Author: Design Incubation

User-Centered Design + Generative AI Research Tools: Usability Testing and Implication

Comparing how generative AI facilitates interaction design undergraduate students’ work.

Yi-Fan Chen
Assistant Professor
Farmingdale State College

Research is involved in every step of the user-centered design process. It aims to define users’ needs and pains, uncover user behavior, survey the current state of similar design solutions, aid user experience (UX) design decisions, improve usability, and enhance overall user satisfaction. Designing and conducting various research during the human-centered design process takes time and effort. Recently, increasingly popular generative AI models can generate high-quality images, text, audio, synthetic data, and other types of content. UX professionals have found that generative AI can increase productivity. A Nielsen Norman Group report found UX professionals mainly used generative AI for content editing, research assisting, design assisting, and ideation co-designing (Liu, Zhang, & Budiu, 2023). On the other hand, how much and how effectively UX professionals utilize generative AI in their work is unclear. The current research aims to examine the transformative potential of AI research tools in facilitating user-centered design practices.

To examine AI tools for UX research, this ongoing ethnographic observation study began in the Fall of 2022 when ChatGPT was launched. The research site is an interaction design studio at New York State College. The instructor investigated several generative AI tools to learn each tool’s policies before introducing them to students. Students are encouraged to use the tools for their projects if they identify which tools they used in their projects. The projects served the purpose of comparing how generative AI facilitates interaction design undergraduate students’ work. Preliminary findings include students using ChatGPT to remind them of steps in research method design, such as writing recruitment notes, drafting open-ended and closed-ended questions, and analyzing data. They also use it to assist in user persona development, wireframing, and creating content for case studies. It takes time and experience to prompt useful suggestions. Limitations, implications, and future studies will be further discussed.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Pedagogical Workshops and Collaboration

Engaging with dialogue, risks, intuitive creativity, and happy accidents.

Chen Luo
Lecturer
Boston University

My research is centered on pedagogical workshops and embodied publishing that encourage cultural exchange through collective practicing and community building.

I believe the pedagogical workshop as an interrogative exercise is a place where practice has no preconceived outcomes, but engages with dialogue, risks, intuitive creativity, and happy accidents. The workshops bridge making and thinking, focusing the process rather than the final results. They serve as a tool to gather individuals who want to practice together without hierarchy and institutional pressure.

The programs and writers, such as Typography Summer School, Workshop Project, Vilém Flusser, etc. inspired me to think about workshops as a place to gather discussion and craft on the need for today’s graphic design curriculum, and the relevance of typography in design history and the part it plays in today’s society. Etc. A workshop I designed with designer Chuck Gonzales, we asked students to list vocabulary related to their identity, culture, love/hate, methodology and previous work. Then they connect any two listed words into a final deliverable which is not disciplined in a certain format, but visually and sensorly engaging. The goal is to build connections among one’s beliefs and interests by considering materials, languages, performance, identity, scales, spaces at a fast pace. There are workshops that transform research into collective visual experiments. My methodology begins with trust-building exercises and instructional constraints, allowing unexpected possibilities to happen during the process. In the “Pen+Pen-Pen” workshop, hosted in multiple Art Book Fairs, Designer Bella Tuo and I made a set of creative pen tools that provide variable lengths and multiple participants to hold a pen at once. By using the pens to experiment with symmetrical typography patterns, we questioned how to create sustainable tools built upon the existing art material, and what exchange would affect in a group practice. The prompt was inspired by artist Job Wouters’ methodology.

