An Affiliated Society Meeting at the CAA 113th Annual Conference
Affiliated Society Meeting at the CAA 113th Annual Conference, New York City
Friday, February 14, 2025 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM New York Hilton Midtown – 2nd Floor – Murray Hill West
This is a hybrid event. Attendance is free to anyone in person. (No conference fee is required.) To attend virtually, complete the form below to receive details for the virtual login.
Join Design Incubation for a workshop on Writing an Academic Abstract. We will provide examples, recommendations, best practices, and ideas on crafting a written synopsis of your communication design research for submission to conferences, journals, invited lectures, grant and book proposals.
Please complete the form and let us know how we can facilitate your academic abstract writing efforts. This event is suited for junior faculty new to research and publication. It is also an opportunity for senior faculty to discover community and feedback on their scholarly endeavors.
Strong positive correlations between students’ comfort with technology, its perceived importance for skill development, and overall satisfaction with the learning environment.
Danilo Bojić Associate Professor Winona State University
This proposal examines the effects of technology integration on skill development and student satisfaction in undergraduate design education, guided by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DoIT). It aims to clarify how digital tools enhance design competencies and learning experiences.
Two primary research questions were explored:
1) How does comfort with technology correlate with its perceived importance among design students in blended environments?
2) How does technology integration affect students’ satisfaction with their learning environment? The study utilized a quantitative, exploratory, correlational design, surveying 288 undergraduate design students from public liberal arts colleges in [name anonymized for peer-review] using a structured Qualtrics questionnaire.
The analysis found strong positive correlations between students’ comfort with technology, its perceived importance for skill development, and overall satisfaction with the learning environment. These results emphasize the essential role of technology in design education and highlight the need for strategies that enhance technological proficiency and effectively integrate digital tools.
The findings are significant for educators, curriculum developers, and educational policymakers, stressing the importance of innovative pedagogical approaches that leverage technology to meet the evolving needs of the design profession. This research contributes valuable insights into the integration of technology in design education, enhancing both theoretical discussions and practical teaching approaches.
Graduating students may not understand the historical conditions that created their discipline.
Aggie Toppins Associate Professor Washington University in St. Louis
Design history is not a firmly established field in the United States. Scholars Grace Lees-Maffei and Rebecca Houze show how in the UK, by contrast, educational reforms in the 1970s mandated that colleges offer subject-specific contextual studies, creating demand for design historians in studio programs and initiating the field’s growth in Europe. Although many early graphic design historians were American educators, most colleges here offer little design history content. Consequently, graduating students may not understand the historical conditions that created their discipline.
NASAD Data Summaries show that enrollment in communication design programs is eclipsing studio art, yet most design students are required to study art history. The author will argue that as design professions contend with new forms of automated labor, skills in historical thinking—described by Andrews and Burke through the “five Cs” of change over time, context, causality, contingency, and complexity—are as useful as analyzing aesthetic objects. Design conferences and journals have recently spotlighted design history pedagogy, questioning its entanglements with connoisseurship and canonicity, and with capitalism and imperialism. How are these trends making an impact on design history education today?
In this presentation, I share insights from data I collected on 345 US-based undergraduate programs in communication design. The data affirms that the survey course is often the only touchpoint graphic design students have with design history. I aggregated information about these courses from academic bulletins, course catalogs, and program websites, and verified facts with faculty. The data contributes evidence for current practices and patterns of change in course titles and descriptions (which indicate common approaches and themes), textbook choices, and faculty training. The data will serve as a useful resource for educators looking to situate their curriculum in current discourse, and for administrators in positions to advocate for faculty hires and curricular revision.
Students now more effectively understand and display text, images and data.
Teresa Trevino Professor University of the Incarnate Word
Francesco Franchi, graphic journalist, described infographics as “impossibility in its purest form,” using the Penrose triangle to illustrate the complex coexistence of content, design, and data. This reflects the challenges that information designers face when aiming to inform and engage overstimulated audiences.
These challenges resonated in our Information Design studio course. While students begin the semester with enthusiasm, a shift occurs when transitioning from research to design. Confusion often sets in as they struggle to create effective visualization. Observing this recurring pattern over the years, I recently implemented a subtle yet significant change that led to improved outcomes.
An original 5-week Infographic assignment became the current 8-week “Editorial Infographics” project. Students begin researching and gathering information for a newsletter. The revised assignment required students to design all pages including an infographic as the central spread. Despite the complexity added by merging Editorial and Information design as a unit, students now more effectively understand and display text, images and data.
References such as Franchi’s work for La Repubblica and Intelligent Lifestyle Magazine, along with Manuel Lima’s The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, and Nigel Holmes’ Map of Infographia and Infographic Design were instrumental.
The extended project introduced a learning curve, with some resistance to the longer assignments. However, most students reported increased confidence and have incorporated these skills into other projects, with some receiving recognition at design competitions and publications.
I will continue refining this project to enhance students’ information design skills and better prepare them for future challenges.
Welcoming Cat Normoyle, incoming Director of Peer Reviews, and Camila Afanador Llach as Chair, Director-at-Large
This 2024 academic year has been busy and productive at Design Incubation. We have had many activities this fall, including the Design Educators Awards, currently accepting nominations and entries until December 31, 2024. In October, we had our first fully in-person colloquium since the onset of the pandemic and our largest one to date at Boston University with four sessions and more than 20 research presentations. This year, we celebrate our 10th year with new members and ongoing development. We continue to host the series, Design Your Research Agenda (DYRA), the latest one in November. We will be publishing this episode online shortly.
