The course numbers assigned to these descriptions employ the following structure:
Carry this scheme forward to 300 and 400 level.
Note: Since specific 300 and 400 level course numbers have not yet been assigned, course names have been used in their place where they appear as prerequisites.
The course provides an introduction to cognitive and perceptual processes as foundation to the design of virtual environments for work, learning and play. Students will use problem-solving and collaborative methods to explore a series of design cases on topics in cognitive science. The course will introduce issues of how individuals think, model, and perceive; how groups perceive and collaborate; and how these compare to, and differ from, machine cognition. Drawing liberally from theories in psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, sociology, computer science and education, the course emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach to design applications. Prerequisite: Students must have completed at least 24 credits, including TECH 100, TECH 101, CMPT 120, and CMPT 125. Recommended: IAT 103.
Theoretical foundation, philosophy and practical application of techniques for analyzing how people interact with designed environments covered by the 4 IART streams, including performance environments, human systems, new media, etc. A major goal is to determine how these environments should be designed to suit human capabilities. Students will engage in simple empirical usability studies in conjunction with active research projects within SIAT to gain experience in current usability practice. Prerequisite: Students must have completed at least 24 credits, including TECH 100, TECH 101, CMPT 120, & CMPT 125. Recommended:IAT 103.
This course is a second programming course that teaches practical and advanced programming concepts in the context of multimedia software. Students will explore fundamental programming issues in using and representing sound, graphics, animation, and text. They will be introduced to the key ideas of event-driven programming and object-oriented programming, and will work with sophisticated programming aids such as debuggers, profilers, automated testing tools, integrated development environments, and graphical prototyping systems. The basics of user-centered software design will be introduced, along with the use and design of large code libraries (e.g. OpenGL). Prerequisite: CMPT 125 (or equivalent first programming course).
This course introduces the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies within the historical backdrop of popular arts. Students begin by investigating early sacred imagery, royal spectacle, the rise of museums, world expositions as well as traditions in which artistic practice are incorporated into everyday life. Through discourse analysis, students explore how the emergence of photography and an international avant-garde influence narratives around cultural production. With the advent of television and film, popular arts gather momentum and prominence. Finally, students examine the growing interpenetration of marketing, entertainment, and art, as reflected in key areas of practice, including popular music and anime. Prerequisite: IAT 100, IAT 101.
This course introduces new media programming techniques using a visual dataflow language suitable for the rapid prototyping of media systems. Programming techniques are explored within the task environment for various individual and integrated media such as music, speech, animation, 3D graphics and their performance. An approach to the performative aspects of programming is developed through a series of composition and design projects in software across media. Prerequisite: none
This course will critique current approaches to media and the design of cultural interfaces. Cultural differences in art, design and communication are examined and related to current trends in new media. Culturally appropriate alternatives to ethnocentric norms are explored through creative media projects. Prerequisite: none.
This course presents an overview of the various forms and languages of drawing as both a critical and creative research tool. Activities and projects in each unit offer
opportunities to understand and apply drawing as a medium for visual thinking and conceptualization. Related social and gender concerns are investigated to contextualize figurative representations within a broader cultural framework. Prerequisite: TECH 101-3, IAT 101-3, IAT 103-3, CMPT 120-3, CMPT 125-3.
This course identifies characteristics of critical thinking and innovative and creative thinking, and develops a framework for discussing and understanding concepts of knowing, questioning, and developing and presenting ideas. Students learn to build an argument through rhetorical methods, explore the history and formulation of criticism, develop and formulate questions as a mechanism for constructing and supporting concept building. Students will explore the characteristics of innovation and creativity, including the importance of informational mediaries such as "opinion leaders" and "change agents". Prerequisite: IAT 100, IAT 101.
Project Management processes and methods are introduced and applied to a technology based project. Traditional concepts of project cycles are compared with newer multidisciplinary techniques. Topics include effective team formation, responding to a Request for Proposal (RFP), planning, implementation, and project completion. Issues involved in scheduling, estimates, resourcing, procurement, budgeting, and corrective actions are explored and applied. The course culminates with control issues and a post-mortem. Prerequisite: TECH 101, IAT 101, CMPT 120, CMPT 125.
Communication Design is used as a medium through which to introduce design process, design methods, and the relationship of experience to emergent interaction design thinking and problems. Projects are applied, but grounded in historical context and focus on design as a language-based activity. The course builds from simple graphic image and communication problems to grounded brand experience and marketing issues, to urban-scale issues and site considerations. Prerequisite: IAT 100, IAT 101.
Visualizing Interaction explores the theory and development of visual thinking and communication skills students will require to investigate and communicate the dynamics of interaction. Students will be introduced to a range of rapid visualization techniques including 2-d and perspective sketching, schematic representation, information graphics, visual explanations and storyboarding through a progressive series of visualization projects. Prerequisite: IAT 100, IAT 101.
Prototyping plays a critical role in the design, development and assessment of the physical relationship between people and technology. This course examines the role and value of different prototyping techniques in assessing human factors and ergonomics as well as the functional and visual characteristics of new design concepts. Projects will introduce students to the concept of human factors and ergonomics and explore physical prototyping techniques ranging from paper prototyping to basic model building. Prerequisite: IAT 231.
This course introduces techniques for 3D computer animation such as keyframing, performance animation, procedural methods, motion capture, and simulation. The course also includes an overview of story-boarding, scene composition, lighting and sound track generation. The course will explore current research topics in computer animation such as facial animation, behavioral animation, artificial life and interactive systems. Prerequisite: none.
This course reviews and consolidates the fundamentals of digital video production, including camera and composition skills, the role of sound, lighting, and continuity and montage editing. Students will review and analyze works from traditional cinema and from contemporary digital video. The course will reinforce fundamental skills and extend the student's abilities to use a range of digital production, post-production, and presentation techniques. Prerequisite: TechOne or the equivalent of IAT 101 and IAT 100.
An introduction to the acoustic and psychoacoustic properties of our sense of space as provided by sound and their digital mediation. Recording, editing and interactive audio design are introduced and used for the composition of audible spatial environments. Students learn the theory and practice of sound as it interacts with visible images and explore fundamental audio techniques for interactive audio-visual presentation. Prerequisite: none.
This course is based in electronic imaging and is designed to provide an introduction to digital photography and photographic image modification through the use of computer technology. Students will build skills and techniques in digital photography and image processing for digital printing, the web, and interactive multimedia.
Emphasis is placed on acquiring digital photographic skills based on proficiency through the appropriate use of software and image editing tools. Image formatting possibilities are investigated, along with aesthetic/functional aspects of site navigation, design, sequence and consistency. Prerequisite: none.
This course explores major concepts of the analytical and computational geometry and introduces tools for programming geometric information and displaying the results. Students completing this course will have a basic understanding of how computer graphics systems work; skills in writing programs to display geometric information for graphics display; ability to solve geometric problems using transformations, geometric representations and the basic algorithms of computational geometry; and familiarity with various common mathematical notation for representing spatial objects. Prerequisite: MATH-232, CMPT-125.
Students learn programming and machine perception techniques useful in the design of audiovisual media display systems. Readings, discussion and writing are conducted in critical issues in the historical development of interactive media including the poetics of site, space, time and technology.
This course includes the fundamentals of game design and the analysis of game experience. It will examine game as a set of rules, game as the experience of play, and game as a culturally-situated phenomenon. Students will analyze and produce a wide range of games in both electronic and non-electronic media. Prerequisite: IAT 200, IAT 201, IAT 202 or permission.
