April 14 2026
What I value most about the Shark Tank project is that it teaches students how to shape an idea into an experience that can be understood by others. I often think of the presentation structure as an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert. This metaphor helps students understand that presenting a project is not simply about delivering information in sequence, but about creating an arc of attention, understanding, and memory. Each stage serves a different purpose. The appetizer invites curiosity, the main course offers substance, and the dessert leaves behind an impression strong enough to carry the project forward in the minds of others. In this way, students begin to see that building an interface and presenting it are deeply connected acts of design.
The appetizer is where students practice invitation. At the beginning of a presentation, they are not yet trying to explain everything; they are trying to open a door. I want them to think carefully about how an audience first encounters an idea. What makes people lean in? What creates curiosity, recognition, or even surprise? This opening moment asks students to distill their project into something clear, intriguing, and approachable. It teaches them that communication is not just about clarity, but about timing and atmosphere. A strong introduction creates appetite: it prepares the audience emotionally and intellectually for what is to come.
The main course is where students reveal the depth of their process. Here, the project moves from impression to investigation. They explain how the interface works, how they developed it, what challenges emerged, and how those challenges shaped later decisions. I see this as one of the most important pedagogical moments in the assignment, because it teaches students to make their thinking visible. Development is often messy, nonlinear, and full of revision, but that is precisely what makes it meaningful. When students discuss debugging, research, user feedback, visual refinement, or code comprehension, they are learning to narrate process rather than simply display results. They begin to understand that technical work is also reflective work, requiring observation, interpretation, and the ability to respond thoughtfully to obstacles.
Within this main portion, I also ask students to evaluate their project from multiple perspectives. This encourages them to move beyond the question of whether something merely functions. Instead, they must ask whether it communicates well, whether it feels intuitive, whether it can be improved, and how it might be perceived by others. These are forms of judgment that are essential for any creative and technical practice. Through user testing, optimization, personalization, graphical development, code explanation, or comparative research, students start learning how to assess the quality of an experience rather than just the completion of a task. In doing so, they become more aware that a digital project always exists in relation to users, contexts, and expectations.
The dessert, to me, is where students learn the art of resonance. A conclusion should not feel like an abrupt ending; it should feel like a continuation of possibility. I encourage students to think of this final stage as the moment when they leave the audience with an aftertaste—something memorable, thoughtful, or forward-looking. What remains after the demonstration is over? What future does the project suggest? What kinds of collaborations, expansions, or new directions might grow from it? This part of the project is especially valuable because it helps students understand that creative work is rarely fixed or final. Even a classroom prototype can carry the seed of a much larger idea. By articulating future potential, they practice seeing their own work not as an isolated assignment, but as something that could continue evolving.
What I appreciate about this appetizer-main course-dessert structure is that it gives students a way to organize not only their presentation, but also their thinking. The opening teaches them to frame an idea, the middle teaches them to examine and support it, and the ending teaches them to extend it into the future. Together, these stages help students connect multiple forms of learning at once: technical fluency, critical reflection, audience awareness, and imaginative projection. They learn that making an interface is not just about code, and presenting a project is not just about slides. Both are acts of shaping experience. That integration is one of the reasons this assignment matters so much to me.
Am I talking about teaching or project development? Maybe both. To me, developing teaching pedagogy is an art form in itself, one that involves care, craftsmanship, intuition, and constant refinement. Project development, in a similar way, is both a continuation of previous excellence and a collision with new ideas—ideas that respond to the needs, tensions, and possibilities of our current society. Through that process, a project searches for its most crystallized state of expression, pushing itself toward the furthest edge of what it can become at its very best.
Perhaps this is why I do not see teaching and creative development as separate practices. Both require sensitivity, structure, experimentation, and vision. Both ask us to shape experience into form. Both demand that we work with what we have inherited while daring to imagine what has not yet existed. In that sense, teaching is also a kind of making, and making is also a way of teaching.
As I sip a cup of matcha latte and look at art, I find myself thinking about how naturally these worlds come together. Art and food have always been one of my favorite combinations. There is something deeply moving to me about finding art in food—in texture, color, presentation, atmosphere, and the care behind its making. Perhaps that is also part of how I understand pedagogy and creation: as something sensory, crafted, nourishing, and expressive all at once.
Love, hope my writing makes you hungry for more.
Ka Hei Cheng 