Author: Design Incubation

Not Just Playing Around: Game Design In The Interaction Design Classroom

Liese Zahabi
Assistant Professor of Graphic/Interaction Design
University of Maryland, College Park

The act of play is key in the art and science of Interaction Design. A sense of fun, wonder, and the unexpected help shape the games we interact with on our computers and phones, but also the interfaces we wouldn’t associate with games: working out with Fitbit, learning code with CodeAcademy, managing our money with Mint. By utilizing principles from games, designers can help motivate, engage, and teach users.

This presentation will highlight the work of graphic design students across two separate semesters. As part of an Advanced Interactive Design class, students were charged with designing, prototyping and play-testing games. Students chose a topic and target audience, and conducted initial research to help build the concept and content for the final game prototype. The students conducted play-testing to help them shape and revise their game designs, and had five weeks to complete the project. The resulting games ranged from phone and iPad apps to board games and card games. Students explored a myriad of topics: endangered animals, Crohn’s Disease, alternative energy, humility, empathy, packing gear for a music gig, constellations, and many others.

Engaging students with games has achieved many positive outcomes, often enabling them to understand the material, and the design process, more deeply. A sense of fun and exploratory play permeates the classroom, energizing students and encouraging true collaboration: you need players to play games, so students enlist each other for that purpose. Games are also little worlds—suggesting systems-based structures, the creation of rational rule sets, and demanding a focus on both design details and overall game experiences. Asking students to build and design games allows them to explore all these aspects in a contained and creative way, and helps to make them better designers and thinkers.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.2: Parsons Integrated Design on Thursday, Feb 16, 2017.

Grafik Intervention: Sparking Urban Revitalization Efforts Through Graphic Design

Brit Rowe
Associate Professor of Art & Design
Department of Art & Design
Ohio Northern University

How can graphic designers use their skills and knowledge to draw attention to—and invoke a solution to—the problem of urban decay? How can they take responsibility and help rehabilitate those wounded environments?

Buildings that sit vacant for one or more years can become eyesores in any community and even bring down the value of properties surrounding them. In some situations, it is too costly to rehabilitate these spaces, causing developers to avoid them and leaving them susceptible to blight. This presentation discusses how students in a senior level graphic design course designed a Grafik Intervention to bring awareness to an underutilized building and to inspire community members to consider the potential the building held.

The Grafik Intervention is an open source project that identifies a site based on its underutilized urban space and potential for revitalization. The building is carefully selected based on its notable history and location. Along with the digital projections during the event, an historical exhibit was created to emphasize the significance of the building. The goal was to engage the public through visually dynamic and compelling communication methods. The projections were created to provide historical information in an urban context on the building after dark. Through the use of projected visuals and real-time discussions, printed questionnaires were used to elicit information from the general public as they walked or drove by the case study building.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.3: Kent State University on Saturday, March 11, 2017.

Teaching Design in the Age of Convergence

Robin Landa  
Distinguished Professor
Michael Graves College, Kean University  

To help people master Canon’s capabilities, 360i in partnership with Canon “set out to create a classroom experience in the field.” With Canon Photo Coach, 360i helped photo enthusiasts take the kind of photos they hoped for. 360i “used social listening to find New York City’s most photographed areas and then placed billboards right where people were taking those photos.” They created smart billboards—digital screens and trucks equipped with giant monitors that tapped into API data such as light, weather, time, traffic, location and events—giving real-time tips to photographers right when they needed them. This solution is neither conventional advertising nor graphic design.

Interactive public screens. Mobile design. Social media design. Environmental experiences. From any consumer’s point of view, brand experiences have been converging. However some design courses remain in pre-digital era silos.

Moira Cullen, Coca-Cola’s former design director, once said our profession could no longer tolerate thinking in silos. Yet we’re still divided in departments, in the classroom, and in our own brains. Contemporary visual communication problems demand new types of pedagogy.

To effectively address dealing with this convergence, I have been abolishing graphic design and advertising categories (and some conventions) in the classroom. Getting my students to think of visual communication as value-added experiences is my approach. I do this by asking students to consider the following questions when critiquing their own concepts.

