Teaching

I’ve been teaching college students for years, most recently as adjunct faculty at the University of San Francisco

Teaching is one of the toughest — and most rewarding — forms of experience design there is. And it’s my favorite way to learn new things.

Introduction to UX Research & Testing

University of San Francisco UX/UI Minor, Spring 2025

A new class required for all students in USF’s UX/UI minor

Units

  • Students gain familiarity with core concepts in UX and UXR, including the field’s history and ethics, while engaging in activities designed to foster empathy and curiosity. Students start observing users and developing original insights on day 1.

  • Working in small research teams, students plan their first usability studies, conducting research sessions and presenting insights into a product area of their choice.

  • Students practice additional qualitative methods and tools, including card sorts, heuristic evaluations, and journey maps as their research teams dig deeper into a chosen product space.

  • Students gain familiarity with quantitative methods, with a particular focus on best practices for collecting and analyzing survey data.

  • Teams expand their understanding with a final research study they design themselves. To complete the course, students create a polished final portfolio and teams present their research.

AI & the Question of Human Creativity

University of San Francisco Honors Seminar, Spring 2024

What does “creativity” mean in the age of generative AI?

In early 2024, with ChatGPT all over the news, I co-led a 15-week seminar to explore this question with honors students across majors.

Each week students experimented with gen AI tools to practice prompting and experience the possibilities and pitfalls firsthand. They used AI to make music, art, videos, poems, presentations — even virtual study partners.

And each week, we spent time critically engaging with the larger conversation, considering the emerging public discourse around AI. Questions of media framing, ethical responsibility, and our own human agency were top of mind.

Our discussions took us all the way back to Plato and the concerns Socrates had about the new technology of his own time: writing. We asked: Is all the buzz about AI just the same old story?

Course topics

  • Clarify core terms, including: AI, generative AI, LLMs, training, prompting, creativity, technological determinism

  • Identify key themes, concerns, and arguments in the public discourse around AI.

  • Identify recurring patterns in discourses around new tech, starting with Plato’s critique of writing.

  • Experiment with AI tools and best practices for effective prompting.

  • Consider “creativity” as both a timeless human capacity and a historically specific concept linked to 20th century corporate ideals.

  • Understand the role bias plays in AI training, and how that’s leading to inequitable applications.

  • Consider what AI might mean for work and our own careers. What, if anything, can we do to protect workers and the integrity of creative and intellectual labor?

  • Develop a set of working principles to guide the use of AI-powered tools in our own academic and professional practice.

Additional courses taught

    • Gender, Sexuality, and the Media

    • Persuasive Communication

    • Politics of Popular Culture

    • Media, Advertising, and Society

    • Rhetoric and Public Advocacy

    • Theory and Practice of Argumentation (TA)

    • Core Concepts in Communication Studies (TA)

    • First-year writing & speaking

    • Intro to Cultural Studies

    • First-Year Seminar

    • Storytelling & strategic content development