Access needs to be core to the design process if we want emerging digital designers to design for the public good.
As a discipline, we often focus and reward visual design and aesthetics over, rather than in addition to, usability and accessibility. If we want emerging digital designers to design for the public good, then access needs to be core to their process and their education. Creating a learning environment that makes access a priority both in the way the course is delivered and in the learning objectives impacts who student designers consider as audiences and how they prioritize the needs and desires of those audience members.
Students in four sections of a beginning web design course over three semesters were given a pre-course survey, designed by Teach Access, to measure student perceptions and knowledge of accessibility and disability. Accessibility was regularly discussed throughout the course and was a design requirement on all assignments. Interventions across the three semesters evolved based on results of the prior semester. At the end of the course, students were given a post-course survey, to measure shifts in perception and understanding of accessibility.
In this session, I will share the interventions introduced each semester and the philosophy behind each intervention. In addition, I’ll share the statistically significant results and discuss the successes and failures of each iteration of interventions. As educators, the way we approach access in the classroom influences future generations of designers, therefore it is important to begin to systematically study the impact of the course design decisions we make.
Call for Nominations and Entries for the 2020 Design Incubation Communication Design Awards for Educators and Graduate Students
Design Incubation announces a call for nominations and entries for the 2020 awards for communication design educators and graduate students in the areas of scholarship, teaching, service. The aim of the awards program is to discover and recognize new scholarship (creative work and publications), teaching, and service in our broad and varied discipline. We hope to expand the design record, promote excellence and share knowledge within the field.
This year, the jury also will be considering commendations for work covering the area of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in communication design. We encourage submissions of work that relate to these areas for consideration.
Nominations
We kindly ask colleagues and mentors to identify outstanding creative work, publications, teaching, and service being done by design educators and graduate students in our field and to nominate these individuals for an award. Nominations will be accepted from April 15 to July 31, 2020.
Title: Description of project and outcomes (not to exceed 500 words)
Supporting Materials (limited to 5-page medium resolution pdf of artwork; web links to websites, videos, other online resources; published documents or visual documents)
Bio of applicant/s (150 words per applicant)
Curriculum vitae of applicant/s
New Initiative for the 2020 Design Incubation Awards: Graduate Student Work
Beginning this year, Design Incubation is accepting entries in a new juried area of Graduate Student Work. The future of communication design education begins with the work of future faculty and researchers in the field of Communication Design. Recognition of graduate student work will be grouped and reviewed in the categories of scholarship, creative projects, and service. Graduate students currently enrolled in graduate design programs are invited to submit scholarship, creative projects, and service projects they completed during graduate study or up to one year after graduation.
2020 Jury
Gail Anderson, School of Visual Arts, United States
Fatima Cassim, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Denise Gonzales Crisp, North Carolina State University, United States
Paul Nini, Ohio State University, United States
Maria Rogal, University of Florida, United States
Teal Triggs (Chair), Royal College of Art, United Kingdom
A Moderated Discussion for Educators
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
1pm EST (10am PST)
Wednesday, March 25, 2020 1pm EST / 10am PST
Hosted by Lisa Hammershaimb Associate Dean of Curriculum Independence University
Are you new to online and remote instruction? Do you have questions or concerns? Join a live Q&A Session with educators who have experience working in both synchronous and asynchronous online learning environments. Ask questions and learn about best practices. Hear about the range of tools these educators use to create engaging online design courses. Join our community and connect with other educators as we discuss the tips, tricks and challenges of working in the online learning environment.
Who should attend:
Educators who are transitioning to a fully online learning environment for the first time. Those of you who have taught online or hybrid classes in the past are encouraged to take part and share tips and tricks. Think you may have to start teaching online? Come and hear what others have found to be helpful. All are welcome!
Dr. Lisa Hammershaimb is a visual designer and design educator whose research investigates community, presence, and the porous borders between here/there + digital/physical.A 2018 graduate of the EdD program in Distance Education from Athabasca University, Lisa’s dissertation focused on how design educators use the internet to decentralize and extend studio pedagogy. Through her work, Lisa aspires to inspire design educators to be brave in the face of complexity and to build inclusive structures, where all participants can learn how to navigate and thrive in an increasingly information-abundant world.
Alex Girard
Alex Girard is a graphic designer and design educator who believes in the power of design to connect people to ideas, visually. His recent work focuses on developing meaningful assessment practices that define and help to constructively evolve curriculum, rather than exclusively evaluate it. Throughout his career, he has worked to adopt technology at the forefront of the field, and is currently exploring virtual course management systems and other online tools in an effort to create virtual collaborative spaces. Alex coordinates the Graphic Design program at Southern Connecticut State University, and serves as the Director of Peer Review for Design Incubation.
