Site maintained by Nancy Rasche, Assistant Professor of Practice at Purdue University, nrasche@purdue.edu

Experience Studio Semester History

The Experience Studio started in the Spring semester of 2016. Below you can find information and links to learn more about the teams, students, and projects in each semester.

Spring 2024, 15 teams

This is the 17th semester of the Experience Studios. Paul Parsons led the 2 sections that had 15 teams. Visit the Spring 2024 page to learn more.

Fall 2023, we have 16 teams!

Managing 16 unique client-led projects is challenging, but the students make it possible! This is the 16th semester of the Experience Studios. We have 16 teams with a total of 95 students (48 sophomores, 41 juniors, and 6 grads). Visit the Fall 2023 page to learn more.

Spring 2022, we need 2 sections!

There are no active classrooms at Purdue large enough to handle our numbers, so we have 2 sections for the first time. This is the 13th semester of the Experience Studios. We had 14 teams with a total of 122 students (47 freshmen, 47 sophomores, 20 juniors, and 8 grads). Visit the Spring 2022 page to learn more.

Fall 2021, we're all back together in the classroom.

We returned to “face to face” instruction…with masks of course. This is the 12th semester of the Experience Studio! We had 12 teams with a total of 91 students (47 sophomores, 38 juniors, and 6 grads). Visit the Fall 2021 page to learn more.

Spring 2021, semester 2 of covid-campus.

We continued to adjust to our hybrid learning environment and made improvements in how we worked online. Another record breaking number of students in the Experience Studio, we had 14 teams with a total of 115 students (48 freshmen, 42 sophomores, 23 juniors, and 2 grads). Visit the Spring 2021 page to learn more.

Fall 2020, adjusting to covid-campus.

This semester we had to learn how to adjust to Purdue’s “covid-campus.” We had de-densified classrooms, social distancing, hybrid classes, and a pledge to Protect Purdue. We had 12 teams with a total of 76 students (42 sophomores, 31 juniors, and 3 grads). Visit the Fall 2020 page to learn more.

Spring 2020, hello grads and goodbye campus.

In Spring 2020, we welcomed 4 graduate students into the experience studio for the first time. This is also the first time we were pushing the 100 student threshold. We added a second Lead Project Owner to help. We had 12 teams with a total of 94 students (45 freshmen, 31 sophomores, 14 juniors, and 4 graduate students). We also had to transition to remote learning on March 13 as the Covid-19 pandemic sent everyone into quarantine. Visit the Spring 2020 page to learn more.

Fall 2019, enter instructor #2, Paul Parsons.

We welcomed Dr. Paul Parsons into the experience studio to help manage the growing numbers in the UXD major. We had 10 teams with a total of 60 students. We also welcomed the first Lead Project Owner role to add structure and leadership to the 5 Project Owners. Visit the Fall 2019 page to learn more.

Spring 2019, new team structure with Co-Leads & Project Owners.

To continually improve the leadership setup, we re-aligned the Project Owners (PO) role to what it was originally intended. The setup from the previous semester caused confusion on expectations. So, the POs returned to managing 2 teams with a strong focus on individual team member growth. Each team now had Co-Team Leads to lessen the burden of the larger team sizes. Another record breaking enrollment with 25 new freshmen “interns.” We had 8 teams with a total of 68 students. Visit the Spring 2019 page to learn more.

Fall 2018, growing pains?

We had to re-imagine the Project Owners (PO) to help manage the high enrollment (*a good problem to have) and lack of UXD upperclassmen to place in leadership roles. So, we placed one PO on each team to help the Team Lead manage the project strategy and to facilitate individual team member growth. We had 7 teams with a total of 40 students. Visit the Fall 2018 page to learn more.

Spring 2018, hello Project Owners.

We added Project Owners (PO) to the leadership roles. The 3 PO roles were filled by upperclassmen with a desire to specialize in project management. They managed 2 teams each. We had 6 teams with a total of 47 students. Visit the Spring 2018 page to learn more.

Fall 2017, we are UXD majors only!

We narrowed to only UXD majors this semester and had only 3 upperclassmen who had the experience or desire to lead. So, we had 3 teams with a total of 19 students. Visit the Fall 2017 page to learn more.

Spring 2017, first UXD cohort.

We welcomed 15 new freshmen UXD students into the experience studio. This is a great indicator that the program is gaining momentum. We still have multi-disciplinary teams filled with students from other Computer Graphics Technology (CGT) majors. We had 7 teams with 33 students. Visit the Spring 2017 page to learn more.

Fall 2016, keep learning, keep growing.

We continued to build the structure and set up for the Experience Studios. We had 9 multi-disciplinary teams of 28 students. Visit the Fall 2016 page to learn more.

Spring 2016, 1st semester of the Experience Studios.

The first semester of the User Experience Design (UXD) Experience Studio with only 1 declared UXD student. We filled the classroom by recruiting students throughout the Computer Graphics Technology (CGT) department. We had 21 students on 7 multi-disciplinary teams. Visit the Spring 2016 page to learn more.