Through transforming participants’ responsive creation into performative and installation typography through the process of writing, sharing, and moving. We explored the boundaries between bodies and language, typography and space, the individual and the communal. In “Embodied Making as Collective Publishing: The Body and Hanzi”, hosted in Boston Art Book Fair 2022. Mary Yang and I designed this workshop to explore embodied making and publishing. During this workshop, we explored the relationship between the body and Hanzi (Chinese characters) through a series of hands-on exercises to create collaborative, large-scale wearable posters. With participants who have/have no Chinese background, we proposed questions including what does collective publishing look like through collaborative labor in a shared space and time and how can this workshop create a space for cultural exchange and expression. The workshop was not only a typography experimentation, but also more lively with posing, collective moving, dancing, and photography. I have enjoyed practicing the phonetics and hieroglyphics of Hanzi through letterform writing. My aim is to create a new interplay of workshops by activating the body and traditional graphic design mediums. It fosters a sequence of processes, discourse, culture expression, and prolongs the conversation after the completion of a project.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Accessibility and Creative Authorship in Design Theory Through Multimodal Learning and Metacognitive Reflection

A course that engaged a cohort of international first-semester masters students in complex theoretical concepts encouraging self-reflection and creative authorship.

Molly Haig, Lecturer & Dr. Till Julian Huss, Professor
University of Europe for the Applied Sciences
Berlin, Germany

The study of media ecology offers design students vital insights into our culture, but like any detailed framework of ideas, these should be approached with precision, care, and scaffolding. Ecological thinking engages with the interconnectedness of complex systems, from the environment to technology and culture (Hörl 2017). Using ecological thinking as a conceptual entry point and typography as a visual one, we built a course that effectively engaged a cohort of international first-semester masters students in complex theoretical concepts by encouraging self-reflection and creative authorship.

The theoretical branch of the course involves lectures and discussions, engaging with theories of media ecology from their early anticipations (Kiesler 1939) to their defining approaches (McLuhan 1967, Strate 2017). Design is understood through the environment, or as transformation of lived environments (i.e. the Future Ecologies series ed. Löffler, Mareis, & Sprenger since 2021, and in a historical perspective Busbea 2020). Gibson’s (1979) concept of affordances, which Don Norman (2013) translated to a key principle for user-centric design, offers a bridge to design practice, and the theory of metaphors is introduced as a foundational mode of creative thinking.

The practical branch of the course frames typography and publication as tools for conceptual analysis, integrating excerpts from the theoretical texts into increasingly complex visual assignments. Students also keep a scrappy physical journal or “commonplace book” with 30 entries, each linking an in-class idea to an external one. Each student’s final publication is an “autobiographical user manual” guiding the “user” through the course based on the student’s subjective experience.

Student work revealed unique representations of theoretical content and strong metaphorical thinking, and many projects were reflective of students’ fresh experiences of a new environment during their first semester in a foreign country. Publications ranged from a hand-bound dictionary of terms, to ChatGPT’s “diary,” to directions through a distorted Berlin, to thirty existential questions posed by a whimsical humanoid peach. We heard from many students who found the course structure engaging and welcoming.

Our theoretical/practical approach is supported by an abundance of research on the educational benefits of multimodal learning, or engaging with more than one “mode” of accessing information (i.e. Moreno & Mayer 2007, Serafini 2015) especially when studying in a second language (Yi & Choi 2015), as well as metacognitive reflection (understanding one’s own understanding of a topic, i.e. Cummings 2015).

Our course offers an example of how explorations of ecological thinking and typography can support each other, but more broadly how collaborations across disciplines can be mutually beneficial, and increase the accessibility of both.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Design + Computation + Performance + __________

An innovative software tool enabling users to create dynamic, immersive media environments.

James Grady
Assistant Professor
Boston University

Random Actor is an innovative software tool initiated by James Grady, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, and Clay Hopper, Senior Lecturer of Directing at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. This solution connects computation and human performance, enabling users, including theatrical designers, artists, and more, to create dynamic, immersive media environments without extensive coding expertise. By incorporating computational vision, projection mapping, MIDI control, and machine learning into a user-friendly interface, Random Actor democratizes interactive design, making it accessible to a wide range of industries from theater to corporate events and gaming therapy models.

Building on tools like Processing, OpenFrameworks, TouchDesigner, and Unity, which integrate projection mapping, interactive generative graphics, and computational vision, this new tool addresses the challenges of traditional scenic and visual design. These existing tools often require coding knowledge, which can limit accessibility for non-coders. Random Actor bridges this gap by providing an intuitive, user-friendly interface that enables designers and performers to leverage advanced techniques without needing to learn how to code, thus expanding creative expression and adaptability in real-time visual storytelling.

