Lightning Talks
Offscreen
Online Lightning Talk Cedric van Eenoo
An image contains visual ingredients of composition, arranged on a surface to create meaning. However, when the focus diverts from what is present to what is absent in the picture, a new dimension can emerge. The offscreen elements appear as significant as their visible counterparts. But by concentrating on what is missing, the mind has a different perception of the art. The message is not direct, but implied, allowing for freedom of interpretation. Utilizing omission rather than addition enables the viewer to recompose the art and project personal emotions. Ultimately, the act of removing generates an aesthetic of absence. In this regard, the exploration of the void leans toward inwardness and discretion, emphasizing introspection. Additionally, a closer look at psychology and its use in the arts with the Gestalt theory describes how the human brain tends to close gaps in visuals that are unfinished. This mechanism generates an immersive experience. Essentially, the Japanese concept of ‘ma’ utilizes and manipulates the in-between, shifting the centre of attention, to enable an intensification of vision. In this configuration, the invisible inspires contemplation, in a similar way poems use metaphors: to suggest, as opposed to signify. The work can then operate on a new level of awareness, where the elements that are missing become quintessential.
Multi-disciplinary Imaginings in the Time of Humanitarian Crises: Enacting Possibilities View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Diane Fellows, Elliott Jones Boyle, Molly Burns, Andrew Porten, Mira Patel, Emily Medosch, Katie Schelli
In 2019, the Syrian refugee crisis reached its seventh year of humanitarian disaster. Designers responded to the crisis by providing habitats requested by non-governmental (NGO) relief agencies, and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). While researching the political, social, and economic policies of place and people, could designers engage in a more proactive multi-disciplinary process to better understand the complexities of displacement, and contribute more informed design opportunities with communities in need? Since 2016, a Miami University architecture studio has collaborated with NGOs and resident Syrian refugees in the Jordanian Za’atari refugee camp to design and construct needed structures. Currently, the studio is collaborating with Oxfam International in Za’atari to design and build community structures using SuperAdobe as a material source. This paper discusses a multi-disciplinary process engaging architecture students with pre-law, finance, and anthropology students collectively exploring social policy such as international refugee law, Jordanian refugee policy, Syrian resettlement laws, financial constructs, and anthropological methods related to community empowerment. Our goal is to help construct the needed structures by deeply understanding parameters of displacement through international refugee laws, governmental financial arrangements, and, by engaging the complexities of our current political crises, understand the ethics in design at this time of humanitarian concern. While our collaboration with Oxfam and the refugee residents results in semi-temporary structures, it is through our role as informed global citizens that we can enact future possibilities with communities to resettle in areas they choose.
Outside-in: A Model for Educational Collaboration View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Jennifer Kowalski, Bryan Satalino
Design students tend to work with clearly defined prompts, but design problems in the “real world” are much messier. Designers today must be comfortable applying their skills to solve complex problems without clear answers. To simulate the experience of an industry project, we collaborated with Adobe and a third-party “client” to hold a multi-week “Creative Jam” inside the classroom. Three concurrent classes of Advanced Design for juniors were combined to form teams of 3-4 students to address the problem of physical exercise for the blind and low-vision community. Students spent the first week of the project reviewing the brief and forming questions for the client. The "client" presented the brief through an Adobe-coordinated webinar, and an Adobe trainer guided students through an Adobe XD bootcamp. In the second week, teams worked on their designs with faculty guidance and assembled presentations for judging. In the third week, the teams presented to judges from Adobe and the design industry. Judges provided feedback for each team and scored projects. Winning teams received prizes from Adobe. In later weeks, students worked individually to finalize designs. Students also wrote case studies that reframed the problem, explained the approach, showed the finished work, and addressed opportunities for expansion. This paper outlines the process of the collaboration and shows examples of the resulting student work. We address what the students learned, what we learned, and what we would change in the future.
An Elective Course as a Means to Teach the Psychosocial Characteristics of Space - Spatial Perception and Cognition: Experience of the Body and Cognitive Mapping View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Nevset Gul Canakcioglu
Architectural studio courses are universally structured with the highest credit in the curricula that the student is expected to comprehend an existing urban fabric with its physical and social components in order to solve a specific design problem. Within this context, as the students develop their conceptual ideas, they are expected to assume probable interactions that are supposed to occur between the users and space. However, the students commonly face difficulties in embracing the topic through such an interdisciplinary approach and sometimes ignore the psychosocial dimension of space such as spatial perception, needs, privacy, satisfaction, etc. that affect the mutual interaction between space and users. Then, the resulting project is likely to be an output derived entirely from geometric principles overlooking the psychosocial characteristics of context. Thus, elective courses become essential in order to support the student's interdisciplinary comprehension about space. A spatial perception and cognition course is such that the concept of space is not only introduced and presented through theoretical seminars, but also through experiential participation of the students themselves where they actively perform daily activities by the guidance of a blind, in a specially designed thematic environment with complete darkness equipped with scent, sound, wind, and tactile simulations of a specific urban setting. Upon completion of the experience, the students are invited to a drawing and discussion session that they firstly transfer their experiences on cognitive maps and later discuss the interaction between body and space in relation to senses and user needs.
