co-design immersive

While teaching students across my two graduate courses, I noticed that a common thread among them was that they didn't understand "how work happens" in industry settings. Many were either emerging design and technology professionals, or were changing career paths, and so they often lacked perspective on the ways of working in the enviroments they'd be entering into. In an effort to bridge this gap, I established a partnership between New York Institute of Technology and Meta, where I led the content design practice for the Reality Labs Metaverse Creation Pillar, to host a co-design onsite. The goal of the partnership was to give students experience that was consistent with how things are done at a global technology company, and to direct the fresh perspectives of the graduates toward some of Reality Labs' most complex challenges. 

I was responsible for:

• Developing and pitching the proposal to both my Department Chair at NYIT, and my VPs at Meta
• Assembling a committee to help drive the effort
• Creating a budget, agenda, and identifying opportunity areas that were aligned with curiculum learning objectives and company business goals
• Recruiting academic and industry mentors to support the immersive
• Delegating tasks to committee members at both Meta and NYIT
• Leading bi-weekly mertings among partnership committee
• Managing logistics (advance reading materials, space and equipment recervations at Meta office, a/v support, etc.)
• Partnering with legal teams to develop appropriate NDAs and Data Use Agreements 

The immersive took place over the course of three days. The first half of day one was dedicated to learning sessions taugh by Meta practitioners. These sessions provided students with appropriate industry/company context, as well as "crash courses" in various technical skills in immersive design and programming software.

The partnership was a success, and was expanded in its second year to include students and faulty from NYIT, Parsons School of Design, Columbia University, School of Visual Arts, and Fashion Institute of Technology.