Author: Design Incubation

Re-Inscribing History

Yoonkyung Kim
Assistant Professor of Visual Communication
OU School of Visual Arts
University of Oklahoma

Most images and informational data from historical records and databases remain unseen because there is a massive over-saturation of visual material. This material has not been thoroughly investigated or understood.

Historical archives offer opportunities to discover stories that reposition history in more intimate terms. I explore what remains unseen by revealing new routes that these “facts” can take.

Exploring the boundaries between the public and the personal, I visit archival documents, public databases, and historical collections. Fascinated by their stories’ multifaceted nature, I critically examine these primary sources that nourish generations of new histories.

My intention is to redefine our relationship with controlled primary  sources. By creating new narrative structures, I expand the terms of the archives’ accessibility through personal encounters. The resulting works produce a new interpretation of history that links the past and present, disseminating stories that challenge the fate of most archives. Re-inscribing history helps viewers connect to historical details by offering them proximity to the primary source through my experience of various archives. My practice is specifically that of reconstruction; linking the past to my personal life.

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

Video Games Help to Prepare Girls For a Competitive Future In Stem

An analysis of how video games help to build visual-spatial skills and the positive influence early childhood gaming can have on girls.

Leigh Hughes
Adjunct Instructor
School of Visual Communication Design
Kent State University

Play is beneficial for children—it allows for freedom to explore and problem solve while freely using their imagination in a safe environment. It is imperative to allow girls this freedom to explore digital games and all of their possibilities. Video games help to build visual-spatial capabilities, which is the ability to mentally construct and organize 3-dimensional objects in an imaginary space, a skill that promotes advanced mathematical and engineering skills.

In order for women to compete in male dominated STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) industries, females must have more opportunities in early childhood to develop their visual-spatial skills. To do this, girls should play more video games, suggests a study by University of Toronto researchers. Research shows, most girls play with toys that emphasize relationships or creativity. In contrast, boys typically play with computers, video games or build, which develop problem-solving and spatial skills. There is considerable evidence that these gender differences are generated from nurture, not nature.

By designing video games that engage young, female interests while incorporating essential, 3D building tools, and by offering girls more opportunities to practice their visual-spatial skills through this media may begin to help close the STEM gender gap and encourage females to pursue engineering and computer science. Women’s representation in STEM occupations remains low in engineering and computer occupations. Video games can begin to slow this decline by providing girls with the confidence they need to succeed in the classroom.

In conclusion, early exposure to video games could have significant impact on whether women choose to pursue engineering or computer science. Girls need to be engaged at their level, be provided more opportunities to construct without restriction or bias and should be encouraged to play video games as a means of developing crucial competitive skills.

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

INPLACE: Innovative Plan for Leveraging Arts Through Community Engagement

Robert J. Thompson 
Assistant Professor
Graphic & Interactive Design
Department of Art
College of Creative Arts & Communications
Youngstown State University

Terry Schwarz 
Director
Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative
Kent State University

In 2015, the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation awarded the Department of Art in the College of Creative Arts & Communication at Youngstown State University with a $100,000 “Our Town” grant to fund arts engagement, cultural planning and design projects. Their programs support creative place-making projects that help to transform communities into lively, beautiful, and resilient places with the arts at their core.

The grant authors, Asst. Professor of Graphic Design, Leslie Brothers, Executive Director of the McDonough Museum of Art, and Dominic Marchionda, City-University Planner with Youngstown State University successfully proposed the “INPLACE” project, otherwise known as “Innovative Plan for Leveraging Arts through Community Engagement.” INPLACE came together over the course of three years through a unique blend of artists, designers, community stakeholders and civic leadership. It focuses planning initiatives and resources in targeted locations within city-in-revival Youngstown, Ohio to draw on the compounding effect of well-coordinated action and creative output. It is directed toward community driven public art projects that combine storytelling with art and design to create memorable, permanent place-making experiences throughout the city. The NEA chose only 64 of nearly 250 applications from across the nation for funding. INPLACE offers unique opportunities for members of Youngstown’s creative community to play an integral role in this prestigious NEA Our Town grant.

