Latest / You've Got Options / How Students Turn Wild Ideas Into Marketable Skills: Inside The Creative Technology & Design Major
Transcript
- Intro: Welcome back everyone. Today we are going over our creative technology and design major, often referred to as CTD, which is possibly our most mysterious major, as many students don't know what this major is or what it entails, but today we are here to demystify it. I am also joined today by our very own Danny Rankin, who is the director of the WA lab and an associate teaching professor in the CTD program. Danny has expertise in graphic design, games, material fabrication, hardware hacking, and much more. So please welcome Professor Danny Rankin. Clare Kelly: I'm very excited to have you join us today. I think CTD can fly under the radar a bit for a lot of students, since it's maybe not the most self-explanatory major, but it's one of the majors I personally find the most intriguing and that I've heard from students that have looked into it, they're the most intrigued by it. So I I appreciate you coming here to give your perspective on the major. before we get into the nitty-gritty, just to know more about you, how did you get into this discipline, into this field? How did you decide to kind of mentor in it? Totally, yeah. Well, thanks for having me. It's it's fun to get to come and talk about it because I don't know that anybody's like, I'm a creative technologist, right? When I started out. Like, what does that necessarily mean when you talk about it? But For me, I have tons of different interests, right? I am interested in art and design, I'm interested in engineering, I'm interested in sort of inventing and tinkering, I'm also a musician, and It's hard to find a place to apply all of those things together, So I've worked as a freelance graphic designer, I've worked as a farmer, I've worked in all sorts of different weird fields. And I found actually my way into sort of Atlas and those programs when I was an undergrad here, a long time ago, I was in environmental studies as my undergrad, And I found the hackerspace called the Blow Things Up Lab, the BTU lab, which is still active today inside of Atlas. And I just started hanging out with people there. I was at the time working on farm automation projects for environmental studies. And then I started to realize just how much I had in common with all of these sort of creative tinkerers and makers. And I kind of just never left. I was finishing school, And then I started guest teaching there. and then eventually they're like creative technology and design, we're starting it. do you want to be in that? I was like, Yeah, I definitely want to be in that. Yeah. So I was in the very first master's cohort of that. And just kind of fell in love with everything that that means as I've been there. So it's been fun. Yeah, I appreciate that perspective because when I talk to students and I hear that I just have so many different interests and I love to tinker with things. I think when I ask students, you know, how they got into engineering, the first thing is Well, I just like, you know, tinkering with stuff, or you know, I helped my dad on cars and so I always push them. If you have all these different interests but you don't know where to put them, it's possible to combine them all. For sure. Yeah. CTD is really hard to describe, right? You say it's this sort of mysterious major, and it is because like creative technology design, these are huge words that can mean almost anything when we combine them. And what we hope is that students are taking technology and using it to solve creative problems. And creative problems can mean like you need to invent new things. It can mean that you want to produce art or music, right? It can mean that you want to be a storyteller. we have students that kind of go all over the place. We have students that go to work in user experience design. We have students that go to work at Meowwolf. We have students that go and work in interface design and development for aerospace companies, with people that go to work at Blue Origin or or SpaceX. And it's like, ⁓ wow, okay, so then what does CTD do? And like I ⁓ I guess it just makes you really interested in ⁓ how to solve problems with technology in really creative and kind of unusual ways. that's awesome. so ⁓ what types of students would you say are drawn to this major? Or how would they be able to tell if this major is a good fit for them? ⁓ Well, ⁓ I think. If you're looking for something where you have more freedom in the way that you sort of pursue what's happening, CTD is definitely attractive to students that don't want to be told exactly what to do while they're in school, right? Our curriculum is really diverse. You take a lot of courses in different areas. You take courses in graphic design and you take courses in sound and in 3D modeling and in, you know, inventing machines and robotics, physical computing, you take courses in web development and lots of programming. And the the point of all of that is not that you have to be good at all of those things, but that you should get a good survey of the areas that you could work and then hopefully choose the pieces that best fit what you're interested in. So I would say the first kind of sign of a CTD student is they're kind of self-directed or self-motivated. They really like this idea of I'm gonna kind of curate my education the way that I want. And then the other thing is sort of what you're talking about is they have a lot of interests, some technical, some creative, some fusion of those things. And they don't necessarily see themselves immediately fitting into, say, computer science or mechanical engineering or something like that. CTD becomes a sometimes I almost call it an artist refugee