Discovery & Engagement Discovery & Engagement

LIBERAL ARTS MAGAZINE Spring 2004
18
around
Design Class
Takes a Ride
BY BARBARA H. DIXON
CAMPUS
When Professor Petronio Bendito
teaches Web design for visual communication,
he strives for a meaningful
learning experience for his students.
One of the ways he does this is to involve
real clients. In spring 2002, Bendito’s class
teamed up with CityBus of Greater Lafayette, which
hoped to get children involved with the local bus system
so that they would be lifelong users of public transportation.
The result of this semester-long collaboration is an
interactive Web site designed to teach children how to
ride a city bus.
To build the site, the class had to determine the
client’s design needs, look at the intended audience, and
come up with a plan. John Metzinger, manager of development
at CityBus, was
so impressed with the
work of the class that
he hired one of the students
as an intern to
implement the plan the
following summer.
“They did a great job,”
Metzinger declares. A
Petronio Bendito,
assistant professor
of visual and
performing arts,
discusses a visual
communication project
with Haydee
Maldonado, one of
his students.
Purdue graduate himself (BA in visual
communication design in 1990),
Metzinger was impressed with the
class’s work. “The Web site is part of a
larger outreach program we engage in,
and serves as a reinforcement for the
children who have had tours of the
CityBus facilities,” he says.
The Web site (http://www.
gocitybus.com/kids/intro.htm) shows
a cartoon child named David learning how to take the
bus home from a library. The sights and sounds of bus
travel make it a fun and interesting site for kids.
The mutual benefit from this type of service learning
is enormous. Despite considerable preparation and work,
Bendito says that working with an actual client is worth
it. “Working on a real problem gives the students a
chance to apply the theories they have learned about
visual communication to a real project,” he says. “My
students and I get an opportunity to practice inquiry and
explore issues of business-based design methodology, as
opposed to classroom-based problem-solving strategies.
This is great, because we get to apply and fulfill our
discovery process, and the rich learning environment
also helps the community, making it a truly win-win
proposition.”