I hope this Q&A will be helpful to those of you who are curious about ITP and maybe thinking
of applying to our graduate program but don't have a chance to physically come for a visit.
We are joined today with two of our amazing faculty members, Catherine, Dylan, and Tom
Igo.
Welcome.
Thanks for coming.
Catherine's focus is on design and user experience.
At ITP, she teaches visual language, persuasion, design, and thesis.
She's the creative director at L2, Inc., a digital research firm.
Tom Igo's research includes physical interaction, design, network, sustainability, and monkeys.
He teaches physical computing courses and is the co-founder of the Arduino open source
microcontroller.
So why don't you guys take a couple of minutes and maybe expand on that, talk about your
work a little bit.
Sure.
You want to go first?
Sure.
Yes.
So my class visual language is for students who have no design experience so you don't
have to come to ITP with design experience if you have strong technical skills or other
skills, neither technical nor design skills, but good ideas, we welcome you to apply.
And that class particularly offers students without that design experience an opportunity
to get some fundamentals in basically graphic design for digital and how its focus is mostly
on how to use design tools to communicate ideas and explore ideas.
We're a very collaborative place so sometimes the language that we use to communicate with
each other are visual language since we're such an international population as well.
And then I also teach, persuasion design is actually called for design for change this
year because the focus, it is about understanding some of the psychological triggers and behaviors
that are fundamental to human nature that we should understand in order to apply those
to the ways we want to impact the world hopefully for good in terms of social change.
So we look at social problems and how to move the needle on them at scale using some of
these behavioral psychology learnings.
I also teach a class I'm very passionate about called Hundred Days of Making which flips
the traditional model of final projects and the pressure on those on its head and asks
the students to challenge themselves to iterate on a theme every day for a hundred days.
And then a basic course in user experience design and how to introduce the voice of the
user in the design process at the end of the day, we're all designing things.
For the most part, we hope other people will use to enrich their lives or experiences so
we need to make sure that they're part of that design process.
And then lastly, as Midori said, thesis which for me is a fantastic opportunity to see students
both on their way in for a semester with visual language and see all the amazing things they
learned and accomplished on their way out through their thesis project.
So I teach physical computing which is our core class that really introduces people to
the idea that you can't interact with computers or digital systems without some sort of physical
body for the machine because you have a body.
And we often focus so much on the software that we forget that there is a limit to how
much we can express through computers and through electronic devices and that limit
is based on how many senses we give them.
So the more the machine can read our actions, the more it can interpret our expression.
We also use that as a class to really teach students what a computer is going all the
way down.
We're using a very basic computer so they really do learn what it is without an operating
system all the way up.
I also teach a class called Understanding Networks where the focus is really on understanding
networks.
I'm not so creative with the names because I think it's important that students really
do have a deeper understanding of how all these telecommunications networks we use work
because they affect our lives and they can control our lives if we don't understand
enough to make our own choices.
And then on top of that I'll teach other classes from time to time around one or two of these
themes either something on physical computing or something combining electronics with network
devices.
Occasionally I've taught classes on sustainability and technology and though I'm not doing it
at the moment I've also taught classes where we take some of the work I'm doing working
with primatology researchers and use it as an interaction design challenge to say these
are folks who work in extreme situations how can we use what they do as a way to learn
to build the tools that they need.
Great.
So can you take a couple moments and describe what the environment is like at ITP?
Oh boy.
It's well Dan O'Sullivan who's our chair likes to describe it as sort of a creative
mess I think.
It's a very open space which means there's a lot of people sort of working next to each
other or on top of each other.
It's very much a studio space in that there's plenty of open work space and tools to work
with and you know walls where you can just kind of get up and put something on the wall
and draw or things like that because we want to give people room to have ideas and again
ideas that affect physical space as well as network and telecommunications space.
It's a very social place I think people tend to spend a lot of time chatting with each
other or in the middle of working on something saying hey let me know how to do such and
such and that's something we really try to encourage.
I just would second that and say the students learn as much here from each other as they
do from us certainly probably more.
Very much of a collaborative social making kind of environment here.
Yeah, what stands out of the line is that classes are really an excuse to be hanging
out in the hallway and that really does tend to work that way here a lot.
And what kind of applicant in your opinion makes the best kind of student at ITP?
I think someone who's curious, passionate about ideas and possibilities, I think students
who come with a particular focus of that passion tend to succeed here you know whether it's
education or health care or a traditional art practice or whatever it is but students
who really know that the world can be a better place know that all the things that can be
invented haven't been invented yet and that there's lots of opportunity with the right
tool set to experiment and push ideas forward.
Having said that we do find that students who think they're going to come and you know
they are going to be a documentary maker, they've been a documentary maker, they take
you know understanding networks and there's lots of changing and morphing of ideas which
is part of the magic here too so I don't want to suggest that people sort of come with
a specialty and hone that specialty, that specialty often leads them to other places
that they would never have anticipated.
Yeah, I think that's very true, I think and it's funny because you mentioned that we did
actually have someone who came as a documentary maker, took understanding networks and now
he's running a telephone company in Nicaragua so you know things take different paths.
I think if there's anything that really makes people successful here is that they do want
to explore things through building, through trying to practice it and that they like working
with people and that may sound trite but I think a lot of times particularly in our
design schools you often get students who have a vision, they just want someone to
help them craft that vision and they're not so necessarily worried about working with
other people.
I think our best students here are people who they genuinely like each other and they
genuinely ask each other questions and will help each other out.
They're not necessarily extroverts but they are the type that will say oh yeah no I can
help you with that, what do you need?
Okay, James online asked, can you talk about the range of technical backgrounds of your
students?
Oh boy, range is the right word because it's everything from, you know in my case have
never opened Photoshop, you know no coding experience whatsoever to, I think every year
we have a few that are fairly sophisticated on both the design tools and the software
tools coding skills but by no means are they the norm, it's very much of a wide range and
that's sort of where that whole collaborative notion people bring their particular expertise
in the sharing of, the knowledge sharing is really the secret sauce around here I'd say.
Yeah and I think it's interesting that the two of us are in this conversation right now
because we do represent two parts of the technique that's done around here that people often
don't recognize that the other side is a technique, right?
But I think what's really fun in class is when you get someone who, they think they
know everything about a particular area and then they get introduced to an entirely different
set of practice and they go oh that's kind of interesting, I want to mess around with
that.
I was thinking of a couple of our alums that we worked with, Nick Sears and John Cousins
who came in with strong electrical engineering backgrounds and walked out of here doing design
work.
Yeah.
And it's, those are the kinds of things we like to see but yeah it is really a wide
range and not just art or science but sociology, anthropology, politics, the business you name
it we see them come through.
Yeah and it's, there is no typical, so there is no mold we're trying to fill but just interesting
people with interesting experiences that they bring.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what do your alumni do after they graduate?
That's as hard as answering what the students are.
It's such a, again there is no typical, some pursue a traditional art practice, some we've
had a number of people very successful in the education field and bringing disruption
and fresh ideas to that, we've had people focus on health care issues, some end up at
the obvious places, Google, Facebook, Amazon, some go the agency route, a lot of entrepreneurial
ship comes out of here, people, I think we expose people to sort of what it's like to
be inventors and makers and that's fairly contagious and compelling and so a lot of
people do like to pursue that when they leave and there's some wonderful success stories
around that.
So there, again, there's nothing typical about who comes in or what they do when they
go out, which is, again, what makes for such a rich place.
Yeah.
I think Dan was saying yesterday that he was doing a look at stuff on LinkedIn from Alums
and that the most common job description people had was co-founder but not necessarily co-founder
in the currently in vogue entrepreneurial way.
A lot of people who maybe started small agencies of two or three people because they like working
together and they have shared clients and I think we see that agencies in a lot of different
areas, both design, both construction, in strategy, all kinds of areas.
And one of the nice things about the alumni network because we are so international in
terms of our student population, people also leave with just a network of colleagues and
friends literally from all over the world, which is fantastic also.
