Teaching Portfolio (2019-Present at CMU)
Dina El-Zanfaly, Ph.D.
My teaching experience spans courses in several institutions, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, and Carnegie Mellon University, CMU. At CMU, I have brought my interaction design and computation expertise to graduate and undergraduate courses on user experience, social innovation, interaction design, and design research methods. I have taught more than seven unique core courses over the past two years. I have been teaching the interaction design core studio for first-year master’s students, in which one of the projects by a team of four students, Chef, won two awards in Core 77. I also created an elective based on my research to provide students an opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research. This course has been recently added to CMU’s IDEATe, the Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology program. Five values shape my teaching philosophy:1) I emphasize in the studio that we are designing human experiences and interactions, regardless of the technology medium, 2) thinking through making, 3) reflective practice, 4) knowledge transfer and 5) design is always a conversation. Going forward, I will build more connections with the industry to bring corporate sponsors to the classroom.
51825 - Seminar III Advanced Interaction & Service Design Concepts + PhD Seminar Design Theory & Practice.
Fall 2019 -2023
In this seminar, we formulate an informed, rounded and reflective stance on — theory, models, and themes, in design research and practice. We discuss matters of care, unmaking, more-than-human, ethical AI, design justice and value-sensitive design, and the future of design education among other design research themes. We design a participatory design event at the end of the semester.
You can read more about our weekly sessions on the seminar's website for Fall 2022. Previous version could be found on Fall 21's Website.
End of Semester Participatory event, Inside Out, Link.
Discussing worldmaking and the toolmaker’s paradigm, Designing with Session's link.
51-711-Graduate course studio I and lab: Design for Interactions
Fall 2019- 2023
This course introduces students to concepts, methods and practice that form the basis of designing for interactions. We explore design processes (ways to think about and approach design), contextual relevance (how interactions affect, and are a result of, their context, culture, situation), and tools and materials (how you make the work and what you need to make it), in order to give form to the behavior of products, systems, services, and environments. Students develop expertise in envisioning preferred futures by examining the present, while considering design criteria based on client needs, human concerns and personal values.
Blue Apron – Chef, Conversational AI for Culinary Experiences. Link🡥
By Anna Boyle, Amrita Khoshoo, Deepika Dixit, and Yiwei Huang.
Student Notable in the 2020 Core77 Design Awards🡥
Encounter, The Future of Msueums. Link🡥
By Bhakti Shah, Deepika Dixit, Jisoo Shon, Michelle Chou, and Anuprita Ranade
AURUM, Augmented Reality Experience for the Carnegie Natural History Museum. Link🡥
By Amrita Khosho, Hannah Koenig, Michelle Cedeno, and Yiwei Huang.
Motional Aero, An intelligent virtual assistant and travel companion for autonomous ride sharing. Link🡥
By Alice Chen, Catherine Yochum, Hannah Kim, and Karen Escarcha
Tesla Conversational UI, Integrating a voice assistant into Tesla's brand and UI that encourages exploration Link🡥
By Alex Heyison, Aashrita Indurti, Hongxun Jin, and Yuchuan Shan
VO, A virtual assitant for Volvo Link🡥
By Minkyoung Lee, Peter Cederberg, Xuehui Zhang, and Yueru Deng
BeMee, A Multi-sensory Interactive Tool for Remote School. Link🡥
By Alice Chen, Carol Ho, Hongxun Jin, and Xuehui Zhang
SyncUP, A wearable device for remote music collaboration Link🡥
By Hannah Kim, Minkyoung Lee, & Yu Chuan Shan
51-361/861 - hyperSENSE: Augmenting human experience in Environments
Fall 2020 & Spring 2022
Undergraduate and Graduate
How can we create physical and digital interactions that bridge the gap between humans and built environments to augment our senses?
Over fifteen weeks, sessions will cover a weekly theme through readings, hands-on exercises, and invited speakers from various disciplines. These weekly themes include embodied interactions, temporality of interactions, phenomenology of perception, data physicalization, and materializing interactions in space.
Time In(material), A portal for spatial memories. Link🡥
By Amrita Khosho, Christianne Francovich, Isabel Nagan, and Rachel Arredondo (Graduate Students)
Environments Studio IV: Designing Environments for Social Systems
Spring 2020
Undergraduate
This studio is about design, behavior, and people’s understanding, in physical, digital, and hybrid environments. The course comprises practical projects investigating, understanding, and materializing invisible and intangible qualitative phenomena, from intelligence to social relationships, through new forms of probe, prototype, speculative design, and exhibit.
Beamer, Emotive qualities in smart home. Link🡥 to process
By Ashley Burbano, and Tay Aras
51480-A- Design Capstone Project: Service Design & Social Innovation
Undergraduate: Senior Year
Spring 2020
Co-Faculty: Kristin Hughes
This studio’s challenge is to design something that contributes to positive environmental, economic, or social change. In other words, as Simon explains, the project should change “an existing situation into a preferred one.” Working in groups of three, you are required to design a community-driven project related to a problem specific to Pittsburgh. The project could be an app, an online platform, a product, or a mix of some or all. Main deliverables include conducted research, identifying your stakeholders, developing prototypes, business planning, testing your design, and developing it.
51102-A- Design Lab I Spring 2020
Spring 2020
Undergraduate: First Year
Co-Faculty: Daphne Peters and Kyuha Shim
A fundamental exploration of visual form-making with an emphasis on the understanding, interaction, and making of two- and three- dimensional artifacts. This becomes the basis of communication, product, environment, & interaction design.
By Grace Li, Sarah Xi ,Joseph Kim
By Chelsea Liu, Joseph Kim, Sarah Xi, Chris Han
By Caitlyn Baensch
By Joseph Kim
Contact
Lab Director:
Dina El-Zanfaly
delzanfa@andrew.cmu.edu
School of Design, MM207
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
USA