This three-day intensive course focuses on increasing the student’s individual level of computer-aided design skills and literacy through the exploration of the fundamentals of both raster and vector-based software. Course projects provide hands-on experience with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator software.
This course will introduce typography to students through an examination of its history, technology, and usage. Practical applications of current typography software such as Adobe InDesign and Illustrator will be covered along other analog and digital typographic tools. The three-day course will include a series of lectures, exercises, and accumulate in one final project. Course content will have an emphasis on typography as it applies to people-centered communication systems and emerging tools and methods.
Ethical and inclusive problem-solving requires a human-centered approach, particularly when designing in the sensitive area of disease prevention, management and cure. This course will utilize research strategies, address communication dissemination challenges, and identify barriers to empowering change in the area of disease. Driven by this exploration, innovative solutions will be conceptualized, designed and prototyped. Individual and team projects will be undertaken. One project will be in the field.
Communication designers are challenged with representing data, ideas, and knowledge with clarity, precision and efficiency. Through both active studio learning and seminar content, this course explores processes and philosophies relevant to the creation of effective communication of complex data about human health using existing and emerging technologies.
This course provides an introduction to changing the behaviors of others. Through interactive in-person and virtual sessions, students will learn about overcoming resistance to change and designing strategies for changing behaviors at the individual, team and organizational levels. Throughout the course, students will work in small teams to apply what they are learning to an actual, on-going task they are working on together. By learning what does and does not work, students will gain practical experience in trying to influence others to change their behaviors.
Design thinking is a methodology that uses human-centered research to drive innovation. This course emphasizes best practices for empathic human-centered research to inform opportunity framing, ideation, concept testing, an iterative process and collaboration. In this course, students will develop and refine abilities to construct, analyze and use the process of designing through the lens of design thinking. This course is not recommended for students who have taken the undergraduate courses Integrative Design Process or Innovation Essentials.
This course is designed to foster learning through doing and to exploring students’ talents, skills, and shortcomings as negotiators. Negotiation exercises will provide students with an opportunity to attempt strategies and tactics in a low-risk environment. Students will apply integrative and distributive negotiations techniques to evaluate the nature of the conflict and determine which negotiations techniques are best for resolving the conflict. Students will design negotiation strategies and apply them to effectively negotiate in one-on-one and team negotiations scenarios.
MS Health Communication Design students will create a Capstone Project as the culminating experience within the degree requirements. The Capstone Project is an independently defined and led project that requires in-depth study leading to multi-faceted output that draws from aspects of the full degree curriculum. This course will take the students through the process of identifying a topic, framing the opportunity to be addressed and finding resources to support execution of the project in the Capstone Project course to follow.
The act of play heightens optimism, energy, joy, memorable experiences, and is an essential part of a fulfilling and well life. Play is a catalyst for creativity and innovation and can exist in unexpected situations. In this course, students will explore the benefits and possibilities facilitated by play via concepts and theories of play for educational, imaginative and wellness purposes. Students will apply these concepts to designed products and/or communication tools that connect to personal skill sets and interests.
Individual life stages and identities will be examined as part of the greater collective life cycle. Sustainable system design, in which responsive and equitable health and well-being are at the core, will drive health communication design responses to the public sphere of government, policymakers and global connectors. This course will utilize research and communication design strategies to deliver meaningful action-oriented design solutions that address life stage and identity challenges. Innovative concepts will be created and prototyped. Individual and team projects will be undertaken. One project will be in the field.
Health and Package Design will provide students with the opportunity to investigate three-dimensional consumer-focused structures in the context of health-related messaging and goals. Students will explore implicit and explicit health messaging strategies in combination with the experience of interacting with a physical structure. Human-centered design research methods will be stressed throughout the development process. Sustainability, material selection, systemic impacts of the package design industry and the connection to human health will also be explored.
This course is the culminant experience for MS Health Communication Design students and provides the opportunity to build upon project framing work done previously in the Capstone Preparation course. Students will prototype, test and execute final deliverables in accordance with an independently defined project. The course structure brings together key learning about human-centered design and an iterative creative process in the context of designing communications for health topics.