They tend to hire each other a lot too.
Yeah, on that front, in terms of international students, I think we have about 60% international
this year representing anywhere from like 20 to 25 different countries.
So ITP really is coming from all over the place and so we really embrace that diversity.
That said, we're also, I think, what was it, like 55% women this year?
So yeah, I think maybe 55, 60% women.
So we're one of the few sort of more technical programs that have more women.
So that's a great plus for us as well.
So Louise online asks, can you talk about the projects in your classes?
Are there many small projects and challenges or more one large project that you work on
throughout the semester?
So I think depending on the class, it's all of the above.
As I mentioned, my 100 days class, it's 100 projects, in my visual language class, it's
a seven-week class.
We do an assignment each week that applies the principles.
Some of the design for change, we do a number of short projects and then there is a final
project that's six weeks long.
The one class where there is a full semester focus on a final project is thesis, which
is one of the few classes where the project is independent, otherwise most of the final
projects are teamwork or some sort of, have some kind of collaboration element to it.
So it's, depending on the choice of class, that there's no formula for what the project
structure is.
Yeah.
I mean, I think you could probably say with a lot of the production classes, you may end
up being working on anywhere from, say, two to five projects during the course of a semester.
And I think one of the things that's actually really satisfying to me that we see is oftentimes
students have something they want to work on.
And they find a way to sort of shoehorn it into the assignment for three or four different
classes.
And one thing we've started to notice the last couple of years, and I think encourage,
is like we'll see people taking intro to physical computing and they're working on a device
or something.
And at the same time, they're taking intro to computational media and they're working
on the software that connects to that device in there.
And then at the same time, they're taking a ComLab audio video and they're shooting
the videos for the thing they're building in that class.
And you were saying earlier that you've got people in visual language who are working
on some poster designs for the show coming up.
So we actually really like to see those things where students realize that the classes can
actually serve an idea from many different facets.
And then what's the, in terms of the projects, are they group projects or individual projects?
Again, that's all of the above, yes, some are group, and sometimes the groups are assigned
by the faculty, sometimes the professors of a particular class, sometimes the groups form
organically within the class, and some projects are individual, but there's no typical, anyone
who graduates here will have done some number of individual exercises, some number of group
projects of their own choosing, and some that they were, you know, there was an arranged
marriage of a team of some sort.
But the groups typically, I think are sort of three or four, it's somewhat unusual for
a group project to be bigger than that, though again, like I'm thinking at the time Square
Project last semester was the entire class, so we're really not, if there's one thing
that defines ITP, it is there is no formula for the way that we do things that depending
on the particular circumstance, subject matter, the class dynamic, we're certainly flexible
enough to do whatever feels right in terms of accomplishing the academic goals.
Okay, and then James asks, how are the classes tailored for the range of design and technical
backgrounds of the students so that they are challenging for everyone?
What about the range of backgrounds inside of one class?
Well, usually what we find with the classes is that no one class is focusing so tightly
on one technique that everybody in the class has to do just that one thing.
So even in a class that may be heavily skewed in one direction, you usually find that people
who have already done that skill still find something that challenges them, like again
in physical computing we do a little bit of electronics, but we also do some software
and we do some fabrication and students will have one or two of those skills, but maybe
not all.
I think another thing that they really find as a challenge and a good one is that when
you are working on a group project, like we were talking about, you often have to help
your partners understand what your skills are and what you're bringing to the table.
So again in the class that I'm teaching right now, it's often the case that one person will
understand the electronics really well, another will understand the software really well,
and a third will understand the design really well, and so in working together they end
up sort of teaching each other the skills as a group as well as learning from each other
as they go.
I think that's pretty typical with a lot of classes around here.
And how many students join the program each year and what's the student-teacher ratio?
Classes are limited to, with the exception of applications, which is the one class that
the entire class takes in their first semester, the first year, the classes are limited to
16.
So it's a very tight student-to-faculty ratio and all of us as faculty have office hours
and are very much in the mix in terms of this creative mess that we call the fourth floor
here.
