TODAY, Friday April 3, from 10 am - 2 pm in the Open Lab at Hillman Library! Open to everyone.
Welcome! The following works were created by University of Pittsburgh students in English and Digital Narrative & Interactive Design courses, and by student creators in the Open Lab in Hillman Library. Please stay awhile, explore, and help us celebrate the wonderful work produced over the past year. These innovative digital and design projects are listed below by alphabetical order of technological medium, from 3D prints, App, and Audio thru VR, Video, and Web designs.
Awards:
Crowd Favorite Award: Voted for by the attending audience. If you're here, and you're not a judge, be sure to vote!
Best in Show, Design: Determined by judges, evidencing thoughtful, meaningful, inclusive, innovative, and/or productive design.
Best in Show, Technical / Production: Determined by judges, evidencing skillful, productive, innovative, and/or finely-tuned technical development / production.
The "je ne sais quoi" Award: Determined by judges. Je ne sais quoi can mean different things from year to year—but the judges know it when they see it, and the award winners in this category always have a certain something that makes an undeniable impression.
Open Lab Creation Award: Best project produced through the Open Lab.
In 2026, our showcase judge panel consists of: Paige Branagan (Digital Narrative and Interactive Design alumna, Narrative Designer in Academic Outreach Extension and Engagement Department @ the ETC), LeTriece Calhoun (Teaching Assistant Professor in English), Aaron Graham (Manager of Open Lab), Abigail Jacobsen (Head of Media Services, University Library Services), and Christopher Maverick (Teaching Assistant Professor in English), and Jessica FitzPatrick (Director of Digital Media Lab and Digital Narrative and Interactive Design, Teaching Associate Professor). We thank our judges for their time and insights; the Open Lab for hosting, sponsoring,and co-organizing; and the Composition program, for helping sponsor this year's event.
Congratulations to every contributor to the showcase! We can't wait to see what you make next.
Sincerely,
Jessica FitzPatrick
Director of the Digital Media Lab (DML)
Gissell Del Castillo, Nick Canada, and Khushboo Bhutani, DML Assistants; Dante Samarco DML Intern
3D Print and presentation: "The Symbiosis of Aviation Technology"
Creator: Lucy Lipson
Class: Digital Humanity, Fall 2025
Instructor: Addison Eldin
Open Lab Creation
Click to access PDF of presentation.
"I'm earning my recreational pilots license, and was fascinated by the difference in technology in a Cessna-172(plane I'm learning to fly) vs commercial airplanes like Boeings. This piece is based on a paper I did for Prof. Addison Eldin’s Digital Humanity course. The assignment was to write about something in regard to a class reading. When we read about JCR Licklider’s ideas about "Man-Computer Symbiosis", I immediately thought of aviation. Despite how advanced autopilot systems have become, pilots remain crucial in aviation in many respects. I looked at different Adobe options in the DML and decided to make my presentation in Adobe Express because I like its interactivity compared to slides. There are 2 physical designs that complement the project; a 3D printed airspace map and a mock-up of the flight controls of a Cessna-172I decided to make the Cessna controls and airspace map 3D because I think being able to actually feel the controls shows how much, well, control a pilot actually has. Airspace can be a hard concept to understand, especially when it’s usually presented as 2D, even though it requires 4 Dimensions. A 3D-printed map is more accurate about how airspace works when actually flying. I used the Open Lab 3D printers for this creation--I've never used 3D printing before, but I found Tinker-Cad relatively easy to navigate." -Lucy Lipson
App: "Prosper: A Financial Wellness App"
Creator: Alexandra Coffman
Class: DNID Capstone in English
Instructor: Jessica FitzPatrick, Fall 2025
Please note: Below is a embed from Figma, a hi-fidelity prototyping tool: you can click around the screen as you would on a computer window, exploring functionalities of the project.
"Prosper is an iOS budgeting and financial wellness app designed for college students who are managing money independently—often for the first time. The app combines: Zero-based budgeting, Account linking & manual cash entry, Visual insights & progress tracking, and Small, gamified financial literacy activities. My goal as a designer was to make budgeting feel approachable, supportive, and sustainable, rather than overwhelming or guilt-inducing. This project became a meaningful culmination of my growth as a designer. I learned how to build high-fidelity prototypes that highlight clearer navigation systems through user testing and to create interactive elements, such as sliders, confirmation prompts, and onboarding flows, that make the experience more understandable. I also strengthened my accessibility skills by intentionally choosing typography, WCAG-approved contrast colors, improving feature discoverability, and making purposeful icon and layout decisions rooted in user expectations.
Working through the full design process helped me see how narrative, technology, and visual design come together to shape an experience. It represents everything I’ve been building toward: designing with intention, creating thoughtful interactions, and developing experiences that genuinely support the people I’m designing for. This project also gave me the confidence to take an idea from early concept to a polished, research-driven interactive design." -Alexandra Coffman
App: "Swissvale Scrapbook"
Creators: Greyson Barsotti, Developed by Greyson Barsotti, Amy Zhang, and Nickhil Naranjan
Class: Digital Narrative & Interactive Design SCI Capstone
Instructor: Dmitrity Babichenko, Spring 2026
Click to access the GitHub of this project.
"This project was designed to work in conjunction with the ongoing Swissvale Open Spaces project that is not only mapping the vacant lots around Swissvale, Pa, but is collecting oral histories associated with each lot. Swissvale Scrapbook is an interactive map application for phones that guides users around the community, highlights vacant lots, and allows them to explore the histories associated with each vacant lot. This aims to not only promote community engagement with Swissvale history, but also propel the community into a state of revitalization by making the vacant lots history and prior functionally more known. The demo provided is a work in progress application without any real story data in it due to the current permission waivers signed by participants." -Greyson Barsotti
AI Statement: AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude were used to help fix certain bugs during the coding process. The team has not used AI to take the place of coding, rather using it to enhance our current skill set. As this was developed in a capstone course, we felt that practicing using AI tools within our workflow would better prepare us for the current AI-focused workforce.
Arduino: “Anomaly”
Creators: Chris Cox and Eli Newsham
Class: 1201 Digital Narrative and Interactive Design
Instructors: Dmitriy Babichenko and Christopher Maverick, Fall 2025
Click to access the GitHub of this project.
"'We created this project to meet the DNID requirements which were that the project needed to do something in physical space and also tell a cohesive story. We were interested in ARG concepts and liked the idea of a game that could be played in the world instead of a static project. We were also interested in working with GPS data, as such a thing was not previously attempted for that course. Our design goals for the narrative revolved around a binary choice for the player due to scope, but we wanted a strong narrative payoff. We elected to depict an SCP-style mysterious digital entity as an animated face on the device, and instruct the player to follow directions without telling them the anomaly was sentient. We intentionally left the purpose of the device and the disposition of the anomaly ambiguous so the player must choose to follow orders or trust the creature they just met. Our design process involved extensive outdoor testing, walking around to test GPS locations and experimenting with map data. We also ran into issues with the Arduino architecture, and needed to find novel code solutions to avoid running out of physical memory. Notably, our instructors informed us that our project was the only one who had ever run into the bounds of the Arduino’s memory for this project. We were able to solve it by storing memory-heavy text strings in flash memory and using logical loops to re-use hard-coded strings. To save on arithmetic operations, we used a simplified flat model of the Earth as a rough assumption for short distance estimation." -Chris Cox
Arduino: "AED Controller”
Creators: Peter Ju, Joe Wang, Alina Yue
Class: 1201 Digital Narrative and Interactive Design
Instructors: Christopher Maverick & Dmitriy Babichenko, Fall 2025
"For our Arduino project for ENGLIT 1201 DNID the class, we created a MIDI controller for virtual instruments on laptops. As three musicians in bands, we recognized a common challenge: professional MIDI controllers are expensive, often costing $200-500+, creating a barrier for student musicians/producers and emerging artists who want to experiment with electronic music production. We designed and built a custom MIDI controller using Arduino Leonardo, five slide potentiometers, and a button, creating an affordable (~$40-50) alternative that provides essential music production controls. Our controller interfaces directly with Logic Pro or any other Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs), giving users control over virtual instruments. Open Lab has generously provided support for our design process as we pivot through hardware device failures and iterations."-Peter Ju, Joe Wang, Alina Yue
Audio: “Irreplaceable: Why Humanity Will Prevail Against AI ”
Creators: Cassie St. John
Class: Digital Humanity
Instructors: Jennifer Keating, Fall Semester 2025
"This project was created for the final in my class in which we were asked to make a digital presentation that connected with audiences about themes that we had discussed in the course, including concepts of humanity, examples of digital technology, simulacra, among others. I chose to create a podcast that reflect the unique aspects of humanity that cannot be replicated by AI. I believe that while AI is a powerful system that can be beneficial in certain areas, it will never become so advanced that it is indistinguishable from humans and human-made content. Within this podcast, I use each episode to focus on a specific human quality that cannot be replicated by AI in order to show that AI is not as powerful as many may think. I want to show audiences that while many fear that AI is taking over, there are many things that make us innately human that AI can not succeed at. This project focuses on themes of social relationships as each episode talks about our relationship with AI, showing how AI is attempting, but ultimately failing, at mimicking humans."-Cassie St. John
AI Statement: There is no AI in the actual creation of this project, however I did briefly use ChatGPT in a portion of each episode. The use of AI in this project is solely to show examples of how AI responds to certain prompts and situations and highlight how its responses are not the same as how a human would respond.