Aaris Sherin
Aaris Sherin is a design educator, researcher and writer. She is a professor of graphic design at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. Her teaching focuses on using blended hybrid models of instruction in FTF classes as well as teaching courses in a fully online learning environment. Sherin’s newest teaching strategies include adding synchronistic modules to online courses as well as working with course management tools and other software to create innovative frameworks for critique in online studio and lecture style courses.
Mitch Goldstein
Mitch Goldstein is a designer, artist, and educator based in upstate New York, where he is an Associate Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, teaching in the College of Art and Design. He has a fine arts practice focusing on a variety of digital and analog materials and both writes and speaks about art and design education, pedagogy, and creative practice. His courses frequently mix analog and digital making, as well as using both in-person and online teaching and critique tools and methods. He received his MFA in Design/Visual Communications from Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts, and his BFA in Graphic Design from Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently pursuing another Master’s Degree in Furniture Design from RIT.
Dennis Cheatham
Dennis Cheatham is the Graduate Director of xdMFA, a transdisciplinary distance-learning MFA in Experience Design at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He has been teaching online and hybrid courses in experience design and design research since 2016. Dennis has implemented pedagogical tools to facilitate highly engaged distance learning, including Experience Points, the Risk Bonus, single-point rubrics, Slack, and PACES: A Multiple Intelligences Model for Design Education. Dennis has used his background in web development and audio/video production to develop accessible, responsive templates for Canvas LMS and engaging feedback videos and tutorials to simulate the face-to-face experience for learners.
If you are looking for some tips on how to use Blackboard effectively for design instruction, including structuring your course, and tools for interactive group critiques, check out the videos below.
Here’s a great resources list published by AIGA DEC:
Two case studies will be shown that demonstrate embedding best practices for team collaboration in the classroom.
Christine Lhowe Assistant Professor Seton Hall University
At the introduction of group projects in my undergraduate
graphic design courses, students in various levels of their education often ask
if they will be able to present the project in their portfolio to potential
employers. Being that it was conceptualized as a team and multiple designers
participated in the outcome, they express concern in presenting work that
doesn’t exclusively belong to them. However, the design profession is
largely collaborative and creatives often work on projects in teams. This
presentation will showcase how I’ve utilized group projects to foster
understanding of the collaborative nature of the design industry to
intermediate and advanced graphic design students in a liberal arts
University.
I have embedded two learning outcomes within the course
material. The first is team conceptualization. Creative teams commonly
work together in developing original concepts in brainstorming sessions. The
purpose of the sessions are to collectively generate ideas where value is
placed in working together.Ownership of a concept may become
ambiguous as some may be merged together or built on by team members. The
second is entering a creative project post conceptualization. Designers are
often asked to develop new creative assets while upholding an existing
aesthetic for a brand, which raises the question, “was this my idea?”
Two case studies will be shown that demonstrate embedding best practices for team collaboration in the classroom. In the first, students worked together in an advanced Brand Evolution course to develop and maintain a brand across multiple digital and physical touch points. Secondly, in an intermediate Web Design course, students implemented a design system to collectively create the user interface of a large scale website.
Have you created an online class or entire course? Please share your recommendations and experiences on our bulletin board. Click on the link above to join the discussion.
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We turn the design into a tool to ask questions and pose solutions.
Omari Souza Assistant Professor Texas State University
Gabriela Disarli, Graduate Candidate, Texas State University Dillion Sorensen, Graduate Candidate, Texas State University Leslie Harris, Graduate Candidate, Texas State University
Traditional design projects typically include the paying
client and professionals within related industries. The paying client will
often use the services of the designer to attract a targeted audience to a
product or service, but what if we transition the members of the audience from
passive recipients in the solution to the active contributor. While there may
be times when informing is a necessary part of the process, we believe that
real impact is often made when we intentionally build up a person’s capacity to
contribute at higher levels. Call and response is a form of interaction between
a speaker and an audience in which responses from the audience punctuates the
speaker’s statements (“calls”). If we view the caller as a user, and the
designer as a responder, we turn the design into a tool to ask questions and
pose solutions.