In staging a previous play within an immersive, fully projected-media environment, we found traditional rehearsal methods to be insufficient for achieving the desired aesthetic goals. The excessive time spent adjusting or writing code during rehearsal led to the development of a software application capable of changing the values of any given generative algorithm in real time, without requiring coding knowledge.

We hypothesize that this kind of generative interactive technology could have far-reaching implications for how we construe visual narrative, story structure, and design principles, and how they manifest in physical space as extensions of the human body, speech, sign, and music. Our goal is to develop a new design vocabulary that merges the interior psychology of the performer with the physical environment, expanding the boundaries of Aristotelian narrative structure while affirming their deep relevance to the human experience.

Random Actor aims to bridge the gap between technology, creativity, and research. It expands on a continuum where technology empowers artistic expression. Based on our recent testing during a live play and multiple workshops, our findings suggest a bright future for such tools, indicating they could be further refined and integrated into broader artistic and educational practices, potentially transforming the landscape of design and performance art.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Sensory and Ambient Interfaces

Alternative feedback strategies that invert the visual-first priority of digital feedback.

Jonathan Hanahan
Associate Professor
Washington University in St. Louis

For most of its existence, communication design has prioritized visual feedback to users. Even today’s digital interfaces only use other senses, like touch and sound, to alert users to look at a device. As our physical and digital worlds further entwine, a new feedback methodology is required that embraces alternative senses as primary feedback methods, particularly in compromised experiences—where a screen is unavailable, dangerous, or distracting from a primarily complex task. 

My research is interested in evolving a pedagogy that builds on the foundation of craft associated with visual design yet translates it into alternative senses as a catalyst for a world where adding more screens is no longer a valid solution. Through my work in the Sensory and Ambient Interfaces Lab (SAIL) at Wash U, which I founded in 2022, I am building a body of research into alternative feedback strategies that invert the visual-first priority of digital feedback and investigate how information is translated through ambient strategies that “complement a human’s environment, rather than impose themselves on it.”

Through this presentation, I will showcase a range of strategies developed for ubiquitous (apple watch) and novel technologies (custom printable textiles) that output bespoke patterns, intensities, and frequencies at numerous locations on the body to relay complex data non-visually. I will present case studies in development at the Sensory and Ambient Interfaces Lab (SAIL) at Wash U, including current research with WashU athletics, primarily the rowing team, to develop haptic interfaces for performance enhancement. Through this example, I will showcase a design-led research approach to identify user needs and opportunities, design elegant haptic solutions, and test strategies that augment human performance and accelerate the Boyd Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop for situational awareness and decision-making in compromised experiences. These foundational pilot investigations aspire to further collaborative opportunities in other compromised experiences including medicine, military, safety, and more.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Exploring Identity Through Curatorial Practices: Gráfica Latina

The role of the graphic designer as curator addressing identity and belonging, culture, social justice, empowerment, and civic responsibility.

José Menéndez
Assistant Professor
Northeastern University

Tatiana Gómez
Assistant Professor
Massachusetts College of Art and Design

As Latin American graphic design educators and practitioners, we recognize the need for further research and understanding of the diversity of graphic design histories and their contextual backgrounds—commonly addressed as a monolithic culture.[1]

Gráfica Latina is a research project that seeks to address these needs through a digital and mobile poster archive of Latin American and Latinx graphic design. The goal of the archive is to speak about the social, economic, and political contexts in which these posters were—or/and still are— created in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Perú, Brasil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and the United States. The collection is curated to represent the diversity of printing techniques, vernacular languages, methods of representation (illustration, typography/calligraphy/lettering, and color), and messaging ranging from cultural to political, and environmental.

This project is led by Colombian graphic designer Tatiana Gómez, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Puerto Rican graphic designer José R. Menéndez, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Architecture at Northeastern University, College of Art Media and Design.