camp inside of the College of Engineering, because people are like, I kind of want to do more creative work. And I want to be clear. I don't think that CTD is the only creative space within it. I think there are ways to be creative in all disciplines. but We are probably the most explicitly as opposed to, you know, learn how to do things technically really well and then maybe you'll earn the right to do creative work. We're like, start doing creative work and then see what technical skills you need in order to fill that in. So it's sort of a inversion of a lot of of what people experience at school. Well, speaking of kind of that creative part, I know that there are so many student labs within the Atlas Institute. and I know you are the director of the one. lab, so can you speak to more of what you do in that lab? Sure, yeah. So the what lab, which I'll probably just say what lab, but yeah, the the lab is all about experimental games and interactions. So we make weird controllers for custom video games. We have a board game library. We have a lot of prototyping materials for people to work on games and playful experiences. Basically, we just want people to understand that games and play are not just about video games. We do teach classes on game design and development But we also are interested in can you put playful interactions into everything that you make, whether it's a website or whether it's a physical robot or whether it's some sort of interface out in the world or really any creative project can be thought of as a little more free and a little more playful. So the room is also full of weird experiments and weird interactions that sort of feel I think Meowwolf is a good precedent for that if people know that space, that sort of massive interactive art museum. Yeah. It's a lot of the kind of things that our students are like, I want to turn this wall into a weird secret cabinet or I want to kind of make a strange transfer system from one area of the building to another area of the building. that space is it's interesting because it's a lab, but it's really more just meant for students to come hang out and play around with ideas. Similar to the BTU lab, which is also there, right? It's a it's a hacker space. Students are doing classwork in there, but more often they're just hanging out and working on their own passion projects, building a skateboard or figuring out a robot or something like that. we also have a sound lab, sound AF, which is all weird music making and DJ equipment, things like that. And they're more playgrounds than they are laboratories. Well thanks for sharing more about that. That's pretty cool to have a space dedicated to play accessible to students where they they feel like they can pursue those passion projects, which I think can help them, you know, build that confidence as they continue in their degree. what classes tend to be the most impactful for students within the major? I think a lot of students, so I'll say this that it's a major, but we also offer a minor in CTD. And we kind of on purpose make the minor built out of the beginning of the CTD program because sometimes it helps to know that you're like, I'm not sure if I want to do this or not, and they'll enroll in the minor, and you don't even have to be in engineering to be in the minor, you can be anywhere on campus to be in the minor. But one of the first courses they take is class called Design Foundations. And it's just an introduction to sort of human-centered design and how to make things for people and thinking about all of the questions of doing good design. And it turns out that a lot of students, once they get the opportunity to think in that way, they're like, I could be a designer. that actually opens up a whole, world of possibilities of what kind of career they might want to pursue or what kind of human being they want to grow into through college. So that's a big one, and it's kind of at the beginning of the journey. the other courses in the sort of beginning of that, the meaning of information technology, which is another weird, you're like, what would that class? What is that? Meaning of information technology? And in some ways it's like we're just explaining how computers and information technology work. But the way that we teach it, it has a lot more to do with understanding humans and why they use technology and why we've created those things and sort of thinking deeply about what we're inheriting in terms of all the technology around us. And how we want to use that or if we want to change that or how it affects us. So a lot of students come in and they're like, this is something I understand natively because I've been bombarded with technology my whole life, but it's the first time maybe that they've gotten a chance to say, do we have to do it this way? Could we change something about it? And that's a big part of CTD, is just being inventive and not being constrained by it's always been done this way, but hopefully saying, All right, well, I guess we could do whatever we want, those are great classes. I'm I'm fond of the classes that I get to teach in game design and play. I have a class this fall called Intro to Games and Play. We teach a class on game design. A lot of those classes students come into, they're like, I'm taking this class because I want to make video games, because I love video games. But they start to realize that actually games and play are so much bigger and so much more important to human beings all over the world and how we interact with each other. And you start to see Them get really excited just about play as a tool for design and creativity, and just as a great important part of being alive and being a human. so a lot of students really start to discover just how. Cool it can