Gaming design students discuss a project in the Game Lab at the Hunt Library.
There, they learned to develop the way it is done in the real world—under great time pressure and in groups that combine areas of expertise. The result: in four months, they built a video game for one of the largest and most color-rich digital displays in the industry today. Other groups from the collaborative class—the “experience designers”—tackled the very real-world challenges of how users interact with such a unique space. By the end of the semester, this group of students had suggested a detailed plan of how to arrange the technology, the signage, and the furniture to turn the Game Lab into an intuitively usable space.
The students really “got” the value in this collaboration: one told us, in fact, that this cross-disciplinary opportunity was “the greatest experience that I’ve had so far in college.”
VISUALIZING HOW TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS CAN CHANGE A CITY On September 4, 2013, the North Carolina Institute of Transportation Engineers, members of the civil engineering faculty, staff from the Institute for Transportation Research and Education on Centennial Campus, and staff from RS&H, a global design firm, met to explore the future of simulation in understanding and communicating how transportation options can change a city. Software quickly modeled, for instance, how a new overpass in Jacksonville, Florida, would change everything from pedestrian patterns to natural light in the surrounding neighborhoods, then let all those in the Creativity Studio live through a very realistic experience of the changes on the room’s massive video wall. One key takeaway—the transportation industry now has a transformative new tool for engaging the public with compelling, realistic scenarios early on in planning a project as citizens begin deciding their city’s future. Transportation engineers explore the latest in computer simulation in the Creativity Studio at the Hunt Library.
16 | FOCUS - NCSU Libraries