Drawing from science, cultural studies, sociology, management, and philosophy, this course explores the dynamics of electronic culture. Electronic culture fosters fluid, permeable, and performative experiences of the self. Interacting in virtual environments via avatars and screen names, and with "smart" objects and systems, we acquire ideas about selves and agency that reconfigure, even deconstruct, the boundaries of the human subject. The networked economy has been a test bed for mapping the dynamics of complex systems onto the field of social practice. With its emphasis on indeterminacy, complexity theory has been eagerly adopted in business circles as a means of managing change. It also provides powerful models for reconceptualizing work flow processes and the structure of organizations. Weblogs serve as individual research platforms and as a forum for dialogue, processing theory through a diaristic form of writing native to the Internet. Students will explore the core concepts of chaos theory and complexity science, and discuss connections between the rise of chaos theory/complexity science and parallel developments in literature and the humanities. Prerequisite: 45 credit hours or permission.
Body Interface explores ideas of embodiment, knowledge, and space within the human relationship to technology. Throughout this course, students will construct and analyze contemporary and historical models of bodily interaction with machines; understand physical practices of embodiment, and apply these concepts to representation, design, and the production of artistic interface. Prerequisite: IAT 310-3 or permission.
This course takes an embodied approach to design and artistic practices. An understanding of kinesthesis and kinesthetic methodologies are introduced by combining theory and practice. Students use their bodies as starting points for understanding the logic of urban, artistic and social space. Their projects are based on enhanced or transformed physical and perceptual awareness and are complemented by theoretical discourse in the area of somatics, architecture and technologically mediated space. Classes are part seminar and part physical workshop. Prerequisite:45 credit hours.
Building from a contextual overview of live performance in the 20th century that emphasizes performance art, happenings and the fluxus movement, this course guides students to develop their own substantial media performance or participatory installation project while introducing theoretical frameworks to critique, analyze and debate their own work and the work of others. Classes are part seminar and part physical workshop. Prerequisite: IAT 301 or permission.
This course explores emerging issues related to research, practice and theory within performance and media art studies. Topics will include the discussion and development of advanced projects incorporating contemporary issues relating to theory and applications in the context of art production and practice. Prerequisite: an approved lower division culture theory elective or permission.
This course focuses on the material culture of the 19th century to the present, with an emphasis on design produced since 1960. The history of design disciplines germane to Interaction Design are explored. These include Industrial Design, Architectural Design, Furniture Design, Graphic Design, Typography, Environmental Design and Urban Design among others. Assignments are project-based and apply historical precedents into skill and conceptual building exercises. Prerequisite: IAT 103 or permission.
A project-based course that explores the relationship between designed products, services, and systems, and the meta-contexts within which design operates as a form of cultural production. Design is considered as a form of language that can be analyzed using ethnography and cultural theory. Once design is itself understood as a language, we turn to the contexts for the use of design and explore what languages form the reception and interactive sites for cultural communication and meaning achievable through design. Prerequisite: IAT 230, IAT 231 or permission.
Experience and Interaction Design explores how design practices have shifted focus from artifact to experience, and from the desktop to the event. This course introduces the concepts of experience design and its relatedness to interaction design. It investigates the design approach of reflective practice and the relevance of aspects of cognitive science and sociology to experience design. The course also introduces the methods of human-centered design such as user-centered design and participatory design, and forms of design knowledge in pattern language and contextual analysis as necessary approaches to the complexity of experience design. Activities include collaborative prototyping projects that integrate theory, method and design outcomes. Prerequisite: IAT 230, IAT 232 or permission.
For designers of interactive systems, spaces, process and products for people, we find that investigations of methodology and practice are critical to design practice and enable designers to explore, build, communicate, and prototype complex and valuable interaction and human experience. This course is aimed at introducing, investigating, and experimenting with interaction and experience design methods. Students will engage a range of strategies and methods including ethnographic, participatory, reflective, narrative and performative methods as well as others, through projects and design scenarios. Students will be expected to develop new strategies and design responses that address complex design situations. Prerequisite: 45 credit hours or permission.
The cell phone and the PDA have moved from the realm of technological innovation to product standards for communication around the globe. We now have the ability to ‘embed’ more technology in any given product that we can practically use in a meaningful way. As a result it has become essential that we develop products that more effectively address the technical and performance requirements of our audience in a user friendly, responsive format. This course will explore the social, cultural and technical issues related to Design for Ubiquitous Computing through a related series of readings, discussions and design-oriented projects. Prerequisite: IAT 331, IAT 332 or permission.