  • What benefit does your concept offer people?
  • Is there any social good you can promote while promoting a brand?
  • Can a design or advertising solution be in the form of entertainment, a product, service, or utility?

As a result, my students have secured coveted internships and jobs with New York City agencies and studios. It’s time to embrace integrated ways to teach in the age of convergence.

 

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.2: Parsons Integrated Design on Thursday, Feb 16, 2017.

Addressing Racial Disparity in Design Education

Audra Buck-Coleman
Associate Professor
Graphic Design Program Director
University of Maryland College Park

How do you engage undergraduates in complex, conflict-ridden issues such as social injustice, racism and police brutality? How can these students co-design meaningful objects and messages around such topics that resonate with its stakeholders and community members? Finally, how can you know if these efforts have been productive and successful? BMORE Than The Story offers one case study of how to answer these questions.

In April 2015, the death of Freddie Gray and his treatment by police sparked anger, protests and violence in Baltimore. People from President Obama to the mayor of Baltimore to countless others called the protesters “thugs” and strongly denounced the Uprising and the destruction taking place. The overriding media narrative was pejorative and full of scorn. West Baltimore schools and their students, including those at nearby Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts (AFSIVA), a public high school, were implicated in the crime and destruction whether they committed it or not. These students lost control of how they wanted to be defined and regarded.

BMORE Than The Story brought together AFSIVA students and graphic design seniors at University of Maryland College Park to co-design an exhibit that would address critical issues in their community: racial disparities, identity, disenfranchisement, equity, oppression, policing and self-agency. The students reclaimed their narrative and voiced counterpoints to the previous year’s one-sided media portrayal. The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History in Culture in Baltimore, a Smithsonian affiliate, hosted the exhibit April through September 2016.

In addition, project authors incorporated qualitative and quantitative research to assess the project’s effectiveness. Results showed the high school students were empowered by the project and deemed the exhibit highly successful. Lessons include ways to engage students on difficult topics as well as ways to measure the effectiveness of such a project.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.2: Parsons Integrated Design on Thursday, Feb 16, 2017.

The Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2017

Awards in Scholarship: Published Research, Scholarship: Creative Work, Teaching, Service. Sponsored by Bloomsbury Publishing.

Design Incubation Communication Design Educators Awards 2017 is a competition. We offer recognition in 4 academic categories in the field of Communication Design:

  • Scholarship: Published Research
  • Scholarship: Creative Work (design research, creative production, and/or professional practice)
  • Teaching
  • Service  (departmental, institutional, community)

The purpose of these awards is to showcase design excellence and ingenuity in the academic study of design. We are excited to announce a partnership with Bloomsbury Publishing who are sponsoring this year’s awards.

Entries will be accepted starting March 1, 2017. Deadline is May 31, 2017. Complete the online entry form here.

Category: Scholarship Creative Work

Portraits of Obama: Media, Fidelity, and the 44th President
Scholarship: Creative Work Award Winner

Kareem Collie

Lecturer

Harvey Mudd

Stanford University

Category: Scholarship Published Research

Critical Making: Design and the Digital Humanities
Scholarship: Published Research Award Winner

Jessica Barness

Associate Professor
Kent State University


Amy Papaelias

Assistant Professor
SUNY New Paltz

Category: Service

The Sit&Tell Project
Service Award Winner

Jenn Stucker
Associate Professor
Bowling Green State University

Category: Teaching

BMORE Than The Story
Teaching Award Winner

Audra Buck-Coleman
Associate Professor

University of Maryland College Park

 

White Plains Storefront Project: Art In Vacant Spaces
Teaching Award Runner-up

Warren Lehrer

Professor
School of Art+Design
Purchase College, SUNY
Founding Faculty Member
Designer as Author Graduate Program
SVA (School of Visual Arts)

 

Science Through Storybooks
Teaching Award Runner-up

Martha Carothers

Professor

University of Delaware

Jurors

Audrey Bennett
Professor
Communication and Media
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Steven McCarthy (Chair)
Professor of Graphic Design
University of Minnesota

Emily McVarish
Associate Professor
Graphic Design; Design; Writing
California College of Art

Maria Rogal
Professor of Graphic Design
University of Florida

David Shields
Associate Professor & Chair of Department of Graphic Design
Virginia Commonwealth University

For details on how to enter, go to the Awards Application Process page.

