Imagine a place where ideas flow as freely as the Rhine River in the beautiful city of Strasbourg. Recently, Centennial Interactive Media Management students—Ayça Zırh, Daniel Ford, Jacqueline Kan and Leví J. Vivas C.—alongside Program Coordinator Pamela Kostur, attended the Symposium on Usability and Design.
The symposium, a collaborative effort between the University of Strasbourg and Louisiana Tech, gathered academics, students, and industry professionals worldwide to rethink and discuss the future of usability and design. Our students not only attended but actively participated in sessions with their peers.
“When you hear you're getting a chance to go to France, you immediately start to fantasize about the trip, but my time in France offered so much more than just great food and architecture,” Daniel, one of the student attendees, shares.
“Attending the Symposium on Usability and Design at Strasbourg University couldn’t have come at a better time in our Interactive Media Management program as we worked on our capstone projects. It brought many principles and ideas presented throughout the semester into a global context, surrounded by great minds and engaging conversations. Thanks to Pamela Kostur and the Global Experience team for making this opportunity a reality.”
Attending the Symposium
After a red-eye flight and a few stops on the Paris Métro, the group finally arrived at the symposium, eager to learn and participate in all the activities. An exciting component of this incredible trip happened right at the beginning of the symposium: Pamela's presentation!
That’s right—Pamela was the first speaker to open the symposium. While she admits it was a bit intimidating in a way, despite taking on many speaking roles in the past, it was a great way to kick things off. Plus, she says having some of her students in the audience was especially fun. “They know me in front of a classroom but don’t know me in this context. I wanted to make them proud,” she shares.
Pamela’s presentation was called Through the Digital Doorway: Designing for Humans. She shares, “The whole idea is that digital spaces often lack a connection to users’ real-world expectations. I always think that when users enter a digital space, they are walking through a digital doorway. So, I was speaking about how, as usability professionals, we might reimagine digital spaces as human spaces and apply our increased knowledge of users." She also highlighted strategies for teaching and practicing human-centricity within this context.
This trip was supposed to happen in 2020 when Pamela was expected to present on a different topic. However, as you might have guessed by the date, the pandemic halted it. Despite this, Pamela kept in contact with the symposium organizers she met at previous conferences, which helped create this partnership opportunity.
When Pamela saw the call for papers for this symposium, she thought she would submit something and hopefully get accepted to speak. Then she thought, what if a collaborative aspect was involved for students on top of the symposium? With that idea in mind, she approached the organizers, Renate de la Paix from the University of Strasbourg and Kirk St.Amant from Louisiana Tech, and conversations over Zoom led to setting the plan in place.
Taking a Collaborative Approach
The symposium began at noon on Friday and ended by the end of the day on Saturday. However, the group of students (which included Centennial, the University of Strasbourg, and Louisiana Tech) met on Wednesday and Thursday to take classes on language and culture, taught by Marie-Aude Sourd-Ramos from the University of Strasbourg and the psychology of design, taught by Kirk St.Amant from Louisiana Tech.
Our group of students had the opportunity to connect with the other student attendees and present their final project ideas, which resulted in great feedback and practice, seeing as how their capstone presentations were set for the following week. Check out the recap from their presentations here. Pamela says the feedback she received was how amazing her students’ work was and how professional they are.
“For them to hear from other people besides their faculty in the program, I think, is really powerful for them,” she shares. “They hear me talking about personas and usability, but it's really good for them to hear about that from Marie-Aude from the University of Strasbourg and Kirk from Louisiana Tech; they're getting their learning validated from many different sources.”
She adds, “It was a great start to ongoing collaboration and opportunities for students to engage with students from other schools in a managed, formal way by participating in a collaborative assignment with them. It was really powerful for me to feel the energy of these students.”
Article by: Alexandra Few
Check out and subscribe to our Storyteller newsletter and Storyteller In-Depth Podcast for more great stories from the School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design.