Capstone
One of the primary courses I teach is a graduate capstone class for interactive media, structured as a comprehensive two-semester experience. As the primary advisor, I guide each student from initial concept development through to production, encouraging them to push creative boundaries while refining their project scope. During the first semester, we work together to develop, iterate, and solidify their project proposals, focusing on achievable, impactful goals for a 15-week production timeline. Throughout production, I provide continuous mentorship—offering technical guidance, constructive feedback, and scope adjustments to showcase each student’s unique strengths. This journey enables students to create polished, meaningful projects that reflect their skills and aspirations.
The projects I've selected here showcase students who fully engaged with the capstone process, responding thoughtfully to feedback and exploring their ideas to their fullest potential. Their commitment to pushing creative boundaries resulted in projects that reflect both their talent and growth throughout the their time at the university.
Sonidify by Erik Soriano
Sonidify is an interactive virtual experience that educates users about the gramophone, immersing them in the historical significance and mechanics of this iconic audio device. Set within a virtual environment, the project allows users to explore the gramophone’s function and its impact on sound recording technology, blending education with engaging, hands-on learning. Through this innovative approach, Sonidify demonstrates the power of interactive media to make historical technology accessible and captivating for modern audiences.
Brush and Beyond by Xueer Xia
Brush and Beyond is an immersive virtual reality experience set in the iconic garden of Claude Monet in Giverny, where players step into the shoes of an artist facing challenges similar to Monet’s own. The experience recreates Monet’s workshop environment and allows users to see through the lens of his cataract-impaired vision in his later years. This project combines interactive storytelling and VR to explore artists’ internal battles with illness, blending art history with educational value for cataract awareness.
Cuban Freedom Flights: A Mixed Reality Experience by Noel Nunez
This project recreates the history and emotional journey of the Cuban Freedom Flights, one of the largest airlifts in history that brought Cuban refugees to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. The project combines historical accuracy with storytelling to bring a significant migration event to life, honoring the memories and resilience of those who undertook this journey.
Be Her Ally by Pingting Ji
Be Her Ally is an educational game aimed at teaching allyship and fostering empathy in addressing gender bias and harassment. Through interactive scenarios and decision-making, players learn how to support and stand with women in various professional and social settings. The project was designed to promote active allyship and offer insights into effective strategies for confronting challenging situations.
My Family Story by Irene Vailikit
My Family Story is a a platform that enables people to transform their personal and cultural narratives into both a physical book and family keepsake. It highlights the importance of creating tangible artifacts that can be possessed and cherished, while utilizing the affordances of modern technology. The project combines visual arts with narrative storytelling to explore themes of identity, family legacy, and memory, creating a deeply personal journey that bridges individual stories with universal themes of belonging and heritage.
Dogs at Work / Designing Games for Impact
In Designing Games for Impact, students engage in rapid prototyping through a series of focused 4-week sprints, emphasizing how games can create meaningful social connections and address real-world issues.
For one sprint, students engaged with illustrations from Dogs at Work: Good Dogs. Real Jobs., written by Margaret Cardillo and illustrated by Zachariah OHora. This collaboration allowed students to use the book’s artwork as a foundation, providing both a creative constraint and an equal footing for those less experienced in visual design.
Margaret Cardillo introduced the project’s design brief, giving students an inside look at her story world, yet leaving them free to explore diverse directions for their games. Some students chose themes around purpose and community, while others took unique creative liberties to shape their own narratives. At the project’s conclusion, Margaret Cardillo reviewed each prototype, offering feedback and celebrating the students’ distinct interpretations.
This project highlighted the versatility of storytelling in game design and the ways a consistent visual style can support varied gameplay experiences.
Design Process Example
Mia set out to design a game that would teach kids the importance of treating service dogs appropriately. Starting with a board game for multiple players and inspired by Candy Land, playtesting revealed that the first prototype was too complex, especially for young children.
In the second iteration, the board was removed from the game with a focus on the core game mechanic: whispering when a service dog was drawn from a deck of cards.
In the final iteration, the game has a leader and a player. The leader starts a timer and the player goes through the shuffled deck as quickly as possible while whispering each time a service dog is pulled.