Russ Maschmeyer, MFA Interaction Design candidate, founded “AppLab” at SVA, an exchange outside the standard curriculum:
On any given Thursday night, students gather to exchange knowledge on both design and programming in kind. Improvising the curriculum as they go, a few of the second-year students — most of whom are learning the process themselves — have already tackled topics such as Object-Oriented Programming, the iOS platform, as well as programming in Cocoa and Objective-C. AppLab aims to collaboratively teach the basics to each member, then each student is tasked with building on that knowledge by developing a unique app idea.
He points out, “Everyone in this program knows something about either design, iPhone interfaces, wireframing, or programming. Skill-sharing isn’t a new idea. We’re just applying it to making apps.”
