Classes and More Classes

I was one class shy of getting my Master of Fine Arts degree when I left SCAD to join a startup in 2000. That’s a decision I would later at least partially regret, mostly because my mom has nagged me just about every other time we speak. This year I decided to get the degree over with once and for all.

As my luck would have it, it turned out I’d been orphaned in my own major. Because of the rapid changes in the computer arts industry, SCAD had to specialize Computer Art into four distinctive majors (Animation, Visual Effects, Interactive Design and Game Development, Broadcast Design and Motion Graphics). Based on my industry experience, they decided I belonged to Interactive Design and Game Development. A professor painstakingly correlated all the relevant courses from way back when to the standards today and found that I still need to take one class in addition to thesis… The class turned out to be “Human-Centered Interactive Design”.

Perfect! I’ve always wanted to sharpen up my user interface design skills. And besides, good UI design is a cross discipline skill — everything we use and operate today has some kind of user interface design element in it.

The best part about this is that the class is also available online, something SCAD has been talking about doing for years but finally got it going. I logged on to the elearning system (run by Blackboard) and was horrified… because I’d miss one week worth of work already…

On top of the catch up work I have to do from SCAD, I also need to attend to the two classes I already registered at UC Santa Cruz (database class and unix administration class), both of which are pretty heavy on reading and labs. Add to all this, Bryan has been a handful… This is going to be a tough quarter to get through.

Speaking of UI design, the professor made three books as required reading, which later I found out are bibles among UI design books: