As part of my Interaction Design II studio course in DAAP, students were asked to identify and evaluate a digital information platform in order to improve its design for the end user.
I choose to explore MIT’s OpenCourseWare platform for students, and create a more refined digital experience for students. MIT OpenCourseWare is dedicated to the “open sharing of knowledge” by distributing collections of video lectures and related materials for a large number of the institution’s course catalog. OCW offers materials from over 2,300 courses (80 of them offering video) to nearly 125 million users—three times the population of California.
My goal with the project was to design a new OpenCourseWare interface that encouraged a focused learning experience—hiding supplemental information while still keeping all materials accessible. The project’s scope was limited to use on an iPad or similar tablet. At the time, MIT did not offer a mobile or tablet-optimized OpenCourseWare platform, and I wanted to take the opportunity to consider one.
To help identify the unique requirements and shortcomings of MIT’s platform, I researched similar online education platforms, including Coursera, Academic Earth, and Udacity.
The final design was communicated with an animated motion demo composed in Adobe AfterEffects.
For a deeper look at the project, check out the process book!
Tools
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe AfterEffects