Audio: “Boys' Club”
Creator: Maxine Van Nortwick
Instructor: Allison Bennett Dyche
Introduction to Podcasting, Spring Semester 2026
"The piece "Boys' Club" highlights my experiences as a woman in scholastic jazz settings and the sexism I've faced between high school and college as one of the few female trombone players in my environment. From just a word to experiences with professionals, it seems every aspect of jazz I've interacted with has bitten back with some form of sexism. Lucky for me, I've also learned the importance of picking oneself up and trying again despite the hurdles. In this piece, I’m looking to address larger societal issues within jazz and the industry, not settle specific issues with the people I’ve faced. My goal for this piece is to show others what it’s like being a teenage girl in this musical setting, and how we continue forward despite the disrespect. For this piece, I produced some of the music and all the sound effects myself with my trombone. I completed the narration using equipment from WPTS Radio, and the dialogue was voiced by Thomas Simione, Michaela Albers, and Colin Woodcock. Music not created by me includes "Sesame Street Theme" by Delfeayo Marsalis, "Desafinado" by Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto, and "Blue Bossa" by Joe Henderson. This piece was edited on Adobe Audition and produced for Professor Allison Bennett Dyche’s, “Introduction to Podcasting” course. CONTENT WARNING: this piece uses profanity and includes the theme of sexism." -Maxine Van Nortwick
Audio: “History of the Gaming”
Creator: Rin Tena, Liam Sullivan, Laura Mcneil
Instructor: Alexandra Hidalgo
Composing Digital Media, Fall Semester 2025
To listen to History of Gaming click here.
"TThis project entailed making an 8 minute podcast on a topic of our choosing. We chose to create a conversational podcast on the pipeline from ET Phone Home to gendered marketing in video games. This topic was inspired by a similar talk Dr. Victoria Grieve spoke on in her Game, Story, Play class." -Rin Tena
Audio: “Songburghs Sound Postcard”
Creator: Luke Hilliard
Instructor: Allison Bennett Dyche
Introduction to Podcasting, Spring Semester 2026
"This piece was created to encapsulate a Songburghs A Capella rehearsal into a sound postcard. It begins at the start of rehearsals, then takes the listener through our typical schedule like check-ins, business, warm-ups, and singing, and concludes with the group exiting rehearsal. My goal was to create an audio piece that could be used if someone were to ask me "What does a Songburghs rehearsal sound like?". I wanted to give a glimpse into rehearsals as The Songburghs prepared for ICCA. I also captured these audio recordings and made this piece so that everyone who is in the group currently can have something to look back on if they ever miss the Songburghs and desired to be audibly transported back to rehearsals. The project instructions were to experiment with mic placements as well as field recording in different spaces. I recorded a few rehearsals and constructed the sound postcard using clips from my field recordings that I thought best aligned with what I was going for. I used the software voice memos on my iPhone and my iPhone microphone for the recording since this was the equipment we were learning how to use in class. The Strand Apartments, the Cathedral of Learning classrooms, and rooms in the William Pitt Union building were the spaces that we rehearsed in, which all came with their own unique sound atmospheres and challenges. This sound postcard was created for a class assignment. Welcome to a Songburghs ICCA 2026 Rehearsal! " -Luke Hilliard
Blog: “Halfway Filipino”
Creator: Rin Tena
Instructor: Alexandra Hidalgo
Composing Digital Media, Fall Semester 2025
Click to access the Halfway Fillipino Substack.
