Improving the experience of future design students

Overview

This project focused on defining the program’s overarching identity. As a relatively new and often misunderstood field, the program faces challenges, such as a course flow that draws upon several departments and the associated lack of a dedicated physical space on campus. We gathered input from students and faculty to ensure alignment with program goals. Other universities’ (somewhat) similar programs were also analyzed to see how they have handled common challenges. We aimed to make the program more cohesive, enhance its visibility and integration into the broader campus environment, and foster a strong community among students and faculty.

Phase 1: Frame the problem

First, to help define the problem, each of the team members conducted literature review research and sketched out a problem frame. (Mine is in the following box, though I have removed all information from confidential sources.) I also helped identify those involved and impacted. Overall, we identified a lack of clear understanding among key stakeholders—current, future, and prior students, faculty, employers, and the administration—regarding the potential of the Design Studies program to meet their needs. This also made attracting students, faculty, and funding to the program more difficult.

In addition to reducing student confusion, we also found it important to establish Design Studies as a sought-after major in its own right, not just a backup plan for those coming from studio programs. Identified potential solutions include FAQs, social media, and events.

The target audience was determined to include groups such as:

• High school seniors selecting a school/major for college
• California Community College students looking to transfer to Sacramento State
• Current Sacramento State students looking to change their major
• Current Design Studies students looking for clarification on their major and job possibilities upon graduation
• Prospective faculty from anywhere in the nation looking to learn more about the program as a possible career choice

Phase 2: Prepare for data collection

We decided to collect data through both surveying and interviewing.

Survey

We conducted the survey to gather feedback from Design Studies students at Sacramento State to improve the program. Key objectives included understanding student experiences, identifying challenges, and using the data to craft a comprehensive program that meets student needs.

Key Research Questions:

• What were students’ expectations for their courses, and how do they compare to the actual outcomes?
• What challenges are students facing, and how much of this is due to a lack of a dedicated program space?
• How do the opportunities available in Design Studies compare to students’ perceptions of other majors?
• How satisfied are students with the curriculum, career opportunities, and internships?
• What suggestions do students have for improving the program?

The survey was distributed via email to all Design Studies students and open for two weeks.

Interviews

Four faculty and staff members and three students in the class were consulted. Each student on the team formulated questions for every faculty/staff member we identified (though each only interviewed one). Then, we collectively worked out the final list of questions. Each also supplied one of the four total questions asked to students.

We were able to interview all the faculty and staff we contacted, but student participation in surveys and interviews was lower than expected.

Ethical considerations

Interview request emails and the email with the survey both clearly noted that the research was done as part of a course and gave a general overview of the project. To encourage student participation, we decided to offer a chance to win one of six $15 Visa eGift cards. The difficulty was how to accommodate that in an anonymous survey. The team communicated about a few ideas via Discord. We eventually decided to optionally ask participants for their name and email address, clearly explaining this was necessary to be eligible for the prize but not a requirement of the survey. This disclaimer is at the top of the survey.

Phase 3: Research and analysis

Learning from precedents

The purpose was to see what insights we could gain from the approaches that have been taken elsewhere. Precedents were largely found through discussion posts, social media, studies of other curricula (even beyond design) and visual identities of Sacramento State, other educational institutions, and brands. (The portions of this research that focused on understanding the target audience, those being the social media and discussion posts, were undertaken alongside phase 2.) Research was limited primarily by a relative lack of directly comparable programs. This led to a focus on design education and even education in general rather than Design Studies programs. Among this broader category of design students, we determined that that social media platforms like Instagram are primarily used for sharing updates, showcasing events, and attracting new members, but they lack significant follower interaction. Instead, most student engagement occurs during in-person events or through more interactive platforms like Discord, so offering chat spaces was identified as a recommendation.

