NYU IMA, Spring 2025. Instructor: Allison Parrish. Send me e-mail.

This page is for various notes, tutorials, etc. related to Capstone Studio. Please consult the syllabus for detailed information on schedule, assignments, grading criteria, etc. Plain-text versions of slide decks are available upon request.

Week 01

• Portfolios
• The ladder of feedback
• Practice-based research

Week 02

• Brainstorming and project ideas
• Research skills, project ideas, abstracts

Week 03

• Prototyping
• Deck from class
• Class brainstorm: What is prototyping? Talk about examples of prototyping you’ve done in the past.
• In-class exercise: Make a prototype of some element of one of your project ideas.

Week 04

• Research paper preview
• Literature reviews and annotated bibliographies
  • In-class exercise: Read a paper together
• Deck from class on literature reviews
• Deck from class on methodology
• In-class exercise (if time): In teams (or as a class), find at least one new paper/resource for each participant to add to their literature review.

Week 05

• Prototype reviews
• In-class writing exercise: Project proposal. We’ll split into teams of two and share our documentation so far with each other. Then, we’ll take fifteen minutes in class to write rough project proposals for each other’s projects. (This will be quick! Try to just write one or two sentences for each prompt.)
• Zotero tutorial
  • Download Zotero
  • Adding items by ISBN, DOI, etc.
  • Using Zotero Connector to add content automatically
  • Exporting a bibliography
  • If time: Show Word plugin for Zotero

Week 06

• In-class workshop of abstracts and introductions. Exchange your abstract/introduction with another class member. We’ll take five to ten minutes in class to read, then respond. What is unclear? What questions do you have?
• Productivity and time-management techniques
• Drafting the “Methodology” section

Week 07

• Peer review
• Production timelines

Week 09

• Production check-ins
• Allison’s presentation tips, deck from class
• Presentations
  • There will be two presentations in this class. (1) Your final presentation. You’ll have twenty to thirty minutes to present your idea (including Q&A) to the class, to your instructor, and to a number of guest critics. (2) Your Thesis/Capstone week presentation (scheduled alongside presentations from the ITP two-year masters). These are ten minute presentations that will be livestreamed and recorded, and are not followed by Q&A.
  • The Final Presentation is good for digging into your project in detail and having a leisurely discussion. Thesis Week presentations are more like TED talks: laconic and impactful. You’ll be able to reuse material between the two talks, but they shouldn’t be the same talks.
• Suggested assignment: Find and make a list of presentations that you like and that you want to emulate.
• If you need some scaffolding, here’s IMA Shanghai’s Capstone Final Presentation Template