BS in Interactive and Social Media

The BS in Interactive and Social Media degree is an interdisciplinary, hands-on program that integrates creative and technical disciplines such as graphic design, human-computer interaction, and information technology. Students in the ISM program to prepare to work in the expanding fields of user-experience design, interaction design and social computing by developing their skills as designers, coders, and user researchers. In project-based, collaborative courses, students learn a user-centered software development process to conceptualize, design, build, and conduct research on interactive systems such as web and mobile applications. Students also learn to incorporate social media and social computing into interactive applications. The ISM program provides a design concentration and a development concentration. Both concentrations build upon foundational coursework in interaction design and social computing. Concentrations - Design Concentration: The design concentration emphasizes coursework in information and interaction design as well as strategies for design of social media. It further prepares students to integrate components for social media and create finished visual designs for website, apps, and causal games. Development Concentration: The development concentration emphasizes coursework in information technology and interaction scripting. It further prepares students to develop the web sites, mobile apps and interactive displays that they have designed. Learning Outcomes - Students will be able to: Plan and conduct user research utilizing user-centered methods in interactive design projects. Produce design documents as part of a user-centered development process. Structure information to match user’s mental models and apply design patterns and principles to guide the design of user interfaces. Design web-based and mobile information and communication technologies. Build web-based and mobile information and communication technologies. Design interactive systems with an understanding of emerging social and technological contexts. Apply a variety of evaluation methods. Career Options: Advertising, Application development, Consulting, Game development, Graphic design, Marketing, Web development, Web design.