Daniel Barreto Wildberger

Assistant Professor, Interaction Design

Availability:

Education:

MA

Bio

Daniel Wildberger is a Brazilian designer and educator with over 15 years of experience in visual culture, technology and education. Since founding his own studio in 2009, he has led projects in identity and branding, motion and interaction design for clients across Latin America and the USA. His work has been recognized in New York, San Francisco, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Cannes, London, Paris, Mexico City and Caracas. Daniel bridges design education with real-world application. His teaching is rooted in collaboration and critical making, positioning designers as creative thinkers and strategic problem-solvers capable of working across disciplines and sectors.

Websites:


Research Interests

Daniel’s current research and pedagogical focus explores the integration of emerging technologies into design practice, with an emphasis on gameful, dynamic, and immersive experiences. His work creates inclusive, participatory and socially engaged approaches to design education, where students develop a deeper understanding of their role as cultural producers and change agents. Two key concepts frame his current investigations. #craftpoetics, advocates for a return to hands-on engagement in a time of increasing automation and technocratic productivity. Whether through hand-coded digital artifacts or material experimentation, this approach embraces making as a site of meaning and presence. The second, Radical Hope, serves as a guiding ethos for design as a future-oriented, purpose-driven discipline. Radical Hope insists on design’s potential to respond to systemic challenges with imagination, agency, and care. Through these frameworks, Daniel’s work invites students and collaborators to question dominant narratives, engage critically with technology and shape futures that are not only functional but also humane.

Courses

Course Name Department Course Code Term
Foundation Studio Courses FNDT 182 27/SP

Description

This course provides an introduction to a range of interaction design practices. Students will gain experience with the range of activities that comprise the design process, including generating, refining, and communicating 2D, 3D, and 4D ideas. This course will use lectures, discussions, and assignments to cover design processes, concepts and principles of experience creation, form, meaning and context in design, and visual, verbal, and written communication. Along with an introduction to materiality and hand skills, students will be expected to engage digital literacy skills in generating, developing, documenting, and presenting outcomes using relevant software.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Interaction Design INTD 319 27/SP

Description

We live our lives surrounded by data. Mobile phones track our location, websites capture our habits, and social networks record our interactions. Yet a great deal of this data remains meaningless. This course merges the best practices of information design and interaction design to explore various ways of generating interactive visualizations of data. Participants learn how to apply design principles including knowledge of human perception, color theory, and effective storytelling, to data visualization. Students who want to present data to others, aspire to work with data scientists, or want to become more technically proficient with visualization tools, will grow their skills in this course.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Communication Design COMD 319 26/FA

Description

This studio course focuses on the temporal and sequential aspects of typography, image, sound and interactivity. Projects focus on sequential organization of information in time, and how pacing, rhythm, and transition can influence and construct meaning. This course considers font formats; the anatomy of digital type; factors affecting resolution and therefore type choice for animation and interactive applications; grids and modular composition systems for the screen; and the effects of sequencing and motion on typographic communications.

Priority is given to COMD and INTD students in Years 3 and 4. Students outside of the registration priority group may register/waitlist for this course as of the registration rule release date.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Interaction Design INTD 216 26/FA

Description

Prototyping has become an essential skill for interaction designers and is the most effective, quickest, and often most affordable way to communicate concepts and make ideas tangible. In this hands-on course participants learn contemporary prototyping techniques to design better user experiences by sketching, experimenting, making and testing.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Interaction Design INTD 350 26/FA

Description

This studio course offers students the opportunity to develop projects around a proposed topic that responds to emerging directions in interaction design. The course offers historical, theoretical and practical insights into a range of practices associated with the topic. Students examine and critique works in relation to the audience and context of their projects. Students position their work in relation to relevant discourses in design. Depending on the specific instructor and subject area, the class may participate in field trips, group critiques, discussions of readings, individual and collaborative projects, community or external organization partnerships.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.