User-driven offerings are experienced usually in time and space. This course uses architectural and urban thinking to speculate on how interactivity can occur in meaningful ways in the physical and increasingly complex urban world. The course uses applied projects in discursive modes to think critically about the impact of technology solutions on existing ecologies – urban, historical, social and geographical. Prerequisite: IAT 331, IAT 332 or permission.
Modeling & Simulation explores the theory and development of computer modeling skills and techniques students will require to simulate and evaluate interactive products and systems. The course will focus on the creation of solid geometric models for the evaluation of visual, static and dynamic properties of three dimensional parts and systems leading to the creation of physical parts using automated production techniques. Students will be required to model dynamic products and systems and produce sample parts. Prerequisite: IAT 332 or permission.
This course includes the fundamentals of game design and the analysis of game experience. It will examine game as a set of rules, game as the experience of play, and game as a culturally-situated phenomena. Students will analyze and produce a wide range of games in both electronic and non-electronic media. Prerequisite: 45 credit hours or permission.
This course develops advanced programming and scripting skills for developing prototype software, hardware and prototype versions of interactive systems. The emphasis will be on high level programming skills such as MAX and Flash that enable students to develop working prototypes of their projects for design and testing. Types of programming projects will include software, interactive systems, network and web-based systems, wearables, and mobile devices. Prerequisite: IAT 202 or permission.
Advanced techniques in real-time audio digital signal processing appropriate for game development and virtual environments are explored including interactive speech, music and sound effects. Students will design and build dynamic, navigable and immersive aural settings embedded in 3D graphic environments. Prerequisite: IAT 243 or equivalent or permission.
This course explores issues in making photographs that are conceived as surrogates for reality. Areas of investigation include historical precedents, major movements and practices that lie outside straight photography. Students are expected to mesh their personal aesthetic with the multitude of possibilities available in electronic media as they build a personal body of work. Prerequisite: IAT 244 or equivalent.
The advanced moving images course allows students to further
develop their communicative and artistic expression through the use
of moving images in new media. This course offers a strong studio
orientation based on conceptual,
aesthetical and technical training integrated within screenings,
seminars and critiques. Screenings center on experimental film,
video and multimedia materials. The class engages in themes of
physical and conceptual assembly, transformations of light and
form, movement, spatial and time based composition through digital
video production from initial premise to final presentation.
Students will have an
opportunity to develop an original and mature body of work that
reflects the student’s interest and passion for moving image
and digital media. Prerequisite: IAT 242 or permission.
Building on skill learn in Computer Animation, the Advanced Computer Animation course introduces advanced techniques for 3D computer animation such as advanced modeling ,animation and rendering. The course also covers creating both linear and interactive projects including short films, 3D worlds, avatars, and character animation and interactive visualizations. The course will explore current research topics in computer animation such as facial animation, behavioral animation, artificial life and interactive systems. Prerequisite: IAT 241 or permission.
This course introduces students to both physical and virtual immersive environments and worlds. A large range of immersive possibilities will be explored as to both define immersive space and to begin to understand how to author immersive systems. Once fundamentals are established the planning and execution stage begins where students will explore real-time dramatic performance art in immersive environments. This course culminates in a public interactive narrative performance or product. In this course we design, script, create actor roles, build 3d immersive sets, rehearse and document the plan of our class conceived immersive performance that delves into the blurring definitions of author and audience, fact and fiction, physical and virtual.
The course provides introduction to conceptual models and their roles in systems design. The modeling languages and techniques are introduced in the context of educational and interactive systems cases studies showing direct benefits of conceptual models in analysis and design. Conceptual modeling of special aspects learners, learning systems, multimedia and entertainment systems are covered through introduction of standards, patterns and established representational systems. Prerequisite: IAT 200, CMPT 225 or IAT 202 or permission.