So people are very accessible, students all have academic advisors to help them with their
class choices.
And just to the previous question, after your first semester, first semester courses are
fairly prescribed, prescribed, but after that you have a lot of choice, you have nothing
but choice in terms of what you take with the exception of pieces in your last semester.
So in terms of choosing your path, there's lots of options of classes and you can really
craft your own curriculum here after the first semester.
In terms of total numbers, we take about 110, 215 per class per cohort and we have two years
going at any given time, so there's typically about 220, 230 students here.
There's about a dozen of us on full-time faculty, 50 to 60 adjuncts, depending on the
semester.
And then we also have research residents, there's about a dozen of them, and staff
is probably about eight or nine at this point, I think, is that right?
So there's a lot of people around to help.
And what are you guys most excited about for this coming year at ITP?
We've been in semester now for a month, so I don't know if it's new technologies or
new ideas, what's going on here that you're most excited about?
You know, I would say, I mean, one of the fantastic things about teaching here is that
every year is a new beginning, every class has its own personality and talents, and so
I do tend to hear the word virtual reality a lot.
Every year there's sort of some one word that seems to emerge as you hear bouncing off the
walls a bit, but there isn't any one thing that I'd say I'm excited about, just sort
of like what this class, I'm seeing how excited they are to be here, how hard they're working,
just looking forward to seeing what's going to come out of their brains, you know, in
all sorts of ways, so I wouldn't say it's any...
We try very much not to push any one technology or be a sort of flavor of the month around
what's popular, but they're all sorts of interesting ideas that are always in the mix here.
Yeah, that's very true, I think.
I think for me, if there's one thing that's exciting about this year, I was away last
semester, so it's nice to be back, and especially given what's going on in the world right
now, what's really enjoyable about being here is there's a huge amount of idealism.
And I see students, so many students here who don't just want to learn how to do something,
but really to understand why and how to make the world better using the things they're
making.
And so we have discussions in class where we'll shift from talking about, say, Ohm's
law to, well, what do we do about disability, somebody's disability, and how we make them
feel included?
And, you know, it can feel like intellectual whiplash, shifting from one to another, but
it's great because you get people who immediately are saying, this is going to matter to somebody
if I do my job right, and that's really great, and I like to see that.
Okay, Louise online asks, how does signing up for classes work?
Is it possible to get all of the classes you want, or what are the chances?
No.
So the sign up for classes is, there's actually two versions of it.
For first year students, you're going to get all the classes you need because you've
got to take the intro classes, and we make sure there's enough sections.
The advanced classes are fairly idiosyncratic, and they really tend to be, we hire faculty
or adjuncts because they've got something special to offer to students, and so if we
run a class, it's difficult to run a second section of it because there's only that one
person who knows that stuff.
So what we do with the sign up is a little different than the rest of the university
does.
We have a system where everybody puts in their preferences, and then the system tries to
fill everybody's first choice first, and if they don't get their first choice, they're
pushed to the front of the line for their second choice.
So I would say most people end up getting, you know, between 60 to 75% of what they want
on a good year.
But the other thing that really happens is they'll say, well, I didn't expect that I
was going to like this class that was my fourth choice, but it turned out to be my best class.
I think if there's one refrain we hear all the time was, oh, there's about three classes
I never got around to taking, I really wish I could have taken.
So it's a process that seems, when you're in the midst of it, like, oh my god, I'm never
going to get everything, and then you get your class and you're like, oh my god, I get
everything.
Okay.
Bogdan asks, is there an opportunity of taking an internship during the program?
If so, what are the typical companies and industries?
Yes, most definitely.
I'm of the personal opinion that internships are great in the summer, but when you're here,
there's only 16 classes you're going to take, and so internships, because they're for credit,
I think for the international students, they have to be for credit if I'm not mistaken.
So they do sort of detract from your academic opportunity, but having said that, you know,
there are students who benefited tremendously from wonderful work experience, particularly
students who have not worked, who come directly from college, which is the exception.
Most students here do have work experience, and we have a lot of companies, Midori can
speak to this, who reach out to us looking for interns, those are posted to the list.
