Courses

Visual Design (CC BY-NC-SA)

In this mini-course, students learn to analyze and produce effective printed documents, such as technical reports, proposals, and software documentation. To guide their learning, students are introduced to the basics of visual communication design and typography through a series of audio-visual explanations that describe and illustrate key concepts and vocabulary, self-assessments that verify the understanding, and hands-on exercises with individualized feedback that provide opportunities to try out what they learned.

Guides

Inclusive Design Guide (CC BY)

Created by the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, the Inclusive Design Guide can be applied to digital design as well as to the design of services, the built environment, and physical products. It can be applied to processes like workshops, meetings, conferences, and even our daily interactions with one another. It can be used by anyone.

Inclusive Learning Design Handbook (CC BY)

The Floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook created by the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University is designed to assist teachers, content creators, Web developers, and others in creating adaptable and personalizable educational resources that can accommodate a diversity of learning preferences and individual needs.

Monographs

Task-Centered User Interface Design (Non-commercial, no derivatives — see Shareware notice)

The central goal of this book is to teach the reader how to design user interfaces that will enable people to learn computer systems quickly and use them effectively, efficiently, and comfortably. The interface issues addressed are primarily cognitive, that is, having to do with mental activities such as perception, memory, learning, and problem solving.

Textbooks

Digital Foundations (CC BY-NC)

This book was written by two artist educators who teach digital art and design studio foundation classes. While teaching classes that take place in software laboratories, we noticed that many of our students expected to learn to use software, but gave little consideration to aesthetics or art and design history. A typical first day question is, “Are we going to learn Photoshop in this class?” This book is a mash-up of the Bauhaus Basic Course and open source software such as Inkscape, Gimp, Firefox, and Processing. We have taken some of the visual principles and exercises from the Bauhaus Basic Course and adapted them into exercises for these applications.

Design Thinking (CC BY-NC-SA)

Design thinking is a methodology for creative problem solving. It’s a structured and cyclical approach to generating and evolving ideas. It has five phases that help navigate the development from identifying a design challenge to finding and building a solution. Those phases include: empathizing, defining the problem, ideating solutions, prototyping ideas, and testing with users.

Interaction Design Foundation Resources (CC BY-ND, but licences may vary)

A collection of open source textbooks on UX design.

Tutorials of Visual Graphic Communication Programs for Interior Design (CC BY-NC)

This book is for the beginning level of both architecture and interior design students who learn computer graphic communication software. The author developed multiple tutorials to teach three computer graphic applications, AutoCAD, Revit, and Enscape. AutoCAD is an essential computer drafting software which is 2D drawing software. Revit is a Building Information Modeling software, which is 3D based modeling software. Lastly, Enscape is a real-time rendering, animation, and virtual reality plug-in for users’ 4D experiences.

Tutorials of Visual Graphic Communication Programs for Interior Design 2 (CC BY-NC)

This book is for advanced-level architecture and interior design students who have in-depth knowledge and skills with computer-aided visualization software. The author developed a total of twenty-two chapters to teach practical graphic presentation techniques for architectural presentations. Readers will learn these techniques by following step-by-step tutorials. This book includes multiple exercises for the reader’s practice. After completing the tutorials, readers will be able to apply these techniques to their design projects. This book contains a total of 22 Illustrator, Painter, Revit, SketchUp, Lumion, Photoshop, and Premiere tutorials for conceptual diagramming, hybrid digital drawing, advanced modelling, rendering, and animations.