This course will explore how to design systems in which an explicit model of the user plays a vital role. To be effective, interactive programs need to represent knowledge about their users. The user model is the part of a program that knows about its users and how best to interact with them. Users can be viewed as optimizing agents (as in economics), story-tellers, artifact creators (e.g. Photoshop users, etc.), learners (e.g. education), shoppers (e.g. eBusiness), and so on. The course will explore practical design issues, such as deciding what aspects of the user to represent, acquiring knowledge about the user, choosing and evaluating an interaction model (e.g. conversation, direct-manipulation, asynchronous communication, etc), and designing an underlying representation schema. Co-req: CMPT 411-3 recommended
Prerequisite: IAT 200, IAT 201, CMPT 225 or IAT 202 or permission.
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the core web technologies. Technologies covered include languages used for the information exchange and presentation in web-based applications. The web services and their role for building scalable distributed systems are introduced. The technologies and design guidelines for web based systems are presented in the context of a case study analyzing and designing distributed system for sharing educational material. After completing the course students will be able to evaluate a suitability of a particular technology for different needs and implement it. Prerequisite: IAT 201, CMPT 225 or IAT 202 or permission.
The course analyses signal processing techniques for analog and digital signals in the realm of multimedia. The student reaches a deeper, quantitative understanding of signal characteristics with emphasis placed on signals arising from multimedia applications. The transformation of 1-dimensional signals in the time and frequency domains as well as of 2-dimensional signals in space and frequency are analyzed. The signal analysis is applied to the area of signal compression and selected compression algorithms for multimedia are analyzed. Prerequisite: CMPT 225 or IAT 202; Math 210, MATH-232 or permission.
User centered interface design starts with an understanding of the user. Building on courses in Cognitive Science and User Modeling, this course explores the sensory and cognitive processes underlying human-computer interaction and applies them to user interface design. Design principles are developed as are approaches to user interface evaluation. All students participate in a team-based project to design and evaluate an interface for a real-world system. Prerequisite: IAT 200, IAT 201, CMPT-125 or permission.
This course explores how visualization can be used to provide insight into complex phenomena. The focus is on how perceptual and cognitive processes studied in second year Cognitive Science can be combined with interactive computing to enhance both understanding and problem solving. The emphasis will be on case studies and computer-based practical exercises. Topics include visualization of large amounts of information, 3D visual data mining, techniques for scientific visualization, and visual multivariate analysis. These fundamental ideas are illustrated by software tools for real applications and all students complete a project. Prerequisite: CMPT 225, IAT 201, IAT 251 or permission.
This a programming course covering the essential programming techniques for implementing 2D single-player video games, emphasizing graphics, sound, and artificial intelligence. Examples and case-studies will be drawn from a variety of game-industry sources. Assessment will be based on a number of small programming exercises, quizzes, and a substantial final project (which can be done in teams of 2-3 students) where students will implement a portfolio-quality 2D video game. Prerequisite: CMPT 225 or IAT 202; IAT 201, IAT 251 or permission.
This course explores the design of systems for education and workplace learning. It offers an introduction to systems for learning management, student information, testing, content authoring, conferencing, e-portfolios, and learning object storage, retrieval and recommendation. The course focuses on technological issues in the design and development of educational systems. Specifically, the issues covered are interoperability, standards compliance, metadata, digital rights management, open source versus proprietary development, and educational applications of the semantic web. Prerequisite: IAT 352 or permission.
Students work in teams to develop and evaluate a design addressing a complex, ill-defined problem. The actual design problems addressed vary from year to year and relate to current social and technological issues in society. The course covers the entire spectrum of the design process from problem definition to prototype and a broad range of perspectives including market feasibility, manufacturing, life-cycle implications, usability and social reception. Prerequisite: 90 credits of prior coursework.
This course explores the advanced interactivity through wearables and natural mode interfaces. Progressively interactive technology is “disappearing” into our environment, our fashion and our bodies. Interfaces leverage our “natural” and bodily actions, reflexes, and intelligence. This course will examine the evolving ideas of advanced interfaces through a series of readings and discussions leading to a team-based assignment to design and develop operational wearable and natural mode interface systems. Prerequisite: IAT 331 and IAT 322, or permission; or IAT 301 and IAT 321, or permission.
