Ariel Haney, a master’s student in the School of Information, had been hoping to take the UI Prototyping Design Clinic course before graduating this spring. When she discovered that the course wasn’t scheduled to be taught this year, Haney made an unusual decision — she decided to teach the course herself.
She teamed up with fellow students Travis Yoo and Bailey Smith, who took the course in Fall 2010; all three are now second-year master’s students in the I School’s MIMS program. “All of us are interested in the field of user interface design and user experience,” explained Yoo.
“It was really valuable to work with Travis and Bailey on the course,” added Haney, “since they had actually taken the class, and I haven’t taken it myself.”
The course is offered as Computer Science 298, a student-led, student-initiated course under the supervision of a faculty member. And the three are really facilitators, rather than teachers; the class features a series of guest lecturers — working user-experience professionals — who share their knowledge and skills in a hands-on workshop setting.
This semester’s guest speakers include two UI designers from Google, Ph.D. students from the Berkeley computer science department and the Berkeley Institute of Design, computer science professor Björn Hartmann (who facilitated the course when Yoo and Smith were enrolled), and I School alumni Ljuba Miljkovic (a user-experience designer at a Y Combinator–funded startup) and Shawna Hein (a user-experience designer at EchoUser). “We have a fantastic line-up this semester,” said Yoo.
Students in the class will learn a variety of prototyping tools and techniques that are essential for user interface designers and developers. Techniques range from low fidelity to high fidelity prototypes, from quick-and-dirty prototypes that can be assembled in a couple of minutes to full-fledged interactive prototypes that may take several days to develop.
“The class should provide students with a complete toolkit of options they can use when prototyping a product,” said Haney.
The first class meeting is tomorrow.