be to think more broadly about things like play. And that happens in a lot of the courses we teach where they come in and they're like, okay, so I'll learn this technical skill in this class. you will, but hopefully you'll get to think, in big ways about how that type of design works all over the place, not just in one narrow area I think especially for engineering students, that idea of play is so important and also a way for them to release the stress that comes with being an engineering student. So again, that's why I find this major so intriguing because I think it is so great for students to have that outlet that maybe they wouldn't have had otherwise. For sure, yeah. And you know, our students are very passionate. the ones that connect with CTD love it and they tell all their friends to do it and they're always in the building working on projects. it's a really close-knit community of students, which is another thing that I think sets C T D apart a bit. CDD students they get to know each other, they take a lot of the same classes together. The classes are relatively small and They find a a group of people that mesh with what they like to do. I think it's a misconception that C T D is easier engineering, right? It is more fun. I I won't deny that. I do think that we get to have a little bit more fun. But turns out when you get permission to work on whatever you're passionate about, you actually end up working way harder on that thing. So our students end up spending probably On average, more hours working on their projects, and the stress levels towards the end of the semester or the end of project time still get pretty high. But it's not because, my god, I have to cram for this test and make sure I don't fail this thing. It's I really care about this project being the best thing I can possibly make, and I'm gonna put dozens of hours into it to make sure that that thing comes to life. So it is really fun, but it is really challenging too, a lot of our students take lots of the same engineering core as students in mechanical or or computer science. so they understand that energy too. But CTD is definitely a different kind of challenge, and it's fun, but it's it's not easy. Well, that leads into my next question. You kind of touched on it, but Are there any other challenges that you notice that students face going through this major? I think one of the big challenges is learning how to say something is is done enough, or learning how to just say it's good enough for right now. I think part of learning to be a creative person, whether you're in CTD or any other discipline, is kind of just accepting the process as being as important as the finished thing, And we have to work a lot with our students to say, hey, you're not here to produce the world's best, most innovative thing yet. You're gonna leave college and you're gonna go do that. While you're here, it's about the process of making and creating and learning. And if the thing that you made crashes and burns, even if you spent hundreds of hours on it, that's okay. That's actually why we're here. That's the cool thing about being in school. Right. So I think that's probably the biggest hurdle is because they get inspired by such interesting and cool creative work both from professionals in the world and from their peers that I think the expectation sometimes is I have to be amazing and we have to go no you just have to make stuff you just have to finish it right and at a certain point you just have to say all right this is what I got done. so that's that's probably the biggest challenge for our students. Yeah that pressure can come In a lot of ways to to get it right, to be the best, especially when you're kind of seeing these other projects. so that's that's good to know for students. what kind of research is coming up within the Atlas Institute or even just in the field, maybe that you're particularly excited about or that you find really interesting Yeah, for sure. Well, I think it's worth noting that one of the weird things about CTD is that even though it's a major in the College of Engineering, it's inside of this building largely that is a research institute, And research institutes have their own missions that they're set up within the college, right? We have a whole bunch of research institutes. And Atlas is sort of about radical creativity and invention. That's part of our tagline. So in Atlas, there are people working on experimental tattoo inks that you can turn on and off with light, or weird smart textiles and biomaterials that you can use to make and create all sorts of things. There's professors that are working more in like studio art and media creation. There's people that are working with more robotics and telepresence for playful interaction and creativity. There's people that are generating, experimental materials for 3D printing and fabrication. There's all of this. interesting research that's happening as part of Atlas. And I think of those things all as creative technology, right? They're all using technical platforms to explore new creative avenues. And a lot of that research makes its way into the courses that get taught at Atlas. All of those professors teach at least one or two electives within the program. So a lot of that stuff is really cool. I think everybody wants to talk and buzz about AI all day. Our students are, no exception to that. But at the same time, they come into the program wanting to do the creation. They don't necessarily just want to get the degree, So we're always looking at that sort of space. I don't want to say too skeptically, right? It's exciting what's possible there and how it's helping people create stuff. At the same time, more of the interesting. Interesting research from my perspective is how are we