Readying Designers for the World of Work View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Nancy Miller
As faculty teaching graphic design, keeping up with the ever-evolving shifts in technology and forecasting occupational trends in professional practice can be overwhelming. Compounding the goal of staying current to best serve students, is the awareness of the over-saturation of entry-level designers in the pool of recent graduates. To answer the modern student’s demand for return on their educational investment, faculty must make a deliberate effort to groom their students to be competitive job candidates with applicable competencies and relevant skills. As a discipline where strategy, creativity and technology must be planned and implemented into all phases of the curriculum, integration of the pragmatics of real work must not be neglected. Beyond teaching the industry-standard tools and foundational skills for professional practice, we must also elevate the student experience by responding to deficiencies in curriculum, simulating real world experiences and work-flows, facilitating meaningful internship opportunities, establishing professional connections and documenting job placement outcomes. In this lightening presentation, I outline efforts for better alignment of students with careers such as structured applied experience requirements, advisory committees, guest lectures, community/client projects and suggestions on identifying university and community resources to support those efforts. Faculty from all disciplines can expect to takeaway ideas on advancing professional perspective in their approach and promoting opportunity to better prepare students.
Space, Time, and Japanese Architecture: The Birth of a New Temporal Tradition View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Kevin Nute
The expression of time is widely believed today to be one of the unique features of traditional Japanese architecture. This paper argues, however, that many of the apparently temporal features to have been identified in traditional Japanese buildings were actually accommodations of change rather than conscious expressions of time, and similar characteristics are found in buildings from other cultures. It is suggested that the interpretation of traditional Japanese architecture as having been based on time as opposed to space was part of a long-standing impulse, both within and beyond Japan, to cast Japanese culture in contrast to the West.
Epistemological Features of Sustainable Design View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Martina Maria Keitsch
Design as a discipline is comparatively young. Epistemologically, this means that theories are not profoundly established and that there is a widespread tendency to adopt concepts from other disciplines. Nevertheless, there exist some disciplinary core values, methods to operationalize them, and applications that exemplify and manifest these values. This study employs Lakatos' theory of science to elucidate values, methods, and applications in sustainable design (SD) concepts, selected from current sustainable design literature. The goal of the paper is to point out possible ways of interaction between the concepts for the benefit of two larger fields – design and sustainability. Following the introduction, the second section sketches a short history of the development of sustainable design. Section three introduces an SD epistemology with help of Lakatos’ model. Section four presents ideas, methods, and applications of representative SD concepts within three categories: natural science-, social science - and practice- based oriented. Section five discusses similarities and differences and suggests how the concepts can be combined, methodologically and practically. While Lakatos’ theory of science allows to scrutinize sustainable design theory, methods and applications systematically, an analysis of similarities, differences and connections between the concepts may encourage to develop sustainable design within a wider context such as e.g the Sustainable Development Goals. One epistemological challenge here is balancing transdisciplinary research approaches with the disciplinary designerly core.
Workplace Design and Employee Engagement: Research on How the Design of the Physical Work Environment Can Impact Engagement View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Paul Kegel
According to research, the design of the physical work environment can have an impact on both the organization and the people who work there. The design of the physical work environment can influence organizational performance, employee satisfaction, productivity, well-being, and commitment to the organization. It can also help shape organizational culture, facilitate communication, teamwork, creativity, and help organizations attract and retain the best employees. One area that has received a lot of attention lately is employee engagement. This paper looks at the importance of employee engagement and discusses the latest research that links the design of the work environment with levels of engagement.
Sustainable Model Proposal for Architectural Education
Online Lightning Talk Elif Tatar, Ruşen Yamaçlı
Architecture, as a dynamically developing and transforming field, has always been influenced by current developments and approaches. Accordingly, architectural education also has to keep up with the current developments to stay updated. Architectural design studios, which are a significant component of architectural education, stand out in this type of education since they combine knowledge and skills in an effective way. This study examines changes, educational policies, and perspectives in architectural education and develops a sustainable model which assumes that sustainability in architectural design studios can be achieved through a knowledge and research-based perspective. In this study, which has been designed with a conceptual perspective in mind, the data obtained from literature review were integrated to the conceptual framework by using historical method and through comparative analyses and implications. The proposed model is significant because of the following reasons: it includes projections made following the evaluation of architectural education’s historical development and the implications from knowledge and research-based educational models; and it evaluates teaching styles and learning theories in studio pedagogy together with current tendencies.