Announcement of Awards

The awards will be announced the first week of September 2017.

Citizen! Designer! Now!

A town hall style panel discussion about design’s role in the Trump Era. Sponsored and hosted by AIGA/NY and Parsons.

@Parsons Lecture Series Presents Citizen! Designer! Now!

A town hall style panel discussion about design’s role in the Trump Era. Sponsored and hosted by AIGA/NY and Parsons.

For more details visit: http://aigany.org/event/citizen-designer-now/

Friday, 2 December 2016
5:30–8:00 pm
Parsons
Starr Foundation Hall, Room UL102
63 5th Avenue

Teaching Type: A Panel Conversation on Typography Education

Educators will discuss innovations, challenges and best practices for teaching typography.

As a mainstay of design, typography is a corner stone of most degree programs in visual communication design. Still questions abound. How and where typography is taught is as varied as its use in design applications. We invite you to join fellow educators in a conversation which will focus on how, where and when we teach typography. Our panelists will explore the role of typography in the continuum of design education and identify areas where traditional programs experience shortcomings and challenges. We will ask what fundamental skills should be taught and whether the way we are teaching typography needs to change in a screen-based world? Finally, we will ask the audience to participate in identifying specific skill sets and methodologies which should be part of type-centric design curriculum in the 21st Century.

The conversation will be moderated by Doug Clouse, President of TDC and Principal at The Graphics Office and Liz DeLuna, Associate Professor of Design at St. John’s University.

Type Directors Club
347 West 36th Street
Suite 603
New York, NY 10018

Saturday, April 1, 2017
2pm–5pm

Moderators

Liz DeLuna
Associate Professor of Design
St. John’s University

Doug Clouse
President, Type Directors Club
Principal, The Graphics Office

Panelists

Thomas Jockin
Founder of TypeThursday
Adjunct Professor
Queen’s College, CUNY
and Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY

Amy Papaelias
Assistant Professor
Graphic Design
SUNY New Paltz
Co-founder of Alphabettes.org

John Gambell
Senior Critic
Yale School of Art
Yale University Printer

Juliette Cezzar
Designer, Writer
Assistant Professor
Communication Design
Parsons School of Design, The New School

Hosted by the Type Directors Club.

Place Into Words: An Unconventional Approach To Communicating The Story of Human Space Flight

Alan Walker
MFA Candidate & Adjunct Instructor
School of Visual Communication Design
Kent State University

Alex Catanese
MFA Candidate & Adjunct Instructor
School of Visual Communication Design
Kent State University

Jordan Kauffman
MFA Candidate & Adjunct Instructor
School of Visual Communication Design
Kent State University

Many of us have experienced moments where we can’t help but stop. We slow down to take in our surroundings; the single sliver of orange hanging onto the end of a sunset, or the subtle shift in colors on a lush rolling countryside. It’s hard to describe or identify why these locations express beauty, but they move us all the same. Place Into Words challenges viewers to imagine Mars, a planet often characterized as desolate and barren, as beautiful terrain. One day future generations may know nothing other than Mars’s vast canyons or sheer volcanos. Could a distant planet offer their most beautiful place?

Place Into Words was originally produced as a part of Kent State University’s School of Visual Communication Design MFA exhi bit, inspired by NASA’s O rion program, titled Survey’s: A Design Exhibition Immersed In The Journey Between Earth and Mars. The exhibit was backed by a semester long research process of secondary and primary methods, including interviews with NASA personnel and a visit to The Glenn Research Center.

Visitors to the exhibit were met with a 20ft projection collaging archival NASA footage and landscape photography of Earth and Mars, combined with documentary style audio of ordinary people’s responses to what they consider their most beautiful place. Visitors were also encouraged to participate by typing a response into the projection display. The installation created a distinct space in hopes to provoke and stir a sense of curiosity and wonder surrounding space travel.

This presentation will include insights gained through the process of research and creation. In addition, designers will present the companion Place Into Words online interface and screen a preview of the video component. Attendees will gain a broader understanding of how speculative design might be applied to experimental installations.