making human creativity more supercharged and not handing it over to a machine but just making it more possible for people to create stuff. So yeah. Right. Yeah, I didn't I wasn't going to bring up AI. I know that can be a very sensitive topic. I mean, especially considering this field, it's all about creative technology. And no matter what you think about AI, I think it's important to emphasize that part about CTD is. It is focused on the human aspect of creativity. For sure, And I I use this analogy a lot of like a gym, People go to the gym for lots of reasons. Maybe they want to just get strong, maybe they want to look hot, maybe they're just bored. But if you go to the gym, you're not going to meet any of your goals if you just go and turn on the treadmill and watch it run, right? You're not going to go if you have a robot lift weights for you and you watch it and you're like, that looks great. The only thing you can do is tell people like, yeah, I go to the gym a couple times a week. Yeah. It doesn't look like you're getting in shape. And you're like, well, I'm just going. Yeah. And I think that's kind of the space that you have to be careful of with college, it's the gym for our brain, We're supposed to be getting our brain strong. so even though those tools are really helpful, you learn a lot by actually doing the creative work, even the hard or the slow way. It actually can really help. And I think that's true for creative technology too, even though, yeah, we're using powerful next generation creative tools. All over the place. Software, hardware, all of that. At the end of the day, we still want students to know what went into the making of that thing because it helps them understand who they are as a creator and also, appreciate just how cool those tools actually are and use them to the to the kind of utmost potential rather than just sort of saying, computer, make a thing for me because I don't care enough about what comes out. So yeah, it is a it is kind of a touchy space. but I usually Trust students, once they understand and appreciate how fun it is to be in charge of the creative process, they kind of understand where some of the boundaries are around what they want to do. well, I appreciate that perspective. It seems like there's a lot of opportunities within CTD. If someone were to choose this major, pursue it, are there any that you would suggest students take advantage of early on? Hmm. As far as like career paths or what do we have? Yeah, yeah. In terms of career paths, research. Yeah, so I think that. It is okay to come into a program not knowing what you want to do, And there's a really good chance, and this is true of any student, that you may have learned a bunch of stuff while you were here, and then you get a job doing something totally different, right? Me. Yeah. Right? That happens all of the time. And what kind of matters more is that you find the type of work that you're excited about producing, not because you necessarily will get a job doing that, If you love making games, figure out why you love making games. You may not end up working in the games industry. You may end up doing any number of other things, but you learn something about yourself and how you work and what you care about, So I think when students come in, if they have a passion or an interest, it's really important to not just say, all right, well the answer is that's a job that makes money and I'm going to do that and I'm going to do that through here. That that would make CTD really difficult, Because I think CTD will challenge and student that says, I just want to learn this one skill and then move on and go do that thing. And we're more interested in saying what makes you excited and why and how could you find ways to do that wherever you work? A lot of the time with CTD students, we say that they are sort of bridge builders between say a design team and a development team. So a lot of our students go to work in software and they go to work in you know like startups or in big software companies. And some of them get a job as a designer, Thinking about a product and thinking about user experience and user interface. Some of them get a job working in more programming and development. A lot of the time companies are looking for people who can kind of switch back and forth or communicate between those teams. So for our students, I tell them, you know, that's what you should be telling people when you go to try and get work. You say, like, I'm I'm really good at sort of moving between these two spheres. Do you need someone who can help, take design ideas into the development team? Do you need somebody who can actually program a prototype to show your senior engineers what kind of ideas are Coming out of the design side, that's a unique space to get to live in. And there's people all over the college that can do that well. But CTD, we're really trying to say: if you like talking to people and you like coming up with creative ideas, but you also don't just want to do that, you want to be one of the makers and creators, then you can explore that. But our students are all over the map. Some of them are very design heavy. I mean, some of our students are like would probably just be happy being a professional woodworker, right? They're just like, I just kind of want to hang out in the woodshot. And make tables in front of you. Right. And I'm like, okay, that sounds good. Great. You know, they get really good at computer aided manufacturing and all of that. And some of our students are very, very programming heavy, They say, I just want to make applications or I want to solve problems with software. you can take somebody who loves woodworking and somebody who loves programming. Programming and they can find a cool project