So there's no formal process in terms of, you know, every year, Company X takes, you
know, five ITP interns, whatever it is.
It is, the students have to sort of have some initiative on their own in terms of securing
those interns, but certainly internships are possible, and I don't know what the percentage
is.
I would say maybe, I don't know, 10% or something like that.
It's a smaller percentage, a relatively small percentage, but internships definitely are
possible.
And summer, between the two years, is definitely a great opportunity for getting some professional
experience and exploring, and ITP is a fantastic reputation, and we just had a fly-by with
the second years, shared with the first years, all the things they had done over the summer,
and it was an incredibly impressive array of opportunities, and, you know, just really
exciting to see the kinds of experiences that our first year students had over their summer.
Yeah, I'd say the number of people who take internships during the summer is actually
probably a lot higher than 10%.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And many times, if they're not doing it for credit, they're still doing what seems like
an internship because they're learning something like a job in that sense.
And in terms of the range of companies, we see a lot of exhibit design, we see a lot
of communication design, we see people going for some of the big tech companies, Google,
Facebook, et cetera.
We see them doing internships sometimes in government, we've seen them go into education
programs.
We have three or four at the UN, is that right?
Yeah, yeah.
And I think a lot of times, the students who have had success with internships have come
to us on faculty and just said, I'm kind of interested in this area, where should I go
look?
And we'll sort of point them to, you know, a dozen companies they should talk to.
Great.
So we have a couple questions about taking classes outside of ITP, like the Computer
Science Department or Game Center.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Sure, definitely doable.
Students do it all the time.
There's just paperwork that needs to be filled out, and I think permission from the department
that you're going to.
So some logistics, but by all means, particularly the Game Center and some of the things happening
over at the engineering school that has a new name that I can't remember, T. Tandon.
Tandon, thank you.
So very doable.
I think technically there's a credit limit of the number of courses outside, but you know,
if there's an argument to be made, there's sort of exceptions to those restrictions as
well.
I think most students come in thinking they're going to take advantage, and we do encourage
it.
I mean, it is great to be part of the broader Tisch community or the Tandon community or
wherever, whatever department you're interested in, but I think people generally do find the
offer of classes here or too tempting to give up to go elsewhere.
But definitely, at least with my advisees, I encourage them to at least explore those
options because it does enrich their broader NYU experience.
Yeah, same here.
And I'd say we've also seen a good number who think they're going to take some outside
classes, but then end up collaborating with someone from dance or from film or something
like that.
They have a great time, and they go, I don't need to spend a class of credit on that.
I'm just going to do this project with this person because it's great.
So we encourage that kind of thinking too.
Okay.
Now, Lauren asks, how do you apply that mission-driven perspective and idealism to classes?
Is there a practical application of those ideas in the assignments?
Oh, definitely.
Very much so.
I mean, design for change, which I can speak to, is we just discussed the final project,
which is to first identify a problem.
Because one thing we do is try to encourage students not to run to solutions, but really
understand the problem first, so they're to select a social issue that they're passionate
about and understand sort of where the pain points are around that issue.
And the only constraints on the assignment are it has to be an issue at scale, so not
solving personal behavior issues.
I want to quit smoking, but how, you know, at a broader societal level.
And then we will, in teams of two, in this case, they will explore the issue and identify
solutions for it, and then hopefully also include it in the process as an opportunity
to really test ideas and make sure that they aren't just all pie in the sky, but try them
in front of some subset of the population to which the problem is an issue.
Yeah.
So I think you'd see in almost all of our classes, there is a sense of the idealism.
Even in the most technical classes, I think we tend to look for projects that are going
to get students thinking about how to apply it to the world.
So, you know, in a programming class you may have someone who's trying to figure out, Sharon
De La Cruz's project is a good example of this.
She ended up working on a project in a programming class that was a tool to help advocates of
children who were being brought in, smuggled in as illegal immigrants, to help them with
their legal advocacy, both with language issues and with getting the kids to communicate
in a way that they felt safe.
So we see a lot of projects like that.