Link To Video/Live Site:
http://weareletters.co/mars/

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.3: Kent State University on Saturday, March 11, 2017.

Fusing Hand and Hi-Tech for Hi-Touch

Denise Anderson
Assistant Professor
Robert Busch School of Design
Kean University

Edward Johnston
Assistant Professor
Robert Busch School of Design
Kean University

Graphic design academic programs must respond to contemporary society’s relentlessly growing need for digitally designed solutions.  According to the Creative Group’s 2017 Salary Guide, starting salaries will increase this year by more than 5% for visual designers and more than 6% for mobile and UX designers.  This poses a challenge to design educators, whose students necessarily embrace an ever-changing array of technical solutions, which can lead to distraction, stress, and loss of creativity.  Surrounded by multiple devices that inhibit their creative workflow, students are relentlessly tempted to multitask, which can decrease productivity and increase stress, according to recent studies.   “Highly physiologically arousing emotions associated with stress” rouse our instinct “to stay away from excitement and seek comfort instead,” depressing, rather than fostering, creative thinking.

Two ways to provide much-needed relief are drawing and listening to music.  As discussed by Robin Landa in a recent HOW article, “Drawing allows you to disappear into the act of creation,” and “sustained focus while drawing acts to quiet any internal noise.”  Dedicated sketching sessions can enable a designer to focus on growing a concept without the noise of multitasking.  The second, listening to music—especially beloved music—is a proven and well-documented way to relax mind and body, slow heart rate, lower blood pressure, and decrease stress hormone levels.

Student Marc Rosario has created a mobile app experience (currently at the designed prototyping phase) that aims to combine these two stress-releasing options to increase creativity.  “Sharpen” boosts creativity through drawing, sketching, and listening to music.  Brainstorming an idea within the timeframe of a song, users can take pictures of their process, upload the work to Sharpen or other social media channels, and share or solicit feedback of their work.

This presentation provides a two-pronged approach to this challenge of fostering creativity while responding to industry needs.  It focuses on the curricular value of fusing “hand” skills outside 
of the computer (focused sketching, research, user testing, surveys, written reflections, and 
brand development) with “hi-tech” digital design (brand identity, mobile design, and prototyping).

Also, it explores, through example, the “hi-touch” results of that fusion, using Marc’s app prototyping project, which celebrates hand skills and entices young people to draw and sketch more frequently.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.2: Parsons Integrated Design on Thursday, Feb 16, 2017.

Critical Practices as Design Scholarship: Strategies and Opportunities

Jessica Barness
Assistant Professor
School of Visual Communication Design
Kent State University

Steven McCarthy
Professor
College of Design
University of Minnesota

Conventional academic scholarship typically involves publishing one’s research findings in journals and books, or in the arts, performing or exhibiting creative work. Design straddles these worlds and adds its own cultural norms, such as industry competitions that seek the commercial work of professional practitioners, or the fine arts tradition with its emphasis on gallery shows. Design scholarship, whether written or visual, does not always fit these models: How might design faculty approach the dissemination of creative work that is neither client-based nor fine art?

Over the past decade, another path to knowledge formation and scholarly productivity has emerged: critical making. Involving a speculative approach to design (experimental, future-oriented, expressive), critical making combines an authorial point-of-view with the tangible aspects of media, technology, materials and process. Critical making is experiential and uses design to create knowledge across disciplines.

Through critical making, some design faculty have found diverse scholarly venues to share their creative and intellectual work. These dissemination venues often take their cues from other disciplinary cultures like the humanities, the arts, science, engineering and business, and can include publications, exhibitions, performances, and conferences. These venues can be an advantage to design scholars as they are already generally recognized and legitimized by academic culture. However, faculty may not fully understand the opportunities for an enhanced, rigorous approach to scholarship – a strategic integration of making and writing – that moves beyond industry practice and fine arts traditions yet remains distinctly relevant to the design discipline.

Considerations of this presentation will include faculty effort, the scholarly product, the selection process, dissemination venues, scope (local, regional, national, international), and the resulting impact. The challenges in assessing interdisciplinary work and the roles in collaborative projects will be discussed, as will the implications for tenure and promotion.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.3: Kent State University on Saturday, March 11, 2017.