EMERGING MEDIA PORTFOLIO
AN OVERVIEW OF MY JOURNEY IN UGA GRADY’S EMERGING MEDIA MASTER’S PROGRAM
Em summary
My time in the Emerging Media Master’s program at UGA’s Grady College was very productive and the impact it has had on my skillset and knowledge is profound.
When I started this program in mid-May of 2021, I was looking to pursue knowledge and expand my skillset as a journalist and digital media consultant, but beyond that and some course summaries, I wasn’t really sure what I was getting myself into with the EM program. Maybe it would be too hard and time-consuming? Maybe it would be too easy? Maybe it would be a waste of money? Safe to say, none of the above proved to be true.
The 12 classes I took were some of my favorite classes ever, and I was in the sports media program in undergrad… so that’s saying something!
The EM program was exactly what I was looking for, and I’m punching myself for not having done the New Media Certificate when I was an undergrad at UGA. I have seen a major transformation since starting the program a year ago, and I am now armed with skills I never knew I needed. I have most certainly achieved becoming more “techknowledgable”.
Below, you will find summaries of the courses I took in the program with projects that display my growth in areas such as app coding, customer experience design, website creation, graphic design, project management, and more.
I’m so thankful to my peers, professors, family, friends, and cats for supporting me throughout this journey. I couldn’t have done it without them.
JRMC 7010: Digital Customer Experience Design
Digital Customer Experience Design was a great way to kickoff my EM journey. During this brief but thorough course, I learned the importance of design, how to be an ethical designer, the service design methodology, how to journey map and prototype, and more.
This course was reading heavy and discussion focused, ultimately building to our final project. In my case, that was redesigning the customer experience of a portion of a client’s website. You can check out the final product below.
This class had a big impact on me, as it showed me that designers are important and integral. The service design mindset has also stuck with me and has become a key methodology that I utilize for my own business and with clients.
NMIX 6110: New Media Production
New Media Production was the kind of hands on class I’ve been looking forward to taking since I signed up for this program.
This course was all about front-end web development, and over a quick month, I learned the basics and then some about HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, WordPress, and JavaScript.
As someone who runs a business with a WordPress website (and all of my clients do, too), that was definitely my favorite unit, but HTML & CSS was a close second. I hadn’t dabbled in coding to this level since high school, and it was a great refresher as well as a building block for my knowledge of that area of web design.
Early on, I designed a hand-crafted website using just HTML & CSS, a BootStrap website, and a WordPress shop. My final project was once again for my client Accountalent. This time, I took the liberty of redesigning the company website. You can check out the final product below
JRMC 7011: Emerging Media Project Management
Project management was focused on two areas: ideating solutions and being able to take those solutions from ideation to prototype to a full-fledged polished product.
This course was heavily focused on group work, specifically working together and implementing a variety of methods to learn about different agile approaches and utilizing The Sprint method. We also read a book focused on being a good project manager and participated in discussions around the topics covered. Finally, we pitched three ideas for our Capstone project that will come to fruition in the next year.
This class was the consistent one across my first summer in the emerging media program, and to have it as the stronghold while learning about customer experience, coding, and design was a great way to bring it all together and arm myself with skills that will help me over the next couple of semesters and in the future as I inevitably manage numerous projects in the future.
NMIX 6111: New Media Design
New Media Design was a great way to end my first semester in the Emerging Media program.
This course was a quick but thorough deep dive into design basics, including design thinking, color theory, typography, photography, and popular applications that designers use to take those practices to the next level.
Our first two weeks were focused on design tools and color theory, among other design basics. During that time, I learned the basics of Adobe XD and Illustrator, which was very exciting! I had no idea what either of those apps did before this class, and learning the basics of them has opened my eyes to the design possibilities within the Adobe Creative Cloud. That module culminated in my final project: Ollie’s Playground.
Our second module was focused on photography and typography. While I am already proficient in Photoshop and have taken numerous photography classes, the typography aspect of this class was new territory for me. Utilizing Adobe Spark, which I’ve also used for a few years, I was able to create a fun Postcards from the Edge project centered around my experience covering the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and my family at home.
The final module, which was centered around UX and UI, was the hardest because of the turnaround time on the lessons and, ultimately, The Final Boss Project. I was lucky enough to be assigned a great team, and we came up with a fun concept that we were all proud of: Blood Mountain.
NMIX 7110: Advanced New Media Production
Advanced New Media Production built on New Media Production, which I took in Summer of 2021.
This course was heavily focused on advancing Javascript knowledge, learning what and how to use APIs at length, and gaining a basic understanding of Vue and GitHub.
While HTML and CSS came natural to me, Javascript was a bigger challenge, but through my professor’s excellent instruction, the concepts were broken down in a way that made them easier to understand. Similarly, the concept of understanding and utilizing APIs was completely new and also presented a challenge but weeks of course work contributed to a solid base knowledge of APIs and Javascript, as well as other concepts we touched on throughout the semester.
NMIX 6310: Rich Media Production
Rich Media Production was one of the courses that made this program catch my eye, because app design has always intrigued me. Little did I know, this class would be arguably the most important for my capstone project.
This course was solely focused on learning SwiftUI – Apple’s app design language – within Xcode.
Throughout the semester, we utilized lessons from the well-written Mastering SwiftUI – Basic.
My midterm and final projects centered around my capstone project – the Gymnastics Now iOS app – in an effort to efficiently manage my time and utilize the resources at my disposal.
JRMC 8016: Interaction Design
Interaction Design was heavily focused on two areas: developing our EM capstone and furthering our understanding about user experience and design thinking that we initially touched on over the summer semester.
Some deliverable highlights from this course include the Gymnastics Now Design System, LinkedIn Learning Figma Certificate, Basic Google Analytics Certificate, and the Gymnastics Now User Experience Research Plan.
NMIX 7005: Graduate Student Seminar
The Graduate Student Seminar in Fall 2021 was solely focused on carving out time to work on our capstone project. This included having an idea consultation with our professor, planning, drafting our project brief, and Alpha and Beta development.
The course concluded with Mini-Merge – a program-wide presentation of the final Beta products that are now ready for user testing in the spring!
JRMC7012: Emerging Media Storytelling
Emerging Media Storytelling was an interesting elective course that took us through a variety of mediums and tasked us with analyzing the mediums, how people utilize them, and their impact on society.
This was easily the heaviest paper-writing course of my program, but it was warranted with the research papers, films, music videos, and other things that we were analyzing.
Starting with letter writing and ending with smart phones, my final project utilized photography, storytelling, and me trying my hand at poetry to create a telling piece that examines the role of smart phones in our lives today.
JRMC8130E: Engaging Digital Audiences
This course explored a variety of ways to engage audiences on digital platforms, including in-depth modules on social media, portfolio design, and audience-focused presentations that resonate with viewers.
Each module had a form of final project, with the final module, presentations, allowing us time to iterate through versions of our capstone presentations as we prepared to present our final projects. My beta presentation, which served as my final project in this class, is linked below.
JRMC6000: Environmental Communication
In this course, we examined communication in the context of global climate change. We looked at the current science on the causes and effects of climate change before examining theories and models that have been used to study communication around the issue. Finally, we used this knowledge to develop a digital “product” to promote a specific drawdown tactic relevant to slowing down and/or reversing climate change in Georgia.
My group’s final project was called Voltage Vehicles. The app is a sleek and simple way to locate charging stations for electric vehicles in your area.
For this project we went through an information gathering phase before developing the brand, creating the wireframe for the project, producing a high fidelity prototype in Figma, and presenting the final project.
JRMC7015: Emerging Media Capstone
Much like NMIX 7005 in the fall, the Emerging Media Capstone in Spring 2022 was a largely independent study focused on building our final capstone projects, including conducting user testing, 1.0 development, additional brand development, and the presentation of our final project.
The course concluded with Emerge – a program-wide presentation of the final projects that are now ready for launch!