We also will often pick classes around a particular theme so that we've got something
to hang the ideas on.
We have a guest, Mark Abbey, hello Mark, he's an alum.
He wants to know what did you eat for breakfast?
But that also goes into the whole part about community and the amount of food that we have
and what brings people together, so maybe you can speak about that a little bit.
And also what did you eat for breakfast?
I don't think I had breakfast, I should get some breakfast, that's a good point.
I think I had a New York bagel.
That makes sense.
But yeah, it does speak to the community.
You often find that people show up here and kind of stay the entire day, partially because
they've got things they want to do, but partially because it's more pleasant to be than where
they might else want to be.
And so we've tried to make the place pleasant by providing a kitchen and, you know, a kitchen
and providing healthy snacks and things like that.
That's a relatively new innovation, I think, the healthy snack thing, but yeah.
And I think Mark can attest to this, I think ITP does become a hard place to leave after
two years.
It's a lot from students because it really does become your broader family and it is
very much a place where you do want to commit, when you come here, to commit to being here
because the value of it is the experience outside the classroom and doing your work
here on the floor versus home in your apartment.
So I encourage applicants to consider that as when they're coming here they really should
be making a commitment to be here in terms of doing their work here.
Okay.
And James asks, what about entrepreneurship?
Do graduates start their own companies?
Definitely.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And again, I think the types of companies they start may be a little different than the
tech press is promoting a sort of the cliche right now, too.
You know, we've certainly seen a few that are, you know, sort of the quick growth kind
of things, Foursquare started here, there's a company called Open Trons that started here
recently, but we also see a lot of companies that started and continuous, essentially small
businesses, Brooklyn Research, Cousins and Sears, Zid Code, the thing that Sebastian
and Ian are doing, I'm forgetting what they call the company.
But so there's a lot of that kind of thing that happens.
And I think one of the things we really encourage here at ITP is to think not just about scale,
but think about what the right scale is.
Sometimes the right thing for you in running a company is not to be running a world-dominating
company, but to running something that serves a certain number of clients at a scale you
can relate to that's also economically sustainable.
Yeah.
And NYU also has great resources for people looking to pursue entrepreneurship, the Leslie
E. Lab, which is specifically for entrepreneurs for all of NYU.
And also we tend to collaborate with the Stern School of Business, you know, they have the
business plan competition, many of our students have entered that and have won, which is a
great thing.
And some grant opportunities too, I don't know, of which that's won.
So Nahil asks, I think we talked about alumni previously, but after students graduate from
the program, where do they typically go?
What kind of jobs do they typically get and in which industries?
Everywhere.
If there are clusters, I would say, we see some clusters around exhibit design, we see
some clusters around communications in general.
So whether that's doing sort of web and interaction design or whether that's helping companies
figure out how to communicate what it is they do to a broader audience.
We see a good number of people going to education.
We see some people start their own art careers or design careers.
We've had one or two people go into, I know, one or two Buddhist monks we've had, didn't
come out of the class necessarily.
So really it's kind of all over the, oh there was a shift builder too, we've had a few people
go into assistive technologies.
Remember saying anything?
I think we've covered it all over the teachers.
Okay, anything else parting words that you want to add or I don't know?
I would just, I've been here, I started Adjunct in 2007, so five years roughly is, Adjunct
in five years this whole time and I just, every day I feel grateful for the opportunity
to be here and to be part of this fantastic community.
Yeah, I would agree.
I came here as a student in 95 and I sort of forgot to leave and it's that kind of place.
And it's still fun to come to work every day and I think that's, if there's one thing
that typifies this place for me is that everybody I work with are people I like working with
and that are excited about what they do.
And I feel like if that's one thing we can impart to the students, that's, we're doing
our job and that's what we aim for.
Great, well thanks everyone for tuning in.
If you are interested in applying to the program, you can find the application link on our website.
Any questions, you can also email me at itp.admissions at nyu.edu.
Thanks for tuning in.
Our next Facebook Live interview will be next Friday, October 21st with Dan Schiffman and
Nancy Heckinger.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
