SIAT @ Explore Design Conference Oct 10 + 11, 2007
posted: october 12. 2007
SIAT was an exhibitor at the Explore Design Conference in Toronto, October 10 + 11, 2007.
Ron Wakkary, a SIAT faculty member, presented a panel discussion on
interaction design, and a workshop on personas and cultural probes as
examples of interaction design methods.
Bio: http://www.siat.sfu.ca/faculty/ron_wakkary
SIAT hosted an interactive display featuring the student installation SayWhat?!: http://www.sfu.ca/bluebox/saywhatproject/
Look for SIAT again at the Explore Design 2008 event!
www.exploredesign.ca
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Review by SIAT Recruiter:
Explore Design was an outstanding educational event created to expose students to the numerous educational and career opportunities associated with the diverse field of design. From fashion design to animation, colleges and universities from across the country attended to show students the great options ahead of them.
This was my first big recruiting event outside Metro Vancouver and I can honestly say I was blown away. 4 SIAT students, professor Ron Wakkary, Leigh McGregor from our Dean's office, and myself flew from Vancouver, complete with brochures, bookmarks, and loads of enthusiasm bound for an event more than 4000km from home. While there was loads of presentations of animation, video games, and graphic design, from some local Ontario colleges, SIAT was one of only two universities in attendance and one of only two presenters who had an interactive exhibit. 4 of our students were outstanding ambassadors of their school, demonstrating their Say What project, an interactive booth that combined sound interaction, motion capture, and digital imagery to create a form of communication through digital graffiti where you could leave messages for those who followed.
I was also extremely impressed by two other students who joined us from their Co-operative Education jobs at Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry. These two students have been working at RIM for about 4-6 months as part of their university degree. They are working largely on the user interface of the Blackberry - how to improve navigation, visual appeal, usefulness, and efficiency. Thips brought together another element of our program and they did an outstanding job as ambassadors' both of their company and their school.
In all, about 4000 students attended Explore Design, mostly from Communications Technology and Visual Communications classes. At SIAT's booth we saw about 500 students who were seriously interested, with well prepared questions about our degrees, what kinds of careers our graduates are in, and life on the West Coast. For this I must commend the teachers of Ontario for so well preparing their students for an event that was so clearly targeted to their interests.
Great job team!!
Andrew Drinkwater, SIAT Recruiter and Advisor
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Review by SIAT students:
It was a great honor to be one of the four representatives of SFU to join North America’s First Design Education Fair for Youth in Toronto.
Our main goal was to promote SIAT to the parents/ teachers/ students that reside in Toronto. We brought our IAT445 undergraduate project “SayWhat: Graffically Speaking” along with us to help them learn more about SIAT. Beside our 445 undergraduate project, we also have some second and third year animation clips shown on plasma TV to display SFU’s animation courses.
The event, located in Metro Toronto Convention Centre North Building, was a huge and successful event that attracted participants of thirty-seven schools and corporations. It was very important for us to be knowledgeable and confident as we were representing SFU and anything we said might affect a student’s impression and decision in attending SFU or not.
I am glad that I had the opportunity to join this event as I learned a lot of new things as well.
- SayWhat?! Project uUndergraduate team
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