This presentation explores how a group of nine graduate communication design students explored how design can be used to create behavioral and systemic change by using the participatory design process. The final deliverables explores the idea of problems as proverbial calls with the designer and audience as equitable participants in the response, or the means to a solution. We explore various calls, including calls for advocacy on behalf of marginalized social groups, calls for self-reflection on the design field itself, and calls for the future that speculates about potential directions within the field of design.
The first phase of a research project to develop and find the place of the emerging technologies in typography
Taekyeom Lee Assistant Professor Illinois State University
Technology
and design have been in a symbiotic relationship, and the demand for the
typography with 3D printing has already arrived. Like the digital revolution
with the introduction of personal computers generated radical changes in
typography, the new digital fabrication techniques urge designers and educators
to embrace the new possibilities. As 3D printing has become more refined,
efficient, and accessible, what designers can do with the new printing technology?
This project is the first phase of a research project to develop and find the
place of the emerging technologies in typography.
Designers can use a variety of printing techniques to produce visual materials and to solve visual problems. 3D printing can change the notion of printed text and how we experience materialized type since the tangible type does not lie on the static surface or live on-screen as a mirrored image. 3D printed tangible type acquires characteristics such as dimension, structure, materiality, and even physical interactivity. For this project, various conventional and unconventional materials in 3D printing were used to explore both the challenges and potential for typography. 3D printed tangible type not only amplified visual but physical interactions. The tangible type provides engaging tactile experiences, which would be more intuitive, expressive, and memorable. It also became relatively challenging to ensure the legibility of the written text and write a long text. More investigations should be followed as the technology will get more refined. This project could be inspirational for both professional practices and educational settings, such as typography, graphic design, and digital fabrication courses. As the outcome provides three-dimensional experience and substance, a new application of this design could be used for spatial typography and developed for people with vision impairment.
In order to truly understand how something works, you have to take it apart and put it back together again.
Dave Gottwald Assistant Professor University of Idaho
Reverse engineering has long been practiced in lab courses in computer science and high technology development. The concept is rather simple—in order to truly understand how something works, you have to take it apart and put it back together again.
In my introductory course in UI/UX design, students are assigned three projects which mimic a reverse engineering process. For Deconstruction they choose an existing mobile app, propose a conjectured user persona based on their own use, and then document user flows of interactive functionality, using their phones to capture every screen. Organizing these screens into flows facilitates a direct approach in understanding navigation, visual hierarchy, and functionality. In this students attempt to “map” the product and speculate on why certain design directions were taken. For Reconstruction students find an app to redesign. User interface and user experience are considered equally; deficits in both aesthetics and functionality are addressed. At this stage students move beyond speculation and begin to integrate actual research into the development of their product and user personas as they design screens and document user flows.
Finally, the last half of the term is devoted to their own unique app product. Construction builds on the first two projects, yet with a more thorough research and testing phase. Students are tasked with building a live prototype designed with industry-standard software and conduct formal user testing in a group setting. Ideation and development time for this final project is noticeably accelerated, as they’ve already undergone the process twice before. Mimicking a reverse engineering process also provides a detailed structural comprehension of interaction design. By approaching apps from the inside out, students report a greater understanding of their mobile devices as designed content systems, and they are better prepared for more advanced interaction projects.
A research project with the intent of understanding the parallels between chefs and designers
Nicholas Rock Assistant Professor Boston University
Design is present in visible and invisible ways in contemporary society such that the term “design” has permeated everyday language—resulting in a situation where everyone knows what design is and no one knows what design is. Design is becoming further integrated with business, and socio-economic demands require a constant pursuit of data and technological advances while leaving behind the personal and social side of those same topics. Design is altering our human experience under the illusion of increasing our connectedness.
We have begun an examination of how design can enable a return to more meaningful connections with people. Since design as a concept is becoming increasingly universal, we are looking at it through the lens of something as culturally ubiquitous as food. How can our relationship with food inform our relationship with design in society? How might we improve our approach to how we both practice and teach design by investigating practitioners of gastronomy and culinary arts?
Our studio began this research project with the intent of understanding the parallels between chefs and designers—hoping to learn from the creative process of chefs pushing the limits of their profession as a way of advancing our own. Through a series of interviews and collaborative experiences, we have held conversations with designers, architects, chefs, restauranteurs, food historians, and farmers to better understand both a historical and contemporary relationship between food, design, and culture. We encountered a shared philosophy of creating opportunities for human connection. Using this insight, we are forming new design methodologies and altering our approach to design education.
We need to reinforce our connection to each other as human beings. If we return to this as a core principle in design practice and education, then we can create new opportunities to bring people together instead of driving people apart.