Among the limited selection of other Design Studies programs on offer, I analyzed those from NC State University, Azusa Pacific University, and San José State University as points of comparison. They differ considerably in focus and scope, indicating that there is no universal definition of “design studies” as a field. I identified this realization as something to explain in the FAQ prototypes. NC State provides a humanities-based approach to understanding design and material culture (similarly to Sacramento State),¹¹ whereas San José State offers specializations in specific disciplines that are less comprehensive than those provided by the BFA or BS (in the case of Industrial Design) degrees.¹² The program at Azusa Pacific was most unique in that it was essentially a graphic design degree,¹³ and this is supported by the fact that there was no major under the title of graphic design.¹⁴ Despite their differences, all three emphasize the importance of developing theoretical knowledge, which may have also led my prototypes to focus on the knowledge that could be gained.

Other curricula across design and other majors were also studied. The visual analysis did not end up having much influence on overall conclusions, however, due to the emphasis on written research and (in regard to the later web mockup) stylistic consistency.

Most other findings related to pedagogy and curriculum structure, but these were of limited relevance to the prototyping since the scope of the project did not involve shaping the curriculum itself, only figuring out how best to present the program and its already-planned changes.

Interview and survey takeaways

Insights covered a wide range from pedagogy to marketing, but here are the most significant conclusions:

• Lack of institutional promotion: The Design Studies program is not effectively marketed by the college or university, as it is excluded from platforms like the College of Arts and Letters landing page and campus tours.¹⁵
• Positive steps: One faculty participant expressed approval of steps being taken to improve the major and make it appeal as more than a backup plan.¹⁶ 
• Neutral feelings from diverse expectations: One student noted that their early experiences in the program featured numerous history courses, However, they also expressed that recent additions feel more relevant to their career interests. ¹⁷
  • Some appreciate the major for its historical focus, while others would prefer more practical skills through studio work that could help them to develop their portfolios.¹⁸ This mirrors the diversity of Design Studies students, as some are interested in fields closely tied to the program like museum curation while others want to be practicing designers.
• Negative aspects: Being required to take courses from several departments, such as GPHD 25: Visual Basics I (an introductory graphic design theory course), reduces cohesion and creates scenarios where certain courses do not feel relevant to what students want to do.¹⁹ The lack of cohesion emerged as an overarching point for improvement among students various hopes.

Phase 4: Written prototyping (largely individual)

The process of prototyping began with going through all team members’ precedent analyses and reaching a consensus on the pros and cons of the identified approaches. Then, as the others finalized various areas, I focused on writing prototype FAQ and social media text for clearer student messaging that also addressed common concerns about post-graduation opportunities.²⁰

Here’s an example of how one FAQ response evolved:

As I was working on this part of the process, the instructor read through the team’s design brief and compiled a list of ideas and recommendations for prototyping. Although we did not work on many of these ideas due to the semester being almost over, “marketing” materials would become an additional focus of my individual work in the following semester, One other recommendation that I helped contribute, however, has already made an impact, as the program’s Instagram became active again.

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Working with my instructor in Spring 2025, I continued to revise and finalize the prototypes, mostly making minor adjustments for clarity and narrowing down the ones to present for testing.

It was then time to format the selected prototypes as an online survey. This proved more challenging than expected. The branching logic I originally wanted to use proved impossible to create in Microsoft Forms. (I don’t remember with certainty what I had in mind. I think I was planning to ask, on page 1, whether the student ever felt uncertainty or confusion around each question, with page 2 then displaying only the prototypes around which the student had felt uncertainty.) I later realized that removing the branching actually improved the survey since even those who did not face uncertainty could still provide valuable feedback on aspects like clarity. I therefore created two alternatives.

Phase 5: Webpage mockup

The final task was to create a mockup for a page that explains and promotes the Design Studies major. (The department and catalog pages did not have much information about this relatively new program.)²¹ This mockup could then be presented to the Division of Information Resources & Technology (IRT) to help make the case for why this type of page should be added. The professor learned that programs are no longer allowed to add such pages to the course catalog. He initially thought that such information may need to be presented outside the official website, but we discovered multiple page styles in use (on the official website but separate from the catalog) for presenting similar information:

There did not at first appear to be any correlation between the type of page and the style used. I chose Style 2 simply because I thought it offered more dynamic possibilities for presenting images alongside text. (I discovered as the project was coming to a close that Style 1 seems far more common for program pages, but there is at least one other program using Style 2: the Film program.²²)

With the discontinuation of Adobe XD, I needed to decide whether to use Photoshop or try to learn Figma Design. Upon seeking advice from two professors, I chose the latter. This does mean that much of the time was simply spent learning Figma, so no refinements were made to the provided text, but I am glad I was able to learn the right tool for the job and expand my skillset.

