Design Student of the Month – Emily Smith

There are a lot of creative students in Canada who are doing innovative work to improve people's life through interactive, visual, informational, and other aspects of User Experience Design. I invited them to introduce who they are and share their work with you. To nominate a Design Student of the Month, email us. The Design Student of the Month for January 2009 is Emily Smith! Congratulations!! Let's hear from Emily.

Who is Emily?

Here in Vancouver, I recently earned a diploma in Digital Design with an emphasis in Interaction Design and User Experience. Before VFS, I went to the University of Western Ontario in London and earned a degree in Visual Arts. I have always thrived in an environment that offers both functional and artistic components, and Interaction Design and UX is the perfect place to exercise those perfectly.

I am a passionate about design and draw inspiration from my interests in art, architecture, music, Sustainability, the Dewey decimal system, Cradle-to-cradle Industrial Design, DIY/Crafts, UX, Interactive and Interaction Design, Typography, Print Design, painting, drawing, and other Analogue Mediums.

What cool things is Emily working on?

After graduating from VFS, I was asked back to the school to complete a post-graduate scholarship in which I was asked to create a project management application along with my classmate, Vincent van Haaff. We felt that applications like Basecamp and MS Project were really useful tools, but that information wasn’t as easily retrievable as it could be. We decided to create a single screen project management tool, in which all information would be more centrally located within a Work Breakdown Structure, a tool commonly used in project management to break down tasks into their component parts. Shaped like a tree diagram, the spatial Work Breakdown structure became the backbone of our site, upon which things like time tracking, file uploading, quality control, and delegation of tasks could be set within the nodes of the structure itself. For this project, I worked on competitive analyses, persona research, conceptual development, sitemap, wireframes, information architecture, as well as the graphical components for the site. The application is currently in the development stages and for more information about the project, feel free to contact me at me@emily-smith.ca.

What are Emily’s plans after graduation?

Right now, Emily is actively pursuing a career in Interaction Design.

Want to learn more about Emily?

My current website is www.emily-smith.ca and will be updated soon. Also coming soon as a blog at www.emily-smith.ca/blog.

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