Gráfica Latina’s collection has been exhibited at The Fine Arts Work Center, at Rhode Island College’s School of Social Work, and at the 2024 Southern

Graphics Council International. It has been featured as part of the “Incomplete Latinx Stories of Diseño Gráfico,”[2] the Letterform Archive “Salon Series,”[3] The Boston Globe Magazine,[4] and the RISD Alumni Podcast “Pulling on the Thread.”[5]

This presentation about Gráfica Latina illustrates, through curation, pop-up exhibitions, programming, and a digital archive, initiatives that investigate the role of the graphic designer as curator and how this practice can facilitate resources for education, engagement and dialogs with communities while addressing topics such as identity and belonging, culture, social justice, empowerment, and civic responsibility.

[1] Flores, Andrea. How UCLA is trying to break the myth of the Latino monolith. Los Angeles Times. 11/6/2023. www.latimes.com

[2] Menéndez López, José R. “Caribbean Contrast: Puerto Rican and Cuban Carteles and Their Representation of Distinct Political Relationships with the United States .” Incomplete Latinx Stories of Diseño Gráfico. BIPOC Design History, 1 Oct. 2021, PROVIDENCE, RI.

[3] Llorente, Ana, and Menéndez López, José R. “Call and Response: Histories of Designing Protest.” Letterform Archive, Salon Series 39. Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest, 23 July 2022, San Francisco, California.

[4] Gómez, Tatiana, and Menéndez López, José R. “Gráfica Latina.” Boston Globe Magazine, 17 September 2023, p. Cover-Interior Cover.

[5] Gómez Gaggero, Tatiana, Speaker; Menéndez, José R. Pulling on the Thread, Season 6, Episode 2: Grafica Latina, Rhode Island School of Design, November 1st, 2021, https://alumni.risd.edu/podcast/grafica-latina. 11/22.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Designing for Mental Health and Wellbeing: Integrating Mental Health Support into UI/UX Design Course

Collaborative work, peer feedback and positive psychology were integral to the whole process, fostering a supportive learning environment.

Ting Zhou
Assistant Professor
University of Connecticut

The mental health crisis is a significant challenge currently affecting college students. According to data from the Healthy Minds Study, which surveyed 76,406 students across the country, 41% of college students experienced depression, 36% experienced anxiety, 14% experienced eating disorders, 14% had suicidal ideation during the 2022-2023 academic year. The main barriers to help-seeking are “no need for services” (35%) and “not enough time” (24%).  (HMS National 2022-2023 Data Report) Given that 97% of Americans ages 18-29 own a smartphone (Pew Research Center, 2021), the mHealth (mobile Health) application has been one of the primary tools for wellness management, especially during COVID-19. It expands accessibility to support mental health and coping skills, helping students flourish on college campuses. Design thinking (DT) is the fundamental theory in UI/UX design that helps people to become more innovative and creative (Brown T., 2009).

This study aims to explore the integration of mental health support into design education by teaching students to design mHealth applications. The focus is on utilizing human-centered design principles to address mental health challenges among college students. Design students were guided through the design thinking process (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test) to develop mHealth applications targeting mental health and wellness. Projects were based on students’ personal interests and experiences in mental health, addressing conditions such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, anxiety, sobriety, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and dissociative identity disorder (DID).  Collaborative work, peer feedback and positive psychology were integral to the whole process, fostering a supportive learning environment.

Through the human-centered design process, students gained profound knowledge of mental health issues on campus and developed innovative solutions tailored to specific user needs. The collaborative approach promoted a culture of empathy and understanding, making students more comfortable discussing mental health and recognizing the importance of self-care. This method normalized help-seeking behavior and integrated positive psychology into their daily lives. It not only prepares future designers to create accessible mental health support tools but also promotes their own mental well-being and professional development.

References

  1. Pew Research Center. (2021). Mobile fact sheet. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/ on 6th of August, 2021.
  2. Brown, T. (2009). Change by design: how design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation. [New York], Harper Business.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Advancing Design Practices: Assessing the Impact of New Technologies and Sustainable Innovation

The research offers memorable experiences that complement traditional marketing materials.

