The curriculum of the Design Studies program at Sacramento State, which focuses on the application of design history, theory, and research rather than on studio practice, has been in transition toward offering more flexibility and encompassing a wider range of skills. This project began as part of a Design Research Methods course in Fall 2024, giving Design Studies students the opportunity to shape the future of their major. The research produced in this team project led to the creation of a comprehensive design brief detailing our process and recommendations, which was summarized to form the basis of much of the case study.
For the Spring 2025 semester, that course’s professor (also my major advisor) offered me the opportunity to continue the project individually, moving into implementation. I first continued the prototyping stage that had been left partially incomplete the previous semester. I then made a mockup (with placeholder images) for an explanatory page, which mimics the design of existing pages on the university website to provide an example of how a Design Studies program page might look.
Here is a brief summary of the case study:
The key points
| Phase | Findings or deliverable | My contributions |
|---|---|---|
| 1: Frame the problem | Student confusion around the nature of the program; desire to make it more than a backup plan | Conducted research, sketched the problem, identified who is impacted |
| 2: Prepare for data collection | Interview questions and survey constructed | Listed potential interviewees, styles (structured versus unstructured), and questions/topics; contributed a portion of survey questions |
| 3: Research and analysis | Recommendation to offer chat spaces like Discord; no strict definition of Design Studies across universities; mixed opinions of the program at Sacramento State | Compared curricula, located some online communities, read research on curriculum development, found and analyzed visual references |
| 4: Written prototyping | FAQ and social media template text; online survey created to test prototypes. | Individual with instructor guidance except for consulting with other team members before beginning to go through pros and cons of identified precedents. |
| 5: Webpage mockup | Desktop and mobile proof of concept, with design replicated from other university pages | Individual with instructor guidance |
| Note: Items in this column were often additionally contributed by other team members. |
Credits
Project Lead
PJ Carlino, Assistant Professor & Coordinator, Design Studies
Website mockup
- Text and (placeholder) images provided to me by the instructor
- Design based on the page of the Ethnic Studies department, using background graphics and the university logo from that page
- Some icons from Figma’s Simple Design System
Case study
Much of the text about phases 1–3 was adapted from our team’s brief.
(Student team members kept anonymous)