that they can work on together and then come up with something that would never have happened if it was all programmers or all you know fabricators. That's great, and this leads into my next question, and I have to ask it because I get this question all the time Can I get a job in this field? What can I do with this? And my advice a lot of the time when I talk to students who are kind of preparing to go out into the workforce and maybe are nervous about how their degree is gonna show up. you know, instead of a mechanical or electrical degree where Pretty much everyone knows what you've been doing in that degree. Most of the time they know what kinds of classes, what kind of skills you have. Whereas some of these newer majors, these more unique majors, they just don't know what you've done. And so I tell students it's not necessarily about the degree, it's how you market yourself. It's about how you explain here are the classes I've taken, here's what I've specialized in, the projects I've done, and how I can be of use to your company. so I guess do you have anything else to say on those kind of worries that students have? Yeah, I mean those are all really good pieces of advice. I would say one, I'm empathetic to students who are worried about the world of job, right? Like it is scary and there's all kinds of things changing and it's like I don't know what's happening. I I think that at at their best, C T D students Are aware of what the sort of currents are that are happening. They're not afraid of learning a new tool when they get a job, They're not saying, I have to know this tool when I leave school that's so that I can get that job. They've learned how to learn creative tools. So they're already ready to step into job training and do that. Our students do go work in software, they do go work in in hardware and product development, they do work in interactive exhibits and entertainment design, you know, lighting and sound and production. and a lot of those. projects and those jobs. You know, they they land those jobs because they have portfolio work, CTD is very much about show more than tell, It's like take great photos and video of your work, figure out how to put it online so that people can look at what you've created and that you don't have to try and explain what CTD is. You say, look at my portfolio and see what I've made, and sort of I see. Okay, you can make a physical installation or you can design a web app for us or whatever it is, because they see those things. So the biggest thing that I tell students is Get good at documenting your work and taking pictures of it early on. Get in the practice of explaining the things that you've done and what you've learned through the process of that. And generally, even though it's kind of the obvious advice when it comes to job stuff, Start getting to know people, Build relationships with your peers, build relationships outside of here while you're a student. Reach out to people who are creating work that you admire, Ask them about their pathway and their journey to get somewhere. it becomes very difficult when you're like, yet another rejected job application or yet another internship that I didn't get or whatever it is like that. And and a lot of the time it's because there is no press a button and get a job. So I think the best thing that you can do is get used to creating projects that you like and telling that story about them and be ready to sort of show that at a moment's notice because whenever I've had the opportunity to hire people, I care less about the verbiage of their resume and more about the the content of what they can show me that they've they've made a lot of the time. Thank you for sharing that. And I'll plug, Atlas has a one credit course about how to create a portfolio. So if you're ever interested. Yeah, we've got portfolios. We have a whole bunch of these actually, how-to classes, which we're really excited about these days. They're one credit, they're like seven weeks, and they're on things like portfolios or becoming job ready or documenting your work or building a creative practice. And they're all these very practical, job-related skills. So we had students asking, Hey, can we just have a course to help me be ready to do a job? Sure, we can do that. That's a cool thing about Atlas, too, is that when we want to, we can kind of just shake up the curriculum and be like, well, a lot of students want this course, so let's teach it and see if they take it through the right. Yeah, I've pointed many students towards those kind of one credit classes if they're interested in like how do I just get a foundation for leaving college? So I think those have been very helpful. all right. Well, I'm gonna go into our rapid fire question. So, first thing that comes to mind, what is the biggest misconception people? Yeah, that it's easy. Sometimes people say that, and I'm like, guys, if you're not a creative person, then you know how difficult it can be to even do that. Yeah. but yeah, people are passionate, so it becomes difficult. And there's a lot of technical rigor under the surface too. We learn how to program well, we learn how to build well. What habits or mindsets can help set students up for success? being more interested in process than outcome. I think that's the biggest one. Just fall in love with making it, not with the thing that you have to make. That's the best way to start. What's one of the coolest projects that you've come across? man. the alternative control projects that we do, right? I mean we've had One last year where someone made a dating simulator with a bow and arrow controller that you could also accidentally shoot the people that you're trying to date. We've had people build controllers for a game where you shout ingredients