"This was a project in learning strategies and trends that are helpful when posting online. My project centered around how I experience Filipino culture as a Filipino American. Three posts that included photos were made that covered topics of dancing, clothing, and food. Each topic was connected back to my childhood interactions with each topic and how I interact with them now. " -Rin Tena
Design Jam: "UNIPARK”
Creators: Peter Ju, Miles Wisner, Zilin Wang, Alina Yue, Joe Wang
Jam Facilitators: Jessica FitzPatrick, Christopher Maverick, & Nick Canada
Jammer's Choice Award Winner! Pitt Design Jam: the friendly design competition where student participants form teams of 2-5 in order to address a real world problem, prototyping their solutions and pitching them before a panel of professional judges and their jam peers for awards. The design challenge this year was "Playground" and teams had to include provided design personas with specific needs, wants, and personal contexts in their designs. After one week's time, teams pitched their designs to a judging panel. For more information about the design jam' visit its webpage--we hope you join the jam next year!
"As a team of five DNID students, we approached the 2026 Pitt Design Jam prompt "Playgrounds" through a human-centered design philosophy, conducting field research at a local Pittsburgh playground and surveying over 110 participants across two populations (parents and college students) before proposing the solution. As our research suggests, playgrounds are one of the few public spaces where people of vastly different ages, backgrounds, and life circumstances share the same ground. However, little infrastructure exists to facilitate connection between them. UniPark addresses this gap through two interventions: a redesigned community space (with accessible seating, weather shelter, gender-inclusive family bathrooms, power outlets, etc) and a digital bulletin board that invites community members to post drawings, messages, and event flyers via QR code on their phones. During the Q&A, judges raised several possibilities for expanding the concept further (solar panel integration, generative art created from the motion of children playing nearby, and more), which suggests that it has potential well beyond the initial scope. All Figma prototypes and concept illustrations were developed within the jam's one-week timeframe." -Peter Ju, Miles Wisner, Zilin Wang, Alina Yue, Joe Wang
Design Jam: "Gearable: 'Safety by Demand Sustainable by Design'”
Creators: Gissell Del Castillo, Lindsey Williams
Graduate Students
Jam Facilitators: Jessica FitzPatrick, Christopher Maverick, & Nick Canada
To access Gearable's pitch packet, click here.
Judges Choice Award Winner! Pitt Design Jam: the friendly design competition where student participants form teams of 2-5 in order to address a real world problem, prototyping their solutions and pitching them before a panel of professional judges and their jam peers for awards. The design challenge this year was "Playground" and teams had to include provided design personas with specific needs, wants, and personal contexts in their designs. After one week, teams pitched their designs to a judging panel. For more information about the design jam' visit its webpage--we hope you join the jam next year!
"Judges loved how this project had a unique focus on safety, understood eco-friendliness is about production / process, and activated sustainability via reuse. The judges were also impressed with the specific recommendations for local companies and the plan to integrate this new offering into existing city infrastructures (RAD passes, etc.), and exclaimed over the depth and context of the presentation which included the team's move from just providing helmets to thinking about three different intervention scales and different supplies. A great example of working a small achievable problem and building outwards! And yes, the judges did love the physically printed and bound copy of the pitch materials (also available to see at the showcase event)." -Jessica FitzPatrick, Jam organizer
Game: "Hard Boiled"
Creator: Owen Kraus
Class: 1201 Digital Narrative & Interactive Design
Instructors: Pat Healy & Christopher Maverick, Spring Semester 2025
To play and learn more about Hard Boiled, visit this link.
"This was a game I made for the class Digital Narrative & Interactive Design. The only requirement was that it was a game based on a public domain fairy-tale. It's a 2D-platformer skating game where you play as Humpty Dumpty on a skateboard and it's awesome."-Owen Kraus
Game: "The Investigation of Derelict"
Creators: Aza Mohanty, Alli Batell, Evelyn Worthington, Yishui Sun
Class: DNID Capstone in English
Instructor: Jessica FitzPatrick, Fall Semester 2025
To play and learn more about Derelict, visit this link.
"The Investigation of Derelict was made as our capstone project for DNID. The goal was to have a game that spans multiple media formats, being played both through a website and through a downloadable game at the same time. Accessibility was also a large focus of this project, as many games similar to this are not made with accessibility in mind. The game itself is about a forum attempting to beat a mysterious space horror game uploaded to the internet from an unknown source."-Aza Mohanty, Alli Batell, Evelyn Worthington, Yishui Sun
Game: "Runaway Wheel"
Creator: Dante Samarco
Class: Digital Narrative and Interactive Design SCI Capstone
Instructor: Dmitriy Babichenko, Spring Semester 2026
CW: This game features graphic images and discusses topics of murder.
To play and learn more about Runaway Wheel, visit its github.