I first reconstructed the desktop and mobile layouts in grayscale without worrying about images or exact typography.

It was a challenge to learn Figma’s “constraints” system to allow the responsive viewing mode to work, but allowing the mockups to adjust to the aspect ratio of the viewer’s screen was worthwhile.

I also discovered that I needed to manually account for the status bar and notch on the mobile mockup, both for viewing on an actual phone in the Figma mobile app and Figma’s virtual device frames. I designed the prototype around my actual phone, but finding the correct status bar height took trial and error.

For the typography and color of the final version, I used browser developer tools to match many of the most important CSS properties used in Style 2. Decorative images were downloaded directly from the real website.

Notes

1. Meredith Davis, Julia De Bari, and Simona Maschi, “Credentialling: Educational Pathways in Design,” in “The Future of Design Education: Rethinking Design Education for the 21st Century,” edited by Meredith Davis, special issue, She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation 9, no. 2 (2023): 121. ↩︎
2. Davis et al., “Credentialling,” 122. ↩︎
3. “Department of Design: BA Design Studies,” San José State University, last updated August 15, 2024. ↩︎
4. “Media Arts, Design and Technology | College of Design: Bachelor of Arts in Design Studies,” NC State University, accessed October 19, 2024. ↩︎
5. Student Voice, “Student Perspectives on Course Content and Structure in Design Studies,” Student Voice Blog, Student Voice, accessed September 8, 2024. ↩︎
6. Student Voice, “Student Perspectives on Course Content.” ↩︎
7. Davis et al., “Credentialling,” 118–19. ↩︎
8. Meredith Davis, and Hugh Dubberly, “Rethinking Design Education,” in “The Future of Design Education: Rethinking Design Education for the 21st Century,” edited by Meredith Davis, special issue, She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation 9, no. 2 (2023): 100. ↩︎
9. Davis and Dubberly, “Rethinking Design Education,” 101. ↩︎
10. Davis et al., “Credentialling,” 121. ↩︎
11. “Bachelor of Arts in Design Studies,” NC State University.  ↩︎
12. “BA Design Studies,” San José State University. ↩︎
13. “Design Studies Major,” Azusa Pacific University, archived November 5, 2024. The program has since been sunset, as noted at “2025-2026 Academic Catalog: Sunsetted Programs,” Azusa Pacific University, accessed September 9, 2025, under “Undergraduate Programs.” ↩︎
14. “2024-2025 Academic Catalog: BA in Design Studies,” Azusa Pacific University, archived November 2, 2024. This observation is based on looking at the programs within the same department in the sidebar. ↩︎
15. Faculty participant 1, email to student, November 24, 2024. ↩︎
16. Faculty participant 2, Zoom meeting with student, November 14, 2024. ↩︎
17. Student participant 1, interview with student team member, November 12, 2024. ↩︎
18. As gathered from the survey. ↩︎
19. Survey, questions 8, 9, and 15. ↩︎
20. For instance, the following Reddit comments about analogous programs were identified in audience research. [deleted], “Design Studies post grad,” r/SJSU (forum), Reddit, May 3, 2024, accessed September 28, 2024; Potential_Jacket680. “What BA Design Studies alumni do after graduating?” r/SJSU (forum), Reddit, June 25, 2023, accessed September 28, 2024; NicoCorty02, “Developing my professional career,” r/IndustrialDesign (forum), Reddit, September 29, 2024, accessed September 29, 2024.  ↩︎
21. “Department of Design: Design Programs at Sac State,” Sacramento State, accessed September 16, 2024; “2025-2026 University Catalog: BA in Design Studies,” Sacramento State, accessed July 18, 2025.  ↩︎
22. It’s worth noting that this page’s color scheme and decorative graphics have recently changed. At the time I constructed my mockup, it was identical to that of the Ethnic Studies department. “Film Program,” Sacramento State, accessed July 19, 2025. (The original colors can be seen in a version archived March 25, 2025.) ↩︎

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