Theconvergence of robotics, affective computing, and artificial intelligence has already spawned the first generation of ‘smart’ products. New networks of sensors are now becoming the eyes and ears of an ‘emerging intelligent environment’. But what are the social and cultural implications of an environment that is aware of its surroundings and capable of responding to stimulation? This course will explore the evolving relationship between people and technology in the ambient environment through a series of readings and discussions leading to a team-based assignment to design and develop an operational interactive ambient system. Prerequisite: IAT 331 and IAT 322, or permission; or IAT 301 and IAT 321, or permission.
This course examines the design and the experience of narrative and story. It includes foundation principles and concepts from traditional linear narrative forms. The course extends these narrative concepts to multi-linear and to networked narrative forms. Students will analyze and produce both linear and multi-linear narrative works. Prerequisite: 45 credit hours or permission.
Media and Culture emerge in the information age, in ways that radically shift both the uses of media and the representation of interactivity in a cultural context. This course explores special topics in the field of cultural studies as related to interactivity in arts, design and technology. Special Topics can include cultural theory as related to interactive gaming, techno-culture, media art, interactive products, ambient and wearable technologies, the gendered nature of interactivity, or the embodied production of experience. Projects are applied studies of history and theory of media and interactive culture. Prerequisite: 60 credit hours or permission.
This advanced production course extends from the 300 level Interactive Performance and Installation. Students are expected to develop an interactive installation or performance project from concept sketch, though to creative process, prototyping, construction and completion. Particular emphasis will be placed on production values, clarity of interactive experience, audience reception, and professionalism of presentation. In addition, attention will be devoted to appropriate strategies for promotion, venue selection, and effective documentation. Prerequisite: IAT321 or IAT 322 or permission.
This course explores practice based research methodologies as
they are applied to
the Interactive Arts and Technology. The theoretical and
conceptual importance of
practice based research is introduced and discussed through
case-studies in Interactive Art. Research methods relevant to
artistic practice in contemporary media arts provides a starting
point. Students will explore and complete their own research
investigation into an Interactive Arts based research problem.
Prerequisite: IAT321 or IAT 322 or permission.
What can be learned by design or what can we understand as being new knowledge about design? Design in the context of research is an exploration of how the practice of design helps to explain the world around us or how we can find ways to improve the way we design. This course will introduce and discuss the theoretical and conceptual importance of design research, review case-studies of research problems in design, and introduce research methods relevant to design. The course will explore research strategies including the application of the research and research methods of other fields, interdisciplinary research, and research and its relationship to design practice. In addition, students will be expected to explore and complete their own research investigation into a design-related research problem. Prerequisite: IAT 330, IAT 333 or permission.
This seminar course allows for in depth exploration of a specific design, cultural and or social theme and its impact on design. The thematic investigation will change each year and will focus on topics not typically covered elsewhere in the Interaction Design curriculum. Possible themes include sustainability, design for developing nations, globalization and localization, and other relevant or prescient issues. Typically, this course will be delivered by visiting faculty. Prerequisite: IAT 331, IAT 332 IAT 333 or permission.
Over the years there has been a significant shift in our understanding of the role of design in society. We have seen an evolution from a focus on designer-driven aesthetics and stylistic concerns to a much more comprehensive understanding of design’s impact on society at large. This course will trace the evolution of design thinking to deal with this shift in perception. Through readings and group discussion students will examine historic, current and future implications for designers in shaping the lives of the people we design for. Prerequisite: IAT 330 or permission.
The objective of this course is to introduce students to the key usability issues in product development. Usability is fundamental to the success of products ranging from commercial software to B2B web sites and handheld devices. The students will be exposed to the different aspects of user requirements and analysis, usability testing, and iterative and evolutionary development. Other topics related to the ethics of usability and internationalization are explored. Students will be expected to participate in a class project to design effective solutions grounded in usability current practices. Prerequisite: IAT 210, IAT 352 or permission.
An exploration of theoretical fundamentals and advanced techniques for computer game design and programming, with applications in mind such as learning/training, decision support, and simulation-based research. Theoretical topics include elements of game theory, decision making, and intelligent active agents. Games design is mainly explored within the agent-based software engineering paradigm. The course builds around a strategy computer simulation game project with teams of students trying to develop best-performing software agents in a standardized competitive environment. Prerequisite: IAT 356 or permission.
This course takes a structured approach to explaining the technical underpinnings of computer networking. It starts with a comprehensive treatment of the theory, hardware, and software responsible for the functioning of computer networks and network applications, followed by a state-of-the-art coverage of specialized topics with hands-on practicals. Topics covered include: standardization, measurement, and practice of network technologies; theory of networking; hardware technologies; network protocols; network applications, distributed computing, autonomous computing, network security, privacy, ethics. Prerequisite: IAT 352 or permission.
Accessible web sites and software are designed to accommodate users with visual, aural, or physical disabilities. This course will introduce students to accessible design through topics such as the changing nature and demographics of disability; accessibility legislation in Canada, U.S., Australia, Japan and Europe; international accessibility standards; W3C and IMS guidelines; XML and accessibility; techniques for accessible animation; developing software for assistive devices; alternate input technologies; accessibility evaluation and validation. The course also more broadly construes accessibility as encompassing usability for mobile devices, low bandwidth connections, and extreme environmental conditions. Prerequisite: IAT 352 or permission.
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the design and implementation of systems that support professional work. The course will particularly focus on computer-aided design systems, that is, systems whose primary output is designs for artifacts. This focus can be changed depending on instructor expertise.
The course will be case-based, in the sense that it will focus on particular programs in their work contexts and will cover its material through an analysis of the program in context and design of new functionality in response to the context.
The course will cover models for work, how computers support and change such models, typical designs for systems supporting professional work, the role of representations in supporting work and processes for the evolutionary development of such systems. Prerequisite: IAT 354 or permission; CMPT-225 or IAT 202 or permission.
This course focuses on the underlying technologies and applications of contemporary wireless systems. It provides an introduction to digital communications and proceeds in the analysis of wireless communications and mobile networking. Three main categories of mobile networks are considered (PAN, LAN, and WAN) and representative architectures from each category and protocols are explored. System components needed to construct applications that extend the corporate enterprise to PDAs, cell phones, handheld terminals, and other mobile computing devices are analyzed. Prerequisite: IAT 352, IAT 353 or permission.
Working within collaborative design teams, students will develop computer programs or online resources as solutions to real problems presented by teachers, instructors, or learners. They will analyze and evaluate their solutions in terms of relevant theory and principles from fields such as software engineering, learning design, social or cognitive science, or interaction design. This course adopts a problem-based learning approach in which students will set personal learning goals as required by the problem they are addressing. Prerequisite: CMPT 225 or IAT 202 or permission.
The objective of this third-year course is to develop skills required of an A&DT professional. In this course students acquire knowledge of advanced methods used for modeling virtual reality and acquire essential hands-on skills in using standard programming API, such as OpenGL, and advanced software tools, such as 3D Studio MAX. Topics cover introduction to virtual reality hardware, advanced geometrical modeling, physics-based modeling (including kinematics and dynamics), and character/agent modeling. Prerequisite: IAT 251 or permission.
Current topics in interactive arts and technology depending on faculty and student interest. Prerequisite: 75 credits.
Current topics in interactive arts and technology depending on faculty and student interest. Prerequisite: 75 credits.
An individual course in which a student proposes a topic of study to a faculty member in an area not covered by a regular offering. This must be approved by the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee. Prerequisite: 90 credits.
This is an individual research project only available to honors students. Students work with a faculty advisor to define a research problem and normally work on it over two semesters. Prerequisite: Honors standing and completion of 90 credit hours.