"Runaway Wheel is an infinite runner developed from scratch in C using the Raylib library. The core mechanic challenges players to type words or prompts under time pressure; running out of time results in a crash and ends the game. More than just a prototype, this project marks my first serious leap into building a larger-scale game. It brings together my interests in programming and art, reflecting both technical growth and creative expression."-Dante Samarco
Game, Global Game Jam exhibit: "Mask Hysteria"
Creators: Zilin Wang (the only pitt student here), Ethorax, Collin Wright, goodmutt, confuseddogo
Class: Narrative and Technology
Instructor: Jessica FitzPatrick
To play and learn more about Mask Hysertia, visit its itch page.
""Do you dare enter "The Cave of Over a Hundred Masks...?" The game is motivated by the theme of "Mask" from Global Game Jam 2026. We teamed up and decided to make a game where player is playing the game in a mask's perspective. We limit the interaction into point-and-click so it's fun to play even having a easy gameplay. It took us two and a half day from concept to the final game, it was a great experience working with random people knew through the game jam channel." -
Game: "Lamport General Systems”
Creator: Jack Drabenstadt
Occasion: Independent Study (DNID English Capstone)
Instructor: Addison Eldin, Pat Healy; Fall Semester 2025
To play and learn more about Lamport General Systems, visit its github.
Lamport General Systems is a first-person immersive sim I'm developing in Godot Engine, set in a derelict facility where intrusion-tolerant networks have turned hostile. As a lone technician, players manipulate adaptive systems through message interception, terminal commands, coding, and physical sabotage while deciding whether to repair or destroy each subsystem. I designed this project during an independent study, developing the design documentation, narrative structure, and core systems. I'm now implementing it in a follow-up independent study, with an MVP build expected by semester's end. My development process includes programming core systems in GDScript, creating 3D environmental assets in Blender, designing interconnected network behaviors that produce emergent gameplay, and producing and recording original audio. The concept grew from three converging obsessions: research into Byzantine fault tolerance, Alien's retrofuturistic dread, and the unsettling robot designs in Routine. The narrative follows a legacy systems specialist sent to restore an abandoned facility whose network—designed to be incorruptible—collapsed into permanent defensive mode, now treating the player as a threat. Trapped inside, you navigate five subnetworks, each revealing more about the authoritarian control system built within. The game explores themes of corporate neglect, systemic resilience, and moral reckoning—examining how "move fast and break things" culture can lead to catastrophic failure. The interconnected networks reward creative problem-solving and systemic understanding, with player actions rippling across the broader system. What you choose to repair or destroy determines the future of surveillance and control far beyond the facility. -Jack Drabenstadt
Game: “Discovery”
Creator: Praj Perez
Class: Media / Ecology
Instructor: Adam Hebert, Spring Semester 2025
This game is available for play in-person at the showcase event.
"To begin with, this project was meant to play heavily on the senses, especially audio. Due to time constraints, I pivoted to more of a focus on what is visually seen. The little puzzle in level 1 is actually a nod to the Emperor’s Test from Apothecary Diaries Season 2 Ep.7. In it, the emperor (optionally alongside a helper) is to navigate a maze of colored doors and reach the balcony. A spoiler for the puzzle; the trick to the puzzle is that it is meant to be solved only by someone who is colorblind. I tried to do a play on that with having the lights creating different colors and having the player work backwards to choose the correct path (if it says “Choose the red block” and there’s only purple and a green block and the light is blue, the correct answer is purple because blue + red = purple). I was still able to execute a piece of what Sobchack talks about in “What my Fingers Knew. The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh” with regards to the textures and look of the first level. The skybox having a desolate appearance, as well as the walls and railing being rusty all were meant to give an lethargic feeling to the player. With how grainy the walls were, the player should have a gritty/dirty feeling just looking around, much like how the textures in Karbonic’s “Psychopomp GOLD” made me feel when I played it. This was also meant to be helped by the implementation of a first-person POV, hopefully employing a bit of Adam Millard’s idea of immersion from his video “What does ‘Immersion’ Actually Mean?” By having the player be that close and intimate in the controls, they physically feel more in tune with what’s going on in the screen. As a reflection, I feel that I fell a lot shorter than what I was planning, but I am glad nonetheless for having done it. All of the textures except the skybox on level 1 were made through a lot of trial and error. While it was very frustrating having to learn a lot of new techniques in a short period of time, I was more fulfilled making the assets myself rather than over relying on free assets (even if my stuff came out very janky). There’s something about creating the pieces yourself that makes the end product feel less cheap." -Praj Perez
Game, Boardgame: "Botanical Blueprint"
Creator: Sara Carrigan
Class: Media / Ecology
Instructor: Adam Hebert, Spring Semester 2025
This game is also playable in-person at the showcase event.