into the game to make like burger ingredients fall through a giant pachinko machine, but then you squeeze a ketchup and mustard bottle controller to try and corral them into a bucket in order to file orders. So many interesting and weird conglomerations and unusual video game kind of come out as some of my favorite things we've seen. What makes this engineering discipline meaningful to you? I guess for me, I love to see people apply engineering to the things they care about rather than the things that say a corporation or a government cares about. Not that those projects aren't important, but it's really cool to go. Engineering isn't just for big entities, it's for individuals too. Last one, what's one takeaway you hope the listeners remember? that C T D is awesome and that they should and can enroll in our program. and I guess also that they want to come visit or see any of that stuff, the Atlas Institute is a building and you can walk over to it. There's a coffee shop in the bottom, you can wander around the building. projects you can become a member of the BTU lab even if you're not a C T D student, You can get involved in what's going on over there, whether or not you're in our major. So come hang out with us Yes, the building is very cool and the people are great. Everyone that I've interacted with over at C T D has just been absolutely lovely. So any students listening, if you're interested, just reach out to someone. They will be happy to talk to you about it. any last things you wanted to say? Any last remarks? I guess I'll I'll plug the the what festival this year is gonna be happening on Saturday, November seventh. so if anybody wants to come and see some weird games and interactions, you can come find out more about that at what dot io w h A T dot I O. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining me today and giving us a little insight glimpse into C T D. I hope students listening this was helpful and that you learned more about C T D and what it is and you consider this major as something really exciting to get involved in. but thank you so much for joining me. Thanks, Intro: Now to get into some specifics. of the curriculum for the CTD major specializations and research you can do within the major. You'll find the CTD curriculum follows a slightly different, more flexible path than a lot of our other engineering majors. In CTD, you can expect to take at least calculus one and then additional math courses. I will emphasize that this is not a major to choose just because you don't like math. You simply get a bit more freedom to choose what kind of math you take. Similarly, you'll take natural science electives and you have some freedom to choose what kinds of electives. So you can choose from areas like physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and more. But again, you will be taking some natural science courses. And then you can also expect to take some computing and projects courses as part of your core curriculum. As Professor Rankin and I alluded to earlier, there are many areas you can focus your degree in and pursue research in. To name a few, there are areas like robotics, interface and user experience, game design, fabrication, music, language, art performance, textiles, and much more. To help students specialize in some of these areas, the major offers focus electives, which are taught in subjects like theater and dance, art history, environmental design, information science, and again, much more to kind of help you hone your specialization. the Atlas Institute, which houses the CTD major, has many labs on campus for different purposes. Specifically for research, there are labs like the Brain Music Lab, which pursues research to promote health and well-being by combining new music technologies and biometric data. There's also the programmable reality lab, which has the goal to make our living environment dynamic, interactive, and programmable to transform our living space into a dynamic medium. And if you're wondering, yes, I am reading off of the website, there is no way that I'm using words like biometric data and dynamic medium, okay? Other than research, there are labs specifically for student use, like the Audio Frequency Lab, which is a space for the exploration of sound design and music instruments. We went into depth about the What Lab, which Professor Rankin directs. And then there's also things like the BTU lab, Blow Things Up Lab, which is a makerspace that facilitates projects. that are at the intersection of art design, engineering, and architecture. And there are many more labs within the Atlas Institute. So I encourage you to check some of those out, see if they are of interest to you. Professor Rankin and I touched on career paths for CTD students and what that looks like. But to give you some more concrete examples, some of the common fields that CTD students go into are areas like motion graphics and animation, user interface experience, virtual reality, video production, web design and development, game design and development, electronic music, and much, much more. It's hard to encompass all the areas that CTD students go into. This is certainly not an example. list, but just to give you an idea. And some companies that have employed CTD students, which I think are pretty cool, are companies like Adobe, Yelp, Disney, iHeartMedia, NBC News, MeowWolf, and once again, many, many more. And that brings us to the end of our episode for creative technology and design. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. And I encourage you to check out more information and resources on the CTD website. If this sounds like a major, that might be the fit for you. as always keep your ears and eyes open for a new episode, and we will talk soon, y'all.