Indian Traditional Folk Painting in Contemporary Context: Representation of Aesthetics and Communication of Social Mores
Online Lightning Talk Siddharth Singh
Making folk paintings is a treasured part of cultural heritage and an important form of expression of creativity of through generations. This paper is a reflection on the development of folk paintings in regions of India in the past decade, when production was patronised by public and private organisations. Whilst folk arts are an important emblem of the peoples and cultural expression of the world, these are still largely considered minor arts. Famous Indian painter and writer K. G. Subramanyan defended the importance and understanding of these in the anthropological and social sense, also placing value on uniquely aesthetic nature of them. We do the exploration with a focus on traditional decorative patterns and iconography, striking colors, and symbolic motifs that enliven folk traditions such as Gond of Central India, Mithila of North and Pattachitra of Eastern regions. We explore the specific relationships between the current resurgence of the Indian folk paintings and matters of representation and communication. We guage these relationships in the recent history of Indian folk painting. We then focus in more detail at the contemporary folk paintings, which can largely be looked at in intersecting functions: representative and receptacle of traditional aesthetics; conveyor of social and moral mores; mode of communication; and means of engagement. Following a brief discussions of recent case studies – vivid examples of contemporary folk paintings – we propose that modern folk art inculcates reconciliation of the apparently contradictory elements of tradition, pure aesthetics, and professional commerce.
Courage, Creativity and A Growth Mindset: Providing a Space for Design Students to be Courageous View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Sarah Alex Carter
As a noun, the word courage is defined as the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc. without fear; bravery. We typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. However, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required to actually speak honestly and openly about courage in the context of creativity and about our creative practice - good and bad. The aim for this research is to open up a dialogue and discussion around the need for courage in creativity and pedagogy, with a focus on the ways in which education can foster and encourage acts of courage within creative practice. The first part offers a visual overview of what courage looks like in the context of creative practice, specifically illustration, highlighting three main themes of courage within creativity and pedagogy. The second part presents a case study of a graduate from BA Illustration who displayed acts of courage in completing their placement and work experience module as a medical illustrator. The premise of this study within the context of the conference is that courage is a requirement for advocacy in Design Education. This session considers courage as a condition for creativity and how it is a vital component in the process of innovation, learning, and developing a growth mindset.
Understanding Motion Design: Finding Clarity in a Fragmented Field View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Steve Harper
Motion design is an interdisciplinary form that combines aspects of graphic design, illustration, animation, video, film, and interactivity. As our media rich world proliferates with screens, motion designers fill a unique niche as hybrid creatives capable of telling stories, building experiences, and communicating ideas, dynamically and effectively. Because of this multimodal quality, motion design is difficult to define, promote, and situate in academic programs. A myriad of legacy terms, such as motion graphics and multimedia, exacerbates the lack of clarity surrounding motion design as a field of study and profession. At first glance these terms seem innocuous, but each demands the addition of a subject, such as artist, designer, or technician, and each of those harbors assumptions and expectations as to their role, further complicating our understanding and diffusing the potential impact of motion design for students, professionals, and discourse. In the 2018 anthology, The Theory and Practice of Motion Design, Dr. Clarisa Carubin sought to define motion design through an understanding of its definitions in literature over time. This paper will seek to reveal the morass of concurrent motion-related nomenclature in use by sampling job postings, official US government labor designations, and academic programs. Beyond describing the fragmented taxonomy surrounding the field, the research will expose the plentiful opportunities motion design offers students, and seek to coalesce educators and professionals around a contemporary understanding and definition. In the form of a online lightning talk, all research and recommendations will be conveyed in visualizations, text, and symbols in motion.
Sensory Book: Co-designing the Sensory-focused Activity Tool
Online Lightning Talk Heeyoung Kim
Sensory focused activity for people with dementia is limited in Hong Kong due to a lack of human resources and space. As the population with dementia is growing rapidly, innovative design solutions are necessary to address the shortage of dementia care. The design researchers co-designed sensory book with HK SKH Lok Man Alice Kwok Integrated Service Centre, an elderly community centre in Hong Kong. The aim of the research is to allow sensory-focused activity for people with dementia to be disseminated to a larger population and also enrich the quality of life for people with dementia. This paper describes the co-design process of Sensory book, created in collaboration with 8 dementia care professionals and 2 engineers. Sensory book is a personalized interactive activity tool, consisting of an electronic fabric book and a mobile app, designed for people with dementia who need meaningful interaction with family members or informal caregivers through activity in domestic settings. The sensory book has adjustable activity difficulty, activity guidelines, and tracks activity performance. The co-design process of sensory book consisted of the stages of interviews, the rapid ideation and rapid prototyping workshops with the 7 social workers and an occupational therapist to gather data for the development of the sensory book. This research project enriches the quality of life for people with dementia by creating a sensory focused activity tool with meaningful associations.
Understanding the Problems of Children Learning a New Language of Madia Gond View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Shubham Waray, Sudarshan Kadam
Language is a road to upward mobility and for others; it is a barrier to even the marginal life of choice and dignity. For millions of people, whose languages are rendered powerless in a society where only one or few languages are dominant, exclusion of mother tongues from social domains of significance has serious consequences for basic survival and wellbeing. Educational failure of linguistic minorities all over the world is primarily related to the mismatch between the home language and the language of formal instruction. The ‘Madia Gond’ is a tribe inhabiting the Dandakaranya forests in the Central Eastern part of Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, India. This tