Author: Design Incubation

The Empathy Points Method: Integrating Identity and Bias Recognition Into Design Education

Leveraging the diverse experiences of design teams.

Andrea Hempstead
Associate Professor
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

This presentation reviews practical tools and methods for guiding students through an understanding of identity and bias definitions and connecting these concepts to the design process. Delivered in a workshop format, the approach combines identity reflection with design methods that foreground empathy and critical awareness. A central focus is the Empathy Points method, which challenges conventional assumptions about empathy in design. This method argues that genuine empathy requires shared lived experiences, applying this idea through the identification of overlapping social identity traits between designers and users. By leveraging the diverse experiences of design teams, group members can establish more authentic connections with users and increased inclusive solutions, particularly in contexts where students lack direct access to end users.

The workshop also emphasizes how implicit bias shapes design interpretations. Participants are guided through an examination of their biases in relation to their social identities. They assess how these align or diverge from user identities and connect the impact of user identities to the design problem. The process concludes with creating a strategic plan, by using team empathy points effectively while continuously checking for bias throughout the design process. Workshop outcomes will be revealed via classroom examples, results, and student reflection.

The integration of identity, empathy, and bias into design education equips students with tools to critically engage with users’ perspectives while remaining mindful of their own positionalities. By framing empathy as relational and grounded in shared experience, the Empathy Points method expands the potential for inclusive and socially responsive design practices.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 12.2: Annual CAA Conference 2026 (In-person only) on Thursday, February 19, 2026.

m(other)ing: Creating Design Research Space for Work on Parenting and Reproductive Journeys

New frameworks within design scholarship that validate personal, embodied, and politically entangled perspectives.

Meaghan Dee
Associate Professor
Virginia Tech

Bree McMahon
Associate Professor
University of Arkansas

Design research has historically marginalized work connected to motherhood, reproductive health, and the lived experiences of womb-bearing and caregiving bodies, due in part to cultural stigma, institutional disinterest, and limited venues for scholarly dissemination. Yet these issues are central to human experience and deserve academic attention, especially within a field centered on systems, communication, and care.

This presentation introduces m(other)ing, a research and curatorial initiative that explores the potential of design to foreground reproductive experiences—from infertility and pregnancy to transgender and non-binary parenting, and the choice to live childfree. Motivated by the growing urgency of these topics,—this work advocates for new frameworks within design scholarship that validate personal, embodied, and politically entangled perspectives.

We will share curatorial outcomes from two exhibitions at Virginia Tech and James Madison University, including posters, zines, digital platforms, and speculative systems submitted by designers responding to reproductive justice and parenting. Through this body of work, we ask: How can design research expand to include projects that emerge from personal reproductive narratives? What methodologies and systems are needed to share and document this work ethically and in a care-centered way?

By positioning m(other)ing as both a scholarly platform and community-building effort, this presentation argues for expanding the scope of what counts as design research. We aim to spark dialogue on how design can bear witness to, and intervene in, the most intimate and contested aspects of contemporary life, and recognize designers and researchers as their whole selves.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 12.2: Annual CAA Conference 2026 (In-person only) on Thursday, February 19, 2026.

The Significant Others: Women’s Contributions to the Private Press Movement

A pivotal role in shaping typography and fine printing as works of art in the 20th century.

Maria Smith Bohannon
Associate Professor
Oakland University

This paper argues that in the early twentieth century, American women played a critical role in shaping the material output and aesthetics of the Private Press movement, which built upon the Arts and Crafts movement and the ethos of William Morris’ Kelmscott Press to reject mass printing in favor of handcraft, high-quality materials, artistic layout, and limited-edition books. Women in the field did it all—typesetting, page layout, proofing, printing, and day-to-day operations—yet, like the legacies of women in the history of typography and book arts more generally, their work is often overshadowed by the eminence of the men with whom they worked. This presentation draws on physical and digital archival artifacts, period articles, and rare books to show how Bertha Goudy (1869-1935) of The Village Press, among others, played a pivotal role in shaping typography and fine printing as works of art in the 20th century. By looking at the professional life of Goudy and other women in the Private Press Movement, their work, and their labor practices, and centering them as authorial rather than peripheral, this paper offers an expanded discussion on women who influenced fine printing, book design, typesetting, and typography—and a few of the women at its core. Analyzing historical and cultural context, this paper contributes to contemporary efforts to diversify and expand design history.

image credit: Goudy Collection Broadside #115, Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 12.2: Annual CAA Conference 2026 (In-person only) on Thursday, February 19, 2026.

