Design students in the art department at UTC have a new perspective on design and first hand experience developing websites. For the first time the art department offered its design majors a web media survey course.

This course was introduced by Adjunct Professors Jessica Westbrook and Adam Trowbridge, married Chattanooga artists who share a passion for art, technology, and design.

"Introducing this new course presented a lot of interesting challenges, a lot of unknowns, and a lot of planning. I didn’t have a model. We knew we wanted to cover a lot of ground, introduce user centered design, web development using hand coded XHTML and CSS, dynamic content with PHP and MySQL, and some Flash - but we didn't know if the students were going to love it enough to keep up. Web design and development is demanding and there is a constant learning curve involving not just design concepts/execution - but technology and mechanics," said Ms. Westbrook.

"I was especially interested in exposing the students to usability and information architecture. This is the foundation of web planning and web use. Design includes clear, useable information,” said Mr. Trowbridge.

The course was very intense. Not only were students studying the web, planning for the web, learning design for screen --- but using the web as a tool, and as an extension of the classroom. Announcements, assignments, discussion, and grades happened on Blackboard, the popular online learning system which Mr. Trowbridge happens to administrate for the university. In lieu of a text, students relied heavily on the web as an information resource, honing their searching skills, using O'Reilly Safari online as a primary source of class reading assignments and information gathering, and used only online texts for class reading assignments.

Excursions to local interactive studios gave students insight into professional practice and a better understanding of what it takes to be a web designer. Highlights included excursions to Coptix, a full service design and web application development studio and Tubatomic, which has its niche in extending Flash for dynamic content delivery on the web.

Both studios shared their process, spoke about their growing business, and their need for more tech savvy design talent locally. Local web developer and code guru Dwayne Anderson came to class and lectured on Javascript and its roll on the web.

Mr. Trowbridge and Ms. Westbrook believe the web is a perfect tool for the delivery of information, it is a gateway to expressing ideas and is a practical, functional way of presenting information for a global audience. They are committed to the idea that as artists you have to be self reliant and are responsible for keeping up with the tools and processes involved with all nodes of graphic communication.

"There is absolutely no way to master everything when it comes to web design/development. But artists - especially graphic artists - should have a good idea of what’s involved, what the considerations are, what drives the discipline, and how to apply and manage the technology involved with designing for screen/web,” said Ms. Westbrook

he course was an elective. It was not required for graduation, but enrollment was strong, and student response very positive. They also have the tools and capabilities to present their own portfolio and work on the web, a must for any independent designer.

”I knew that at some point I would have to design a web based portfolio and I figured that this class would supply me with the skills to do that. I wanted to see what this particular field (of graphic design) offers both technologically and creatively,” said Nick DuPey.

The usability discussion(s) throughout the course have been probably more beneficial to me than anything else we covered. I came out of this course with by far a better understanding of how people operate on the web and how to design based around those needs,” said Daniel Skolfield.