COAL Interactive
An Electronic Arts Senior Thesis Project
This project was my senior thesis for the Electronic Arts program at Missouri State University. The goal was to create an interactive experience for both current and prospective students. The interface showcased three programs within the College of Arts and Letters: Electronic Arts, Global Studies, and Musical Theatre. This video captures some of the interactions and final designs as well as the final presentation at the Electronic Arts senior thesis showcase.
The Project Proposal: Design and develop an interactive installation for a 42″ touch panel for prospective students to see what the aforementioned programs have to offer and work that past students have completed. I would work with the Program Directors to create an identity for their program and get students excited about the possibilities their program offered.
The Design Phase: The first 3-4 months were spent sketching out the basic idea for the project. What kind of content was important to display for each program? Research was done on each program to help them develop an identity and to better understand the design space. Finally, high-fidelity mockups were approved by the Program Directors.
The Development Phase: This project was developed in about 5 months time. Essentially it is a locally run web application, built using HTML, CSS, jQuery, JavaScript and PHP. During the development process, frequent testing and iteration was done to iron out bugs and improve usability.
The video was shot by the Office of University Communications at Missouri State University as an interview for the “Student Spotlight.” I do not take credit for any of the footage and am simply using this video to showcase my senior thesis project.
Awards:
1st place in the Student Interactive Multimedia Competition (large team) at the 2015 BEA Festival of Media Arts.
Project team:
Derek Parker (Project Manager/Lead Designer & Developer)
Becky Gourley (Assistant Designer)
Whitney Meador (Assistant Designer)
Stephanie Martin (Assistant Developer)
Please click the YouTube video below to see the project.