Starting this September 2024, we welcomed Cat Normoyle, Associate Professor at East Carolina University as the incoming Director of Peer Review. In spring 2025 she will be taking over this role from Camila Afanador-Llach, Associate Professor at Florida Atlantic University, who has held the position since fall 2021.
Normoyle is a designer, writer, and educator whose research and creative activities focus on community engagement, interactive and immersive experiences, and design pedagogy. She has a strong record of contributions to design scholarship and community engagement, evidenced by publications, presentations, and grants. Notably her writing appears in articles and book chapters published by AIGA Dialectic, Design Research Society, AIGA Design Educators Community, Routledge, and others. She is a recent grant recipient of the Engagement Scholarship Consortium for her work on the project, Our Story: The LGBTQ Stories of Eastern North Carolina, which is preparing for a fall 2025 exhibition of work. She is currently working on a book project, “Community-based Practices in Action.” We are excited to welcome her as the new Director of Peer Reviews at DI.
Afanador-Llach has made tremendous contributions to the peer review process at DI over the last 3 years. She has further developed the peer review process, ensuring the double-blind process is objective, anonymous, rigorous, and fair and that it offers the benefits of the peer review to our members by offering feedback to all who have participated in our colloquium submission process.
Afanador-Llach will be staying on as a Chair and Director-at-Large as she segues into other DI initiatives. We would like to thank her for her three years of service as Director of Peer Review and we are excited to be working with her in new capacities.
Afanador-Llach was promoted to tenured Associate Professor at Florida Atlantic University, and is currently researching and writing about the history of graphic design in her home country Colombia. She recently completed a three-year NEH-funded project cataloging and translating metadata, developing an online resource. With her experience with metadata and from her role as DI Director of Peer Review, we hope to further the development of keyword analysis and implementation at DI.
A project to organize and catalog resources to facilitate specific reference searches and discover experience design information.
Nicholas Rock Associate Professor Boston University
In both teaching experience design and working in a client-based practice, I have found sourcing clear case studies, examples, and references incredibly challenging and time-consuming. Recognizing the need for an accessible resource for experience design work, I have initiated a project to organize and catalog resources to facilitate specific reference searches and discover new information. The development of an introductory experience design course and my practice in design strategy provided the basis for a foundational framework. Initially designed to help teach design students, it was later adapted for my design work to enhance customer experience strategies. The framework categorizes experiences by scale, emotional response, and form to ensure a broader and more holistic understanding of experience design, benefiting designers, educators, and students.
Groups of students taking an Experience Design course utilized the framework to populate a database with more than 200 initial case studies. These case studies are a learning resource for subsequent classes, demonstrating the framework’s practical application and refinement. I additionally leveraged the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at Boston University to employ two undergraduate graphic design students in the project’s continued development, refinement, and evolution.
The result is a public database and guide for experience design—a resource that enables unexpected connections and discoveries across all forms of experience design. It helps to identify, archive, and contextualize a wide range of examples, making them accessible and valuable to future students and designers.
The work was intentionally published as a web-based resource, eventually welcoming contributions from a global community. This ensures its growth, adaptability, and continued insights on a broad scale. It has been designed to inspire curiosity and broaden perspectives of experience design and serves as a unique and ever-evolving collaborative resource for the design and design education communities.
The Design + Translation panel aims to recenter perspectives and prioritize inclusivity by representing a wider range of voices that build design community.
113th CAA Annual Conference, Hybrid format.
Deadline for abstract submissions: August 29, 2024.
We invite abstract submissions on presentation topics relevant to Communication Design research. Submissions should fall into one or more of the following areas: scholarly research, case studies, creative practice, or design pedagogy. We welcome proposals on a variety of topics across the field of communication design.
Submit an abstract of 300 words using the Design Incubation abstract submission form found here (indicating preference for virtual or in-person session): https://designincubation.com/call-for-submissions/
Submissions are double-blind peer-reviewed. Reviewers’ feedback will be returned. Accepted presentation abstracts will be published on the Design Incubation website.
A 6-minute videotaped presentation is required for participation. The video is due on January 15, 2025. It will be published on the Design Incubation YouTube channel.
The 113th Annual CAA conference session will consist of live presentations plus a moderated discussion.
113th CAA Annual Conference Virtual and New York City February 12–15, 2025 Live presentations and moderated discussion in a hybrid format.
Presenters are required to follow the basic membership and fee requirements of CAA.
We are accepting abstracts for presentations now until August 29, 2024.
Event date: Friday, October 25, 2024 Format: In-person Only Location: Boston University, College of Fine Art, School of Visual Arts
Design + ____________
What is design research?
In honor of Design Incubation’s 10th anniversary, we are examining the ways design and design research has changed over the past decade. How do we define design research, as designers, scholars and educators?
We invite designers — practitioners, creators, educators and students — for a live, in-person event, to examine their own creative research and practice and the adjacencies that touch their work. Design + Social Justice, Design + Curation, Design + Performance …what are some of the subjects that drive your own design curiosity? How does the intersection of such content areas inform your creative practice, your pedagogy, your research?
The 2024 Colloquium will be organized to showcase your design research in lively, interactive sessions that may take the form of presentations, performances, workshops and / or demonstrations.
Interact with us!
Submit abstracts describing your Design + __________.
We invite designers—practitioners and educators—to submit abstracts of design research. This is an in-person event.
Accepted presentations are videotaped in-advance by the researchers for publication online on the Design Incubation channel which is due by August 1, 2024.
A day-long colloquium will be held at Boston University, College of Fine Art, School of Visual Arts on Friday, October 25, 2024. This event is open to all interested in Communication Design research.
Hosts: Kristen Coogan and Mary Yang.
Moderators: Liz DeLuna, Camila Afanador Llach, Dan Wong.