Caitlin Lu & Maidah Salman
Graduate student
Boston University

Purpose: This study investigates new approaches for displaying designs through digital visualization to enhance engagement and impact while considering the future of design. By integrating methods like projection mapping and digital signage, the research aims to offer memorable experiences that complement rather than replace traditional marketing materials.

The focus is on sustainability, adaptability, interaction, and error correction across various display sizes, including screens and projections. With the global shift toward sustainability, this study offers new strategies for designers to move beyond conventional methods and incorporate more eco-friendly practices.

Process: The research involves a workshop where participants test and compare digital design methods with traditional print media. This includes hands-on experience with projection mapping and a presentation introducing new digital marketing techniques. Following the workshop, participants will complete surveys to measure the effectiveness of different methodology.

Outcomes: Test theory by conducting a workshop where we will check the success rate of digital design as compared to tangible marketing collateral. The findings will highlight how digital visualization can enhance sustainability and audience engagement in design practices.

Significance: The study explores emerging digital techniques that advance conventional design methods, contributing to more sustainable and impactful communication strategies.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Drawn Together: Exploring the Intersection of Image-Making and Community-Building

The Center was “founded” in response to a lack of design student cohesion and camaraderie.

Grace Preston
Professor
Texas State University

My paper recounts a collaborative initiative between myself and a cohort of undergraduate design students that we named the Center for Drawn Togetherness. The Center was “founded” in response to a lack of design student cohesion and camaraderie as our institution transitioned back to a fully in-person model post-pandemic. To address these issues, we conceptualized a series of interlocking illustration events that culminated in an exhibition. Each event asked participants to work together, challenging the idea that drawing is a solitary activity and exploring how drawing together could strengthen bonds among participants.

In the first event, a risograph workshop, participants collaboratively designed and printed an official “currency” for the Center. The second event allowed participants to earn “money” by contributing to a collaborative mural, asking them to respond to prompts that could be completed with a partner. The culminating event allowed participants to spend their “money” in a student-run illustration pop-up shop. All happenings were housed in an exhibition that doubled as a gathering space for design students, with student collaborators facilitating the events.

Event planning sessions emphasized Sasha Constanza-Chock’s principles of Design Justice, particularly their assertion that communities should co-lead and control design projects intended to benefit them (2020). Since I was concurrently teaching my student collaborators, planning sessions also challenged the traditional roles of teachers and students, proposing that we can operate as equals.

The workshops received positive feedback from participants, which was gathered through surveys and interviews after the events concluded. The Center plans to use this feedback to develop new initiatives in this upcoming school year. We will continue to investigate how in-person drawing events can potentially promote empathy among students, advocate more collaborative relationships between teachers and students, and encourage young designers to feel ownership over their educational experience.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Kaithi Script’s Revival: An Intersection of Design and Cultural Inheritance

Script revival serves as a means of reclaiming and preserving cultural identity.

Anmol Shrivastava
Assistant Professor
Illinois State University

Kaithi (KAE-THEE), also known as Kayathi or Kayasthi, is a script that was once widely used in northern India. Now classified as a “major extinct” script, Kaithi once flourished alongside companion scripts like Devanagari and other major Indian scripts of today. The name Kaithi is derived from ‘Kayastha’, a cultural group known as “scribes”. I am a Kayastha.

Script revival is crucial to colonized cultures, serving as a means of reclaiming and preserving cultural identity. It fosters pride, heritage transmission, and resistance to cultural homogenization, empowering communities to rebuild unique identities and celebrate their heritage.

This presentation explores the intersection of design and ancestry through a personal journey to revive the nearly extinct Kaithi script, historically used by my ancestors, the Kayasthas. It will demonstrate how design can become a powerful tool for historical and cultural revival, offering a unique perspective on the interplay between design, identity, and heritage.

By delving into sparse historical documents of Kaithi and sharing a personal journey of self-learning the script, the presentation will showcase current and upcoming projects that combine typography, type design, lettering, poster design, and embroidery. It will explore projects aimed at broadening the reach of this nearly extinct script by making Kaithi easier to self-teach. This presentation will illustrate how design can play a crucial role in reconnecting with and reviving our ancestral roots, fostering a deeper sense of identity and belonging.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.