Digital Media

Private Partner Sponsors Rochester Institute of Technology New Media Projects

• By Leila Meyer
• 06/04/15

Senior students from Rochester Institute of Technology's new media design program and new media interactive development program worked in teams to create digital products and present them to members of Adobe's Experience Design (XD) group.

Each year, senior students in the two programs work together in cross-disciplinary teams to produce a capstone project. This year, Adobe sponsored the New Media Team Project, which challenged seven teams of students "to create new user experiences that take advantage of the interaction between handheld mobile devices and big screens," according to information from the university. Each team had the use of a large touchscreen TV and supplies for the project and they met with Adobe staff for direction on their projects.

"In our talks, we challenged the student's conceptual ideas about their projects and encouraged them to think about ways to increase interaction," said Remon Tijssen, principal designer at Adobe's XD group, in a prepared statement.

The New Media Team Projects included:

• Facet, an interactive touchscreen storefront that lets users explore high-end retail products;
• Synapp, a collaborative notebook for the digital classroom;
• Bitness, an immersive group exercise experience designed to encourage people to use the gym and promote a healthy, positive and energetic workforce, while building team morale within a company;
• Interlude, a mobile musical game that takes advantage of idle crowds at festivals and events to raise awareness for music education;
• Espy, a dynamic and interactive way-finding experience for conferences or festivals;
• Vesti, a touchscreen display for dressing rooms paired with a mobile application that creates an advanced, personalized shopping experience intended to bridge the gap between online and in-store shopping; and
• Mendo, an interactive multi-screen exhibit that simulates what the team imagines to be the future of the digital healthcare industry.

For more than 15 years, the university has been encouraging cross-disciplinary work between students in the new media design program in RIT's College of Imaging Arts and Sciences and the new media interactive development program in RIT's B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences. The New Media Team Project brings together visual design and computer programming students to develop Web, desktop and mobile applications for the interactive design and development fields.