November 2023 Updates
#1: 2024 Cohort Application Period Opening in January
The planning for the upcoming apprenticeship program has been underway.
- New mentors. The apprentice program leaders, Grace Lau and Julia DeBari, have been interviewing mentors and we can’t wait to announce them to the DIA community, but not just yet.
- Updated application process. We’ve been working on refining the announcement and the application process for the 2024 cohort of the apprenticeship program, but it’s not ready to share yet.
All we can say is look forward to the application opening on January 3rd, 2024. If you want a sense of who we accept, check out Accepting Apprentice Applications for 2023 and Pulling back the curtain on the apprentice selection process
#2: Design Education Resources
The database of design education resources we’ve been developing since last year has been updated. Nearly 100 resources have been added since the first release last October. Some UX writing courses have been added from the list put together by the lovely Laura Costantino.
Grace Lau
#3: Want to work with DIA?
DIA has availability for client projects next year. We’ve wrapped up developing a resource library for a certificate program on Webflow. We also delivered the final designs for a sole mental health practice. Another team also launched the redesign of an educational organization.
Each of these projects gave our apprentices the opportunity to work on real-world projects, partner with clients and their stakeholders on their needs and goals, and provide a space for them to learn about the intricacies of understanding how to balance information, needs, and intention.
Reach out to talk about bringing DIA Design Guild on for a project!
#4: UX Read Together Book Club has 3 chapters left!
We’ve been reading Mapping Experiences 2nd Ed. by Jim Kalbach one chapter a week and we’re almost to the end. With 3 chapters left to read, we’ll cover how qual and quant research help make maps real, how content layout and content can be brought together to show emotions, and how alignment workshops help teams understand and identify the problem to solve.
- Book: Mapping Experiences, 2nd Ed by Jim Kalbach
- Date time: Thursdays at 4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern
- Venue: Google Meet
- Host: Julia DeBari
#5: Building a Personal Knowledge Garden – Stay tuned for next year
Last month we shared the Personal Knowledge Garden that was being offered by Jorge Arango and Karl Fast. A few of us are taking the workshop and learning the ways of good note-taking. There are plans for this workshop to be offered next year as well. Stay tuned to our newsletter and we'll share the details when we hear more.
#6: Game Club Updates
The Game Club’s members have become busy since the 6th game jam. New commitments and responsibilities were hard to juggle along with game making, but we still managed to get some jams done!
General jam updates
Jam #7 saw us working in RPG Paper Maker, a free 3D alternative to the popular RPG Maker software. While we followed along with the documentation and additional tutorials, the members all agreed it was a difficult tool to learn due to performance issues and a menu scheme that was difficult to navigate.
Jam #8 started off with us learning Unity at the request of one of our members until we learned that none of us could get it working properly and that the company had just announced a predatory payment policy update. Instead we opted for Godot, a free and open-source game making engine that was a fraction of the size of Unity and actually worked. Things were promising until we realized just how complex game engines are to learn and everyone’s schedules made hosting a making session impossible.
Right now for Jam #9 we’re taking a breather and learning whatever tool we’d like, new or old, before the end of the year. At the moment we’re seeing:
- ChoiceScript, a tool for making choice-based narrative games,
- Godot, and
- an exploration of different approaches towards making hypertext games.
A surprise update?!
The Game Club will have a retro soon to review the previous year and see how we can improve for next year. Stay tuned for more updates!