Design Incubation Colloquium 12.2: Annual CAA Conference 2026 (In-person only)

Presentations and discussion in Research and Scholarship in Communication Design at the 114th Annual CAA Conference 2026

Thursday, February 19, 2026
4:30PM – 6:00PM CST
Hilton Chicago – Lower Level
Salon C-6

Recent research in Communication Design. Presentations of unique, significant creative work, design education, practice of design, case studies, contemporary practice, new technologies, methods, and design research. A moderated discussion will follow the series of presentations.

The colloquium session is open to all conference attendees. Be sure to watch the online video presentations before attending this event.

CHAIRS

Cat Normoyle
East Carolina University

Heather Snyder Quinn
DePaul University

Camila Afanador-Llach
Florida Atlantic University

Discussants

Anne Hostetler Berry
University of Illinois Chicago

Jessica Meharry
DePaul University

PRESENTATIONS

The Significant Others: Women’s Contributions to the Private Press Movement
Maria Smith Bohannon
Associate Professor
Oakland University

m(other)ing: Creating Design Research Space for Work on Parenting and Reproductive Journeys
Meaghan Dee
Associate Professor
Virginia Tech

Bree McMahon
Associate Professor
University of Arkansas

The Empathy Points Method: Integrating Identity and Bias Recognition Into Design Education
Andrea Hempstead
Associate Professor
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

Shearing Layers: A Framework for Reframing Contemporary Graphic Design Education
Jarrett Fuller
Assistant Professor
NC State University

Typographic Thresholds: Addressing Climate Urgency
Megan Irwin
Assistant Professor
Washington University in St. Louis

Invisible Nightlife Review: Teaching Fiction as Design Practice
Nika Simovich Fisher
Assistant Professor
Parsons / The New School for Design

Backward by Design: Reframing AI Literacy through Systems Thinking and Critique Pedagogy
Lingyi Kong
Adjunct Professor
Parsons School of Design

Giving Tuesday 2025

Since 2014, we have been serving the community to further the field of research in communication design and related disciplines. Please consider a donation.

Writing Groups for Design Researchers and Academics

Join a community of design writers and academics.

Spring 2026 Design Writing Groups

Accountability • Community • Support

Get ahead on your new writing project or finally finish your ongoing one!

Apply to be part of a Spring 2026 Design Writing Group.

Participants meet biweekly throughout the Spring semester to build community and infrastructure around their writing practice. 

Applications will be accepted until December 1st.

For more information and how to apply: https://writingspacechi.com/design-writing-groups

2026 Design Writing Fellowship

A program for design researchers, authors, and academics.

Do you have an idea for a book? Are you interested in turning your teaching innovation into a publishable article in an academic journal? Are you a new design writer trying to figure out where to publish first? 

The Design Writing Fellowship (formerly the Design Incubation Fellowship Program) has three tracks: Books, Articles and Reviews. Participants take part in a 3-day virtual writing workshop, during which they receive feedback, learn about the publishing process, and commit to working on their writing projects for 3-6 months. Applications will be accepted until December 1st. The Fellowship Workshop will be held May 27th-29th, 2026.

For more information and how to apply: https://writingspacechi.com/design-writing-fellowship

Born Digital: Fresh Attempts around Typography Courses for Students Today

A case study of first-year type.

Jialun Wang
Assistant Professor
Otis College of Art and Design

Eager Zhang
Assistant Professor
Otis College of Art and Design

What should the first year of typography class look like in art school today, when the students sitting in the classroom grow up in the screen-dominated era? This keynote presentation unfolded a pedagogical conversation between the two presenters, across their multiple years of teaching studio typography courses at Otis College of Art and Design and other institutes. Deeply inspired by the mutation from traditional printmaking to digital display in the type and design industry, the talk shares original assignments that we found innovative and unseen previously, along with students’ outcome, to build an emerging speculative pedagogy for the fellow type educators.

The assignment sequence begins with Pushing Pixels, a hands-on, analog typography workshop that introduces the notion of “legibility” through an origin of game UI. Students are required to design legible letterforms from low-resolution to high-resolution pushing the limit of legibility and investigating the balance of mathematical structure and visual intuition. It leads to a more integrated project later in the semester: Typo-e-ology, which will yield two typographic components: a 2D “encyclopedia page” and a 3D “still life”. The project stages a critical encounter between multiple tensions of contemporary life: craftsmanship versus software, individual narratives versus consumer culture, and consciousness versus artificial intelligence.

Rooted at Otis College of Art and Design, we aim to push the boundaries of teaching typography by introducing more digital perspectives—integrating cross-reality and embodied experiences such as AR and VR—while leading workshops and lectures at institutions including NYU, USC, Harvard University, The Cooper Union, and more. Our talk invites audiences to consider key questions: How can typography be taught with an awareness of both humanity and technology? How can students be encouraged to push typography beyond flatness to engage with a rapidly accelerating world?

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 12.1: Virtual Online on Friday, November 14, 2025.

The Keywork: Using AI for Insight, Not Replacement, in Creative Practice

The ethical use of artificial intelligence.

RJ Thompson
Associate Professor
University of Pittsburg

The rapid evolution of generative AI has reshaped professional practice in marketing, communications, and design, introducing both opportunities for efficiency and challenges of adaptation. While organizations increasingly adopt AI—55% already using it for marketing and communications according to Gartner—many professionals encounter decision and adaptation paralysis amid an overwhelming number of tools and pressures to “adapt or perish.” This presentation argues that the essential question is not whether AI can increase the quantity or incremental quality of creative work, but rather how it can sustain and expand human creativity in meaningful ways.

Our inquiry centers on divergent thinking as a method for transforming AI outputs into catalysts for original work. Techniques such as inverting AI-generated story beats, reframing prompts into yes/no pathways, and intentionally opposing machine-suggested structures create conditions for unique, non-homogenous outcomes. These approaches resist the creeping uniformity of AI-produced content, which risks reducing professional output to predictable patterns and disengaging audiences.

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To ground these concepts, we present The Keywork, a project conducted by the University of Pittsburgh’s Health Sciences Strategic Communications team. Leveraging ChatGPT for qualitative data analysis, the project processed five years of institutional content to identify brand pillars and generate insights that freed capacity for human-centered creativity. Here, AI served not as a replacement but as an amplifier—streamlining analysis so designers and communicators could focus on innovation, resonance, and impact.

Our findings suggest that the key to thriving with AI is to treat it as an interpretive and analytical partner, not a creative substitute. By adopting divergent thinking practices and positioning AI as a tool for inspiration and capacity optimization, creative professionals can ensure that their work remains unique, resonant, and enduring in an increasingly AI-saturated landscape.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 12.1: Virtual Online on Friday, November 14, 2025.

Make, Print, Share: Collective Learning Through Risograph Printing 

Finding ways to make design learning more tactile, experimental, and accessible.

Kyla Paolucci
Assistant Professor
St. John’s University

Vic Rodriguez Tang
Assistant Professor
Texas State University

Motivation/Problem/Opportunity 

Risograph printing is having a moment. As a technology-based duplication process—often compared to a hybrid of screen printing and photocopying—it is recognized for its vibrant colors, layered textures, and presence in independent publishing and community printshops. While Riso is often celebrated as a trendy or aesthetic tool within design and art contexts, its pedagogical potential remains underexplored. There is an opportunity to frame Riso as a low-stakes, accessible teaching method that fosters technical literacy, collaboration, and community connection. Risograph printing can serve as an entry point into creative-related careers for students with little to no prior experience in art or design technologies. By offering a process-oriented environment where curiosity is enough to begin, Riso broadens participation in creative practice and helps learners reimagine design through experimentation and collective making. 

Thesis 

This project argues that constraint-driven, prompt-based Risograph printing can function as a model for pedagogy by combining technical skill-building, collaborative practice, and community engagement while moving beyond trend-based or perfection-oriented applications. 

Approach/Methodology 

Two educators respond to the same prompts—printing on black paper, executing a four-color separation, or working exclusively on the flatbed—without sharing approaches in advance. The paired responses form a prompt-based archive including prints, prompts, and reflections on similarities, differences, and lessons learned. Over time, this archive evolves into a toolkit of adaptable prompts for classrooms and community workshops, framing Riso printing as both teaching and research practice. 

Results/Outcomes/Analysis 

Unlike short-term workshops, this project cultivates a sustained, evolving body of work that operates as both practice and pedagogy. Outcomes include collaborative prints, adaptable exercises, and a reflective zine compiling process documentation. The project demonstrates how structured experimentation can reduce gatekeeping, promote curiosity, and support equitable access to design education.

Conclusion 

This project reframes Riso as a tool for approachable experimentation and shared authorship, showing how analog technologies can support creativity, inclusion, and critical reflection in design pedagogy.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 12.1: Virtual Online on Friday, November 14, 2025.