This presentation seeks to present the process of discovery, working with various constituencies within the Youngstown community, mentoring teams into cultivating meaningful, high-quality projects, share project proposals, and provide updates on the INPLACE project, which ends in July 2017.

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

Design Incubation Colloquium 3.3: Kent State University

Saturday, March 11, 2017
School of Visual Communication Design
Kent State University
Kent, OH 44242

Design Incubation is excited to announce our first excursion to the midwest.  We have been invited by Kent State University, School of Visual Communication Design to hold a day of design research presentations and discussion.

Saturday, March 11, 2017
10:30AM–4:30PM
School of Visual Communication Design
Kent State University
Kent, OH 44242

Visit back for more details. We are accepting abstract submissions now until February 18, 2017.

Hosted by
School of Visual Communication Design, Jessica Barness (jbarness@kent.edu) and Sanda Katila (skatila@kent.edu)

Venue

Cene Lecture Hall, Center for Architectural and Environmental Design, Kent State University.

This venue is across the street from the Kent State Hotel in downtown Kent, where there are also many restaurants, shops, bars, etc. Parking is available (campus lot, street, and downtown parking ramp).

Travel to Kent

Kent is located in the Cleveland-Akron metro area and is easily accessible from I-80 (Ohio Turnpike) and I-76. Two airports serve the area: Akron-Canton (CAK) and Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE).

Parking

Parking: Kent Central Gateway parking ramp ($5/day).

Directions to venue from parking: After exiting the parking ramp on foot, walk to the left and across Haymaker Parkway to the KSU campus gateway. Look for the large, brand new brick-and-glass building just ahead on the right – roughly 1 block. Entrance is at the far end of the building: Center for Architecture and Environmental Design (CAED).

Accommodations

The Kent State Hotel is located across the street from the colloquium venue. Contact the hosts for other accommodation recommendations in the area.

Schedule

10:15 Presenter setup

10:30 Introduction

10:45 Morning Presentations

Grafik Intervention: Sparking Urban Revitalization Efforts Through Graphic Design
Brit Rowe
Associate Professor of Art & Design
Department of Art & Design
Ohio Northern University

Re-Inscribing History
Yoonkyung Kim
Assistant Professor of Visual Communication
OU School of Visual Arts
University of Oklahoma

Hearing What Isn’t Said: Visualizing Non-Verbal Responses In Data Analysis
Sanda Katila
Associate Professor  
School of Visual Communication Design
Kent State University

Science Rules: Why Design Research Needs Scientific Research Classifications
Dennis Cheatham

Assistant Professor of Graphic
Design 
Graduate Director, Experience Design MFA 

Miami University

Framing Metaphors in Visual Identity Design
Jason E. Murdock

Undergraduate Instructor

School of Visual Communication Design

Kent State University

Evaluating a Socialization and Companionship Augmented Reality System
Yi-Fan Chen
Experience Design MFA candidate
Miami University

Video Games Help to Prepare Girls For a Competitive Future In Stem
Leigh Hughes
Adjunct Instructor
School of Visual Communication Design
Kent State University

11:45 Q&A / Discussion

12:30 Lunch in downtown Kent

1:45 Afternoon Presentations

Featured Presentation:

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

Presentations:

Uncovering Classical Painting Through Design Process and Artifacts
Zachary Winegardner

MFA Candidate 

Ohio State University

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

Reveal, Empower, Propel: Design Education for a Tenacious Community

Herb Vincent Peterson
Associate Professor of Design: Coordinator of Graphic Design
Co-Founder of Marion Design Co.
Division of Art + Design
Indiana Wesleyan University

Wendy Puffer
Assistant Professor: Coordinator of Design for Social Impact
Co-Founder of Marion Design Co.
Division of Art + Design
Indiana Wesleyan University

INPLACE: Innovative Plan for Leveraging Arts Through Community Engagement

Robert J. Thompson
Assistant Professor
Graphic & Interactive Design
Department of Art
College of Creative Arts & Communications
Youngstown State University

Terry Schwarz
Director
Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative
Kent State University

