In the framework of a course on Designing the User Experience students were engaged in producing large scale multimedia projects focusing in the digital user experience. Results were fascinating with deliverables involving interactive apps, websites and games. This presentation focuses on how students were engaged, guided and motivated in producing them, and showcases select deliverables.

In Designing the User Experience course students were tasked to work on large scale multimedia projects that were developed throughout the course. The focus was put in engaging the students to produce digital content for the benefit of the community.

Each project was created by a group of up to four students that chose a specific theme that would contribute to the community. We ended up with very interesting deliverables in the technical aspect and even more in the documentation aspect. Each documentation included various dimensions of the deliverables such as: the user experience measurements and benchmarking, the design aspect, the implementation aspect, the project management plan including resources allocations, the marketing plan, and measurements on the impact in the user community.

Documentation included description of personas, user profiles and their interactions with the system. Documentation also included project management plans that were created with project management tools that enabled students to track their progress throughout the project developments. The focus was put in the interactivity of users and their engagement with the system. Surveys and questionnaires were developed in order to measure the user engagement and interactivity. Benchmarking was created as well to track the engagement and the methods to increase the involvement. Each documentation described the user interactions and their feedback during the interactions with the system. Usability tests were performed and users shared their experiences with using the apps, websites or games that were developed.

We ended up with amazing deliverables. In one of the projects students created an app for reviewing that serves them to review for their exams. In this app they have digitized their review sheets so that they don’t have to create and photocopy huge piles of sheets each time before their exams.

In another project, an interactive website was created that helps users to spot the various touristic places and events that are happening and can be consulted in real-time. Users are able to generate multimedia content about this and share the content with other users.

In another project, an interactive game was developed that helps users learn and develop their math skills.

Finally, in another deliverable, an interactive website was created that helps students find scholarships and guides them for the application process. They are given the possibilities to work with various templates when they apply for scholarships and depending on their needs they can produce the content that they will use during the process.

This presentation showcases the above mentioned deliverables and focuses on how students were engaged, guided and motivated in producing these multimedia projects.