COURSES
Below are details of some of the courses I taught, teach and would like to teach. My teaching generally focuses on preparing students to use interactive media to educate themselves, create products and solve problems. I also teach VR, AR and mixed immersive media development classes.
I teach courses in NYU Shanghai's Interactive Media Business major at the intersection of media, art, technology and business. My newest courses focus on the locational endowment of NYU Shanghai in China and its connectivity to the Chinese innovation ecosystem. I am also preparing a new production course focused on challenging students to build Blockchain-based financial systems that incentivize ethical behavior and respect for humans.
Subject Areas: interactive media arts, VR/AR development, programming, 3D reconstruction
This introductory course focuses on building virtual worlds and understanding how immersive interactive media and social presence can help create entirely new forms of compelling experiences and narratives. Throughout the course, students will become familiar with critical concepts such as iterative design, play testing, object-oriented programming, physically based rendering of light and sound, 3D modeling, logic and experience design. They will take a design-based approach to content creation, developing a proficiency in a variety of software tools, development methodologies and creation techniques. Students will work over 7 weeks in design teams to create interactive virtual worlds to be experienced on high-end PC VR head-mounted displays, culminating with a premiere where invited guests from around the NYU campuses will explore and interact with the class in each team’s immersive virtual world.
Subject Areas: interactive media business, interactive media arts, business, China, hardware and software design
This course takes a hands-on critical look at the history and factors shaping China's reputation as the 'workshop of the world' and also it's emergence through economies of scale and scope as a hub for innovation through rapid prototyping and manufacturing. They will become experts on not just the techniques involved in conceptualizing and delivering innovation to a market, but also in the ways that China's unique online, offline and decentralized marketplaces for skills, talent and innovation enable a small team to accomplish what a large one cannot.
Students make the full use of China's rapid design and production infrastructure to conceptualize, prototype, design for manufacture and market a consumer electronics product. This is an intensive course that takes place across two of China's innovation hubs, Shanghai and Shenzhen, with conceptualization, design and rapid prototyping, and rapid manufacturing followed by a final presentation, user testing and documentation.
Subject Areas: interactive media business, marketing, branding, new product and service development
Innovation is the process by which an organization generates creative new ideas and converts them into viable commercial products. Branding, on the other hand, is the process of creating a unique image for the product in the consumers’ mind. This perception reflects on the organization as a whole. Moreover, branding aims to establish a differentiated presence in the marketplace to attract and retain loyal customers. Thus, innovation and branding are inextricably linked for organizational success, or survival, in today’s hyper-competitive business landscape.
This course aims to equip students with knowledge in both the innovation and branding processes. By participating in the International L’Oreal Brandstorm Competition, students will gain practical experience in formulating an idea, develop branding around said idea, and then pitching said idea (innovation and branding) in a competitive forum. Students will also develop an understanding of the role of design and innovation as a collaborative, multidisciplinary group activity; and improve writing and presentation skills. The course incorporates multiple ways of learning including: lectures, case studies, ethnographic research, industry expert feedback on projects and guest presentations, and design activities in the interactive media lab. In essence, the course integrates a project- based learning approach.
Below are some courses I've taught in the past, and will possibly teach in the future.
Subject Areas: interactive media business, business, startups, startdowns
Increasing possibilities brought about by emerging forms of technology and decreasing costs of connecting people to things have not only enabled technological innovations, but have also opened the door to new applications, business models, products and services. Experimentation and calculated risk taking are keys to successfully harnessing the possibilities of today’s most cutting-edge technologies and innovative methods to first build, understand and then redefine how humans and products interact.
In this 7 week course, student ‘co-founders’ will conceive of and market a new media, physical or technology product designed to fit a market while also allowing them to accelerate and validate a sustainable business model. Students will ‘get out of the classroom’ and put these products into potential customers’ minds. The course will touch upon topics such as how to design a minimum viable product, design a business model, talk and work with customers, and develop a product community.
Subject Areas: interactive media business, business, China
The course focuses on the roles of technological leap-frogging, government policies, open innovation networks, talent, shanzhai (山寨) and rapid product development cycles on innovation in Shenzhen, China and the impacts of these innovations on individuals, organizations and the world.
The course is designed to take advantage of NYU Shanghai's one-of-a-kind locational endowment and extensive network of experts in order to provide students with a unique perspective and opportunity to understand and participate directly in the ecosystems of Shenzhen and China. Students will learn in and out of the classroom through lectures, mini-case studies and fieldwork. They will also contribute to the production of knowledge on the increasingly important topic of the Shenzhen style of innovation through regular blog posts on the course website.
Subject Areas: augmented reality, 3D scanning and reconstruction, storytelling, unity 3d
Stories are an intrinsic part of our societies and culture. Technologically supported mediums of expression, - radio, television and now the Internet have not only enabled the story to spread beyond the campfire but also to help increase access and impact. This course asks the question: What will the world of storytelling look like in 10 years? Is it one devoid of human input and interaction dominated by CG artificial intelligence supported by machine learning, or is it one in which the relative strengths of human and machine coalesce to bring about an even better result?
Students will explore storytelling and communication by combining the art of storytelling with the state-of-the-art medium of mixed reality. Topics include the history of storytelling through mediums and modes and technologies of expression, development and design for mixed reality devices, reality reconstruction techniques, applications of computer vision, volumetric video production, motion capture and spatial audio.
The contents of this course are framed within the context of the Living Stories Through Technology research project at NYU, which investigates the use of augmented reality for storytelling. Students will work in teams to document and produce a final project and/or technical framework designed to teach and inspire others to tell their stories and to add to the Living Stories Through Technology showcase of work in Shanghai, New York and Abu Dhabi.
Subject Areas: engineering, robotics, business, economics
In this course, students will explore fundamental building blocks of technology-enhanced rapid product ideation and design through the lenses of creative exploration within the real-word business context of work. This course connects and constrains the worlds of art and business in order to challenge students to be creative in both their application of technology and their design of solutions with a real-world impact.
Students will work directly with the course partner, Etihad, one of the world’s leading airlines, to design, develop and test technology-enhanced solutions to real-world business challenges. Students will come away with a much better understanding of not just how to create interactive technology-enhanced prototypes and modern design practices, but also an appreciation for how to propose, enact and manage change across a multi-disciplinary/cultural modern organization.
Specific topics covered will include design thinking, human-computer interaction patterns and exploration of the fundamental buildings blocks of human-computer applications. Students will become familiar with game engines as tools for complex data and interactive orchestration, low-rez prototype development, rapid software development and best practices for researching, designing and analyzing software and hardware products.
Here are some courses currently in the planning stages
Subject Areas: interactive media business, financial technology, programming, economics
This course explores core technical and economic concepts behind blockchains such as Bitcoin and its derivations both from the perspective of their use as financial instruments, stores of value and speculation, but more importantly, the value of immutable, programmable blockchains and how they might be used to improve qualities of life, increase transparency and promote ethical behaviors.