“This was a highlight of my academic experience so far, it felt as if every game I have ever played prepared me for this project. This is a common dream of my entire family-to create our own game. When we are tired and bored on long road trips this is a topic that entertains us for hours- my mom always has a strong theme, my dad a good mixture of all other game mechanisms, and me with the algorithmic approach to how scoring should work. The entire project felt like following through on all of our made up games throughout the years. I initially came up with the mechanics thinking about one of my favorite games “point salad” which I felt was a good starting point since it has easy and clear graphics and interesting strategy. My favorite type of games are optimization games which allow each player to work independently to create an optimized system. I felt that it would only be right to make my own type of game like this. However, this came with it’s own difficulty- creating my own complex scoring system that was fun and easy to learn. I believe this was the hardest part trying to figure a way to make sure every player's experience was balanced and that there weren’t any overpowered cards. As I began crafting the game I kept adding more and more elements like the famous botanist cards and the watering can. I had sketched a quick design of the mechanisms of the games before I went into graphic designing. The graphic design aspect was one of my favorites because it made it feel like a craft choosing the designs for the board and various types of cards was super enjoyable. I tried my best to make the flower artwork look cohesive and added vines everywhere I could. I also enjoyed a lot of the research this project let me do. I was surprised by how much I allowed myself to learn about each individual flower and the art of botany in the process. I really enjoyed the famous botanist cards. As someone who has played so many games where you pick your own character and was faced with only white men, I was excited to be able to create a diverse group of individuals for the cards. Learning about their stories and how different ones' approach to botany could be really gave me a new understanding of the field. Throughout this process I have deepened my understanding of board games, botany, flowers, and my own creativity. I have allowed myself to create something I am extremely proud of and am grateful for the opportunity to do so. There was not a moment of this project I wasn’t excited for the work I had to do. It was truly a project filled with love and passion."-Sara Carrigan
Game, Boardgame: "Pardon Our Dust"
Creators: Aidan Brophy, Owen Kraus, Sidney Cheng, Jorge Llumpo, Praj Perez, Vanessa Hong, Sam Gao, Alina Yue
Class: DNID SCI Capstone
Instructor: Dmitriy Babichenko, Spring Semester 2026
"“Pardon Our Dust” is a singleplayer/collaborative multiplayer simulation game for PC with physical components where the central bus line of a major city must be redeveloped to fit the shifting needs of the citizens. The player builds the route on a physical map and obeys conditions provided by randomly-drawn cards so that they learn about how public services must continually change to support the evolving needs of the people that rely on said services. "Pardon Our Dust" was initially conceived and developed as a Games 4 Social Impact 2025 Game Jam entry, where it won the First Penguin award for novelty and innovation at the cost of execution quality. It was further refined under mostly the same development team for Pat Healy's Game Design course that same semester, and is now being developed under a mostly new team as a DNID capstone project. Although the game's mechanics, looks, and dev team have all changed and continue to change, what has remained the same is the message at the core of the game: There is no such thing as a perpetually perfect and stable public service system, because the system must adapt to the change needs of the people that use it - a topic that is especially relevant here in Pittsburgh as of late, in a public transit context.." -Aidan Brophy & the Pardon Our Dust Team
Graphic: "Acceptance - Being Yourself When the World Says You Can't"
Creator: Cassie St. John
Class: Composing Digital Media
Instructor: Alex Jennings, Fall Semester 2025
To read Acceptance, please visit this link.
"This project was created in a digital media class in which we could create anything we wanted to that has importance to us. I had created smaller storyboard projects earlier in the course and decided that I wanted to create a longer one for my final project and I wanted it to be special to me. I chose to tell the story of coming to terms with my identity as a member of the LGBTQ+ community because for a good portion of my life I was told I had to act a certain way and fit a certain mold. I struggled a lot when I was younger about who I was and who I could love and it took a while for me to realize that it was important to just be me, regardless of society’s views. This storyboard shows my journey to how I came to feel secure in my own identity and attempts to show others who may be going through something similar that they are not alone." -Cassie St. John
Paper / Critical Analysis: “Inscryption: The Hidden Taxonomy of Game Designer Types”
Creator: Rin Tena
Class: Game, Story, Play
Instructor: Rev. Dr. Victoria Luna Brennan Grieve, Fall Semester 2025
"This piece was written on the game Inscryption for a midterm assignment for Game, Story, Play. Students were tasked with writing a critique revolving around the narrative of a game. This paper is focused on creating a taxonomy of Game Designers through the base of the Scrybes from Inscryption" - Rin Tena
Open Lab Canvas: "Pitt Football Mock Art Direction Pitch Deck"
Creator: Alyssa Jacoby
Class: Integrating Writing and Design
Supervisor: Sarah Leavens, Fall Semester 2025
Projection, "Duality"
Creators: Ailina Yue
Course: DNID Capstone in English
Instructor: Jessica FitzPatrick, Fall 2025
Created at Open Lab
Visit this project at the showcase event1
"Duality is miniature house split along a central seam, using Pepper’s-Ghost projection of a looping animation, and light mapping to stage the tension between two mental climates. Disclaimer This is an artwork, not clinical guidance or diagnosis. It engages themes of psychological tension and might include low-frequency flicker. I used laser cutter mainly and i have a intermediate skill with it" - Alina Yue
AI Statement: Despite using ai to search for reliable academic sources during related research phases, the actual project involves no use of ai.
Video: "NRIEP Scholarships Journey Testimonials"
Creator: Aidan Brophy
Class: DNID Capstone In English
Instructor: Jessica FitzPatrick, Spring Semester 2025
"The Scholarship Testimonials—which I referred to internally as the Journey and Destination Testimonials—consist of edited video interviews with students who received a global experience scholarship from the Nationality Rooms & Intercultural Exchange Programsand would be applying that scholarship money to studying abroad over the summer of 2025. This video and the followup Destination Testimonials would serve both as advertising for the NRIEP's scholarship offerings, which are in some cases chronically underutilized, and as part of the NRIEP's Centennial Celebration this year. The Journey component in particular focused on the pre-summer experience, the idea being to establish a "baseline" that could be compared to in the post-summer interviews. Being developed for and with the support of the Nationality Rooms, the project involved cooperation with + implementing feedback from Director Kati Csoman, as well as classmates in the Capstone course, throughout the process." -Aidan Brophy
AI statement: AI was used in the audio transcription process, a built-in feature of Adobe Premiere. AI-generated transcription was used to create video captions, which were manually reviewed and edited for accuracy and clarity by myself. Interviewed scholarship recipients were informed as part of the media release form they were asked to sign that AI transcription would be used in the editing process.
Video: " How Arcane's Jinx Makes, Breaks, and Rewrites the Hero's Journey"
Creator: Alyssa Jacoby
Class: Narrative and Technology
Instructor: Christopher Maverick, Spring Semester 2025
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"For my final project in my Narrative and Technology class I was given the option to make a video essay that stemmed from one of our readings. I chose to explore Jinx from Arcane’s story through the lens of Joseph Campbell’s, “The Hero’s Journey.” I was eager to make a video essay that was fully narrated and contained visuals that matched the subject matter dynamically. I found the process to be incredibly rewarding! Arcane is a series that is very near and dear to my heart, so having the opportunity to put all of my passion towards the show in a final project was an exciting experience."-Alyssa Jacoby
AI statement: AI such as Grammarly was used to check the grammar and flow of my script.
Video and VR: "Where is Lana"
Creators: Kaylynn Zhang, Lana Nader
Classes: Technology of the Body, 3D Media
Instructors: Triton Mobley, Zachary Horton; Spring Semester 2025
Created in Open Lab
Where is Lana 1.0 (Standard video, created for the Technology of the Body class in Spring 2025)
I SEE YOU (Where is Lana 2.0; VR; created for the 3D Media class in Fall 2025) Preview below; experience full VR at showcase.
"This project explores how original identity gradually distorts and disappears through processes of reproduction and circulation. In an image-saturated world, identity no longer stays anchored to the body. It becomes distributed across photos, reflections, recordings, and digital traces. As these images continue to reproduce and circulate, the original is continuously displaced. The identity carried by each copy gradually shifts away from its source, until the copy becomes something new and entirely unrelated to what it once represented. In the first video, Lana becomes lost in the act of reproducing herself and searching for herself. The search no longer leads back to an original identity, and instead pulls her deeper into a growing field of images. As she moves through photos, reflections, and repeated representations of herself, her sense of self becomes increasingly unstable. By the end, the copies overtake her, and her original presence is consumed by the process she is trying to escape. The second video continues from this condition, where Lana exists everywhere and nowhere at once. Here, the copy begins to look back. Lana emerges as an active presence that confronts the viewer and returns the act of looking. Through the VR format, the audience is placed inside her system of repetition and surveillance, unable to fully step outside it. The experience shifts from searching for Lana to being watched by what remains after the original has dissolved into copies.
We used the 360 VR cameras and VR headsets in the Open Lab during the development of this project. At the beginning, we were beginners with this equipment, but through experimentation and testing, we became very comfortable using it. Even though we did not end up using the 360 footage in the final piece because of the project’s format and constraints, the process helped us learn how to shoot for immersive media and better understand how viewers experience space and perspective in VR."- Kaylynn Zhang, Lana Nader
Website "The Invisible Hand of UX"
Creator: Liam Sullivan
Class: DNID Capstone in English
Instructor: Jessica FitzPatrick, , Spring 2026
To view The Invisible Hand of UX click here.
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"This piece was motivated by the lack of tangible example in the UX sphere. Terms in digital web design are often misunderstood by non-designers due to their jargon-filled definitions. This web app plans to address these issues by providing pictoral or interactive examples along with explainer content that is easy to absorb by the average layperson for each given term."- Liam Sullivan
AI Statement: Claude 3.6 Sonnett was heavily used in the architecture of interactive components. However, explanations of terms are human-written.
Website: "I Saw the Signs"
Creator: Karlynn Riccitelli
Class: Trials of the Hero
Instructor: Jessica FitzPatrick, Spring Semester 2025
Please note: Below is a embed from Figma, a hi-fidelity prototyping tool: you can click around the screen as you would on a computer window, exploring functionalities of the project.
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"Trials of the Hero is a new and exciting way to experience the classic tales of Greek mythology. The website utilizes environmental storytelling (visual elements on the page that add depth and are meant to be explored) and interactive buttons to take users through the narrative. By interacting with the narrative to reveal the next parts, the user gets agency in the story. The project started with immense research. I found sources to help with my myth selection and passage tones, as well as sources focused on website interactivity and Figma techniques. I decided on fleshing out the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, and then cross-referenced half a dozen tellings of the myth to inform my plot points. Once the narrative was written, I split it into sections based on the amount of text I felt the user should be given at a time. After I designed my user flow, I figured out styling. Because I focused on UX Design with this project, I started by creating two versions of style guides and A/B testing them with my classmates. These guides included different font combinations, color palettes, and iconography styles. The next step was to create a low-fidelity prototype for user-testing. After interactions were solidified, I added in color and iconography. A few more rounds of feedback and iteration led me to my final product - a high-fidelity prototype of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice."-Karlynn Riccitelli
Website: "The Evolution of Hearing Aid Technology: Exploring the Radioear Collection "
Creators: Miles Wisner, Amy Zhang,
Class: DNID Capstone in English
Instructor: Jessica FitzPatrick, Fall Semester 2025
To explore the Evolution of Hearing Technology, click here..
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"The goal of this project is to showcase an accessible, interactive narrative about the evolution of hearing aid technology. Focusing on hearing aid devices from the Radioear Collection, this digital exhibit is the product of primary and secondary research. Viewers will also notice interactive 3D scans of select devices and lush, detailed alt text that accompanies images of the device for enhanced accessibility. Our digital exhibition aims to incorporate alternative modes of interactivity such as rotating, zooming, and closely examining each artifact."--Miles Wisner and Amy Zhang
"Not every capstone bothers to anchor itself in the archives--and the additional time commitment, ethical questions, and emobodied challenges of archive access--but this one does, and it does so in a wonderfully productive way."- Dr. Fitz, recommender
Website: "A.F.V: Online Travel Agency Website"
Creators: Alyssa Jacoby, Vaishu Kusumba, Francis Huffman
Class: Database Management Concepts and Applications
Instructor: Vladimir Zadorozny, Fall Semester 2025
The AFV Online Travel Agency project required localized settings, but this github repo provides more information.
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"In this final project for Database MGMT and Concepts and APPs class we collaborated to create a website that functioned as an online travel aid. In splitting up our three skillsets we were able to work together efficiently for this project. We saw that travel planning had a problem; it is too difficult to plan an exciting vacation when users have to access multiple websites. Our solution was to create one cohesive website that gathered flights, hotels, transportation, and activities into one website. The assignment required us to create a database back end that would work with the front end, so we created a package system that made the most of our SQL knowledge. In doing so we created America’s Favorite Vacations (AFV)."- AFV Team
AI Statement: Generative AI was used to populate the database for this project.