strategy” more broadly not about software specifically - Alexis IA < > Content Strategy < > Product Strategy Will it overlap with marketing communication? “Content is where things can get fuzzy between disciplines” - Chad Product / Marketing can include SEO handoff and more technical knowledge - Lauren General consensus this class should mention but not cover SEO or marketing-centric content strategy or marketing web design Feedback from Committee members: Committee members felt that it would be important to include: An introduction to systemic thinking writing annotations if thinking of Agile approach, coming from a visual perspective, the difference between a light DLS vs. a really in depth design language system Presenting to larger groups, knowing that you may never see them again Fully documenting everything If thinking of enterprise on a larger scale, a lot of times it’s an in-depth ecosystem. You could partner with mobile or other things to say, how do we make a software suite together, a pairing of shared assets. interviewing skills should be included Questions & Comments: Chad: What is meant by “enterprise”? Does that mean large organizations, or does that mean playing nice with business requirements? Marc: Probably both. At last advisory meeting there was mention of enterprise level projects from a software perspective that we are open to potentially including in our coursework, but yes, how does the business aspect of this work with the design aspect of what we’re doing, and making sure that’s getting fair play among the things we’re offering. The course names could change, I understand that name carries a lot of different meanings depending upon context. Chad: wondering, does this mean working in house, vs. working in an agency environment? Is there any differentiation, or does it just apply to working in the business, regardless of what the engagement? I see a lot of people coming out of programs with a vision of operating like a freelance engagement. AP: If it’s more about business structure as well, success metrics, success criteria, key performance indicators, how you measure those, return on investment, all of that would be important to talk about here. Lauren: A lot of the hiring on the enterprise side goes from contract to hire, so how they play a role as a contractor in an organization as opposed to internally being there, you’re still focusing on the business, but have a slightly different role in the environment you’re in. Accessibility: Where to include in the curriculum? General consensus we should be including as content in existing classes Put high level overview about accessibility in earliest classes (UX Survey) - Latife Put in visual design - Stephanie Cain It’s mostly color contrast and size, should be in Visual Design - Alexis Testing for accessibility and screen readers could be in Design Research - Lauren Identifying accessibility needs and regulations of a business (i.e. government, etc.) could be covered in the Design and Business class - Stephanie Cain / Dina? Feedback accessibility should be covered in Interaction Design - Alexis Coding: Marc posed the question of how much coding should be taught in the UXUI program. Currently it’s taught in 3 of the 15 courses on the degree plan: Responsive Design I, Responsive Design 2, and Swift Programming. General consensus there should be at least one class, but likely we don’t need more Responsive Design I and Responsive Design 2 have stuck with him and been valuable. Learning breakpoints, dabbling in code was valuable. - James Is there a Computer Science program for students interested in front-end development? - Dina Some exposure for empathy of working with engineers, 1 semester - Dina Learning grids and modular design systems is important - Lauren There should be one class in Responsive, very important at frog. - Alexis If one Responsive class, it should cover: nesting elements, designing small and scaling up, designing large and scaling down, basic HTML and CSS, not building an entire site - Alexis Agrees that basic HTML and ability to scale that up or down is important to learn, also loops into IA learnings - Lauren Current Responsive 2 class sounds less important - Alexis Would rather see students learning to set up a grid system in Sketch - Alexis Mobile first practices are very important - everyone I recommend calling the one class “mobile first” and covering both responsive and a bit of native, maybe Swift project can fit in there - Lauren Swift isn’t used by anyone as a designer.

There were lots of questions about certificates vs. institute, etc. but not many opinions on what we should offer. There were a few questions around how many students go for an AAS vs. certificate - Jennifer explained that students who come in having already earned a degree usually start by asking about the certificate, but when they understand that the general education courses they’ve already taken can be applied, they often go for the AAS. James stated that a certificate and a good portfolio would be appropriate for finding an internship as a way into a job without a degree. Jennifer mentioned that since our program is workforce, with a focus on getting students employed, it’s not likely that many of our courses will transfer to a 4-yr college. However, some schools will accept our credits toward a BAAS degree.

Voice technology and conversational user interface (CUI) was the big topic of the evening. Comments included: Main things students who want to learn CUI need to understand are the various technology platforms. Alexa’s guidelines is its own OS. Its highly collaborative with engineers, diagramming and writing, AI and machine learning knowledge, and understanding of how data drives design. - Lauren Voice Technology- Marc recently attended the first voice summit and learned about the impact that voice technology is having on the industry. Frog. wants to see case studies in portfolios on voice - Alexis Large orgs are investing in CUI, having these projects in portfolio is good - Lauren AI and Machine Learning is coming, increasing importance on IA and systemic thinking - Alexis Comcast has a UX team working on voice, a smart home technologies and ioT UX team, and an AI team. - Latife UX needs to understand where technology is today: AI is lots of things: recommendation engines and behavior understanding, machine learning for voice and language, computer vision for pictures - Lauren

Alexis Puchek made a motion to adjourn the meeting. James Hyland seconded. All agreed, so the meeting was adjourned at 7:53 pm.