A semester long project in WSU Vancouver’s digital technology and culture senior seminar class designs an interactive app for the City of Vancouver.
Senior year at WSU typically involves a capstone class, which entails a large final project. Capstone projects can vary from presentations, a research paper or work for external businesses and organizations.
For WSU Vancouver digital technology and culture seniors, the capstone class is called senior seminar. In this class, students work on a semester-long project for a local organization. In fall 2019, DTC seniors partnered with the City of Vancouver. The class worked on expanding an app previously created by former WSU Vancouver senior seminar students. The goal of this project was to spread awareness of Vancouver Parks and Recreation and inspire community engagement.
The course instructor was DTC program director and professor, Dene Grigar. Grigar earned her doctorate in interactive art, is a published author, a curator of exhibits in various venues and has a background in coaching girls basketball, which has impacted her style of teaching. She said with her background, Grigar sees herself as more of a coach or mentor rather than just a professor.
Every year Grigar arranges a project for her upcoming senior class. This project not only includes some kind of community partner, but centers the core value as the whole class working together as one team.
While everyone in the class works together, Grigar builds small teams within the class to simulate job-like environments. She constructs these teams by identifying her students, “superpowers,” as she and her students like to call them.
“Our program is very prominent in town, people know us and we’ve done a lot of projects. We’re all over the place. Part of our whole program is outreach and building the brain trust for this community. Our students live here and work here,” Grigar said.
The teams in the class are divided into categories of development, design, promotions, video and assets. Throughout the fall semester, the class began to expand the capabilities of the City of Vancouver’s small app, developing new content for the app and building a detailed instruction manual on everything they developed.
Gary Langan, a student in senior seminar, described the experience as an opportunity for him to come out of his shell. Langan said before the class, he tried to just do his part in group projects. However, for this project, he was selected as the lead for the design team.
“For past group projects I’ve always just wanted to be a part of the team, I don’t want to be the person that’s in charge of the team. It’s been interesting, everyone I’ve talked to says I’ve definitely come out of my shell,” Langan said.
Langan’s team focused on building the app for the users, designing the layout and making sure it was coherent with City of Vancouver’s website, down to the font they used. After development, teams submitted their designs to the City of Vancouver’s representative for approval or feedback.
“It’s definitely been a challenge, but it’s a welcomed one because it’s preparation for the real world,” Langan said. One design component Langan said he is most proud of is the logo he personally designed that will be seen at the startup of the app.
Another team lead for the DTC senior seminar class is Isabella Guetter, lead of the promotions sector. Guetter explained that her biggest focus for this project was developing a catalog of content.
Guetter and her team developed the catalog for social media and online-use for the City of Vancouver. According to Guetter, the City of Vancouver was hesitant to focus on social media promotion in the app, but their team demonstrated the need for it. The team created illustrations, photos and videos to promote the app on social media. The promotions team’s catalog has three months worth of planned posts for social media to help build engagement from the community.
“The biggest thing our class focused on was accessibility,” Guetter said while explaining that one of the parks the app will be promoting is currently being reconstructed to be fully wheelchair accessible.
Although the app will demonstrate what will be at the park using 3D modeling, Guetter explained some of the features that will be available after the park’s construction. “Even once the parks are built, there’s still scavenger hunt games, interactive maps and trivia games.”
Grigar hopes there is more to take away from her program than just getting a job. She wants her students to leave her program with mindfulness of their actions and confidence in themselves to go after their interests. “Being mindful of everything we do. Living not just in the present but being present in your life and thinking about the future and how the past impacts that,” Grigar said.
The app designed by WSU Vancouver’s DTC senior seminar class, called VanParksVision, is now available for download on Apple’s and Google Play’s app stores. It offers an interactive virtual tour of Marshall Park and North Image Park, which are currently being built.
Brody Voge is a junior at WSU Vancouver studying strategic communications.