The Process Of Exploring the Next Urban Condition

Adam Fromme
MFA Candidate 
Department of Design
The Ohio State University

Participatory Design Research and Social Practice: Postcard Exchange as a Generative Design Research Tool for Eliciting Stories
Hemalatha Venkataraman
MFA Candidate
Design Research and Development
The Ohio State University

Two Implications of Action-Centric Interaction Design
Ian Bellomy
Assistant Professor Communication Design
Myron E. Ullman, Jr. School of Design
University of Cincinnati

Multi-modal Interface Design: Communicating Design Through  Presentation and Review
Peter Lusch
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
College of Arts and Architecture
Penn State

Danielle Oprean
Post-Doctoral Research Scholar
Stuckeman Center for Design Computing
Penn State

3:45 Q&A / Discussion

5:00 Drinks and conversation, location TBA in downtown Kent (optional)

Light Switch Graphically-Assisted Nudges

Niyati Mehta
Adjunct Lecturer
New York City College of Technology
Nassau Community College
Lehman College 

Aim

The aim of this nudge is to demonstrate how Visual Design combined with Behavioral Science can have a positive impact on user (kids’) behavior through the unknown creation of choice architecture. Parents told us that an often-encountered irritant was the necessity for them to remind their young children (aged 5-10) to switch off the light. We took this cue to develop a nudge to encourage children to use the light switch when leaving a room. The aim of this nudge is to reduce electricity consumption to save money, promote the practice of sustainability and to mitigate parental stress.

Description and Development

The graphically-assisted nudge developed is a cutout template that is printed on a home computer printer and then affixed to a light switch plate. Parents access the graphically-assisted nudges via the Nudging for Kids website (nudgingforkids.com). Step by step instructions are included in the downloadable pdf package.

In the ‘fish and bowl’ template, children understand that the fish is, “out of place” and they want to help it get back to where it belongs (the fish bowl). Two alternate templates were developed using ‘basketball’ and ‘bug’ motifs. The bug motif, uses the “cognitive learning effect” where the child remembers to switch off the light by associating it with the bug’s color or a name it has given the bug. The basketball template, with its requirement to pull down the string holding the basketball, uses a child’s desire to explore and understand by exercising her/his manual skills.

The nudges also take advantage of the, “IKEA Effect”–the tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on objects that they have partially assembled themselves (regardless of the quality of the result).

Preliminary Small Sample Size Try-Out

In an initial proof-of-concept try-out, all three graphic nudges were installed in ten homes near Westchester, New York (USA) in December of 2016.

The preliminary results are promising, but the sample size is too small to draw conclusions.

A larger sample size test is in the planning stage.

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

Data Visualization Research: How It Informs Design and Visual Thinking

Joshua Korenblat
Assistant Professor, Graphic Design
SUNY New Paltz

Design research aligns with the process of researching a data visualization project. Data visualization maps numbers to visual variables; many design projects, meanwhile, have concerns other than numbers and statistics. Yet the research process that contributes to a sound data visualization can offer valuable insights into visual thinking and storytelling. Data visualization is the end result of data analytics, an exploratory process that cultivates a mindset familiar to designers.

Curiosity guides this mindset: observational, descriptive methods allow the creator to understand a topic from multiple angles, ultimately honing clarity in communicating an idea. The process might at times proceed from details to a big picture; other times, from a big picture to details. This data analytics mindset dovetails with emergent processes in design thinking. In both processes, small sprints often yield results more optimal than a grand master plan.

Data analytics involves spatial visual thinking skills that designers—all of whom work with points, lines, planes, and color—have the ability to understand. One of the leading visualization packages for the open source statistic package R is called the “grammar of graphics,” akin to verbal and visual language. I will use an accessible information graphic that compares Presidential biographies at the time of first election. This case study will detail how the analytic process conducts along a circular track: gathering data, structuring it, finding an insight, and visualizing that insight in a memorable, authentic, and persuasive way for a specific audience. Designers, and designers interested in storytelling, can identify familiar experiences at each step of the process. For designers who have yet to work in data analytics and visualization, accessible methods of sketching with data can exercise observational skills and visual thinking processes that propel many design and teaching practices—even those unconcerned with data visualization as the end result.

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

Colloquium 3.3: Kent State University Call for Submissions

Kent State University, in the Kent, Ohio will be hosting a Design Incubation Colloquium. Abstract submission deadline February 18, 2017.

Kent State University, in the Kent, Ohio will be hosting a Design Incubation Colloquium on Saturday, March 11, 2017. All are welcome to attend. Details and agenda can be found on the Colloquium 3.3: Kent State University page.
We are accepting abstract submissions for presentations. Abstract submission deadline: February 18, 2017.

We invite designers—practitioners and educators—to submit abstracts of design research.  Presentations are limited to 6 minutes + 4 minutes for questions.
For more details, see the Submission Process description.

Email 300 word abstract to submissions@designincubation.com.  Questions can be directed to info@designincubation.com.

Please RSVP@designincubation.com if you plan on attending. Space is limited.

Hearing What Isn’t Said: Visualizing Non-Verbal Responses In Data Analysis

Sanda Katila
Associate Professor
School of Visual Communication Design
Kent State University

Evidence suggests that people ages 60 and over take at least five different medications daily for distinct health issues, and that subsequent drug interactions create significant health problems. Secondary research shows that few patients can define the phrase, “drug interaction”. Despite this, little is written about what patients understand about drug interactions, and what is written lacks valuable data contributed by patients through nonverbal cues.

This paper examines the process of seeing patients’ nonverbal communication by visually mapping data, and suggests that mapping allows designers to look at data in fresh ways, which will ultimately open doors to further research in the area of drug interactions in an aging population. Visual theorist Johanna Drucker states that, “A basic distinction can be made between visualizations that are representations of information already known and those that are knowledge generators, capable of creating new information through their use.” (Drucker 2014, 65) Such design-generated knowledge has the potential to move the needle toward the reduction of harmful drug interactions.

The mapping process in this research specifically highlights connections between researchers’ questions and patients’ nonverbal responses. 13 non-verbal responses such as confidence, laughs, questioning, pause or deep breath, flat tone, etc. were coded to 31 questions to see if there are correlations between nonverbal responses and answers. Designers then, through visualizing these connections, may provide valuable new pathways in examining the qualitative research. More broadly, this paper will demonstrate the kind of value that designers can bring to qualitative research across a spectrum of data-rich fields.

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

Required Reading: A List Compiled by AIGA DEC & Design Observer

Here is a great list of must reads for anyone keeping up with design research and studies…

http://designobserver.com/feature/required-reading/39497

 

Design Crew Course: Human Context and Service Learning in Visual Communication

Mark DeYoung
Professor
Kalamazoo Valley CC

In Rick Poynor’s book on Jan Van toorn, the author lays out the designer’s philosophy for a more inclusive dialogic approach to design. Rather than authoritarian monologue, this re-envisioning of design respects the viewer, encourages collaboration and is dialogic, in pursuit of what German author Hans Magnus Enzensberger would call emancipatory media. This approach is gaining ground in design practice. Indeed, collaborative, iterative processes are increasingly employed in order to develop more complete solutions that are integrative in their approach, taking into account user, client, and community. Design scholars from Davis to Norman, McCoy to Heller, along with industry champions Martin and Brown continue to advocate for a people-focused approach to design through design thinking—coordinating cognitive collaboration with practical facility to solve problems.

Working in this direction, this paper reflects on the pedagogical and theoretical underpinnings of a media-independent, visual communications course, Design Crew. The Design Crew is a merit-based, advanced-level design course that provides students with the opportunity to work with real clients in the non-profit sector. The course engages students through an experiential learning method, integrating meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich and deepen the learning experience in design, encourage lifelong civic engagement and strengthen relationships that create community. Student designers use design thinking processes as they collaborate with their clients: researching and defining the problem; choosing appropriate media and prototyping solutions; developing final designs and evaluating the success of the solution. Successes and challenges of collborations and design projects are featured.

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