Whether your future career goals include becoming a digital filmmaker, photographer, graphic designer, Web designer, or 3D animator, the Center for Digital Imaging Arts (CDIA) at Boston University offers the online courses to get you started. Thanks to the university’s hands-on approach to education, CDIA graduates are equipped with the real world experience needed to secure high powered, well paying jobs within the technology, media, and entertainment industries.

While CDIA offers courses in a number of areas, the school has become especially well known for its top notch programs studying the effects of user experience, ergonomics, and human factors when designing Web applications and other media technologies.

User Experience

At the Center for Digital Imaging Arts, a number of members of the faculty have real world expertise working as user experience designers for major companies around the country. This experience gives them a unique and helpful look into the true essence of what user experience really means. In the Graphic and Web Design department specifically, this concept is especially important for students to understand.

For those interested in obtaining a Web Development Certificate from CDIA, courses such as, “Building a Content Management System Community” and “Introduction to AJAX,” include instruction on developing Web communities with user experience and user interaction in mind. Meanwhile, students working to earn a Graphic and Web Design Certificate are required to complete “Production Practicum,” a hands-on experience that allows them to produce a media project with concepts such as user experience in mind.

Ergonomics

In the workplace, proper ergonomics is an important factor for employee productivity. CDIA understands this, which is why the area of study is emphasized in the curriculum across a full spectrum of courses.

Building the proper environment, including proper ergonomics and lighting displays, is an important part of the design of every photographer’s workplace studio, which is why it is an area of study taken very seriously for those students involved in the Professional Photography Certificate program at CDIA.

In the “Product and Still Life Studio Lighting” module, students are taught the basics of ergonomics and studio design, with an extra emphasis on commercial practices and methodologies. Additionally, the topic is explored in courses such as “Working with Models I,” “Working with Models II,” “Portable Lighting with Speedlights,” and “Studio Portrait Photography.”

Human Factors

When it comes to designing products with user experience in mind, keeping the human factor in consideration is important for all media and technology executives. At CDIA, this is a concept that is emphasized in a variety of required courses.

This area of study is so important for those in the Graphic and Web Design department, that CDIA has hired instructors with experience in Human Computer Interaction along with Information Systems and Graphic Design.

Within the two-term Graphic and Web Design Certificate program, special presentations, such as “Understanding Information Architecture,” are designed to provide additional insight into the human factors that should make-up the design of a successful Web site or media project.

CDIA’s Web Development Certificate program, meanwhile, offers extensive courses in “Building a Content Management System Community,” “Web Services and Ecommerce,” and “Introduction to AJAX,” which require a “heavy” understanding of human factors and interactions on the part of the students.

Overall, user experience, ergonomics, and human factors are three of the many areas of study that are emphasized at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University, where access to emerging technologies and an emphasis in real world experience put students ahead of the game by the time graduation rolls around.

Author Bio: Stephanie Miles is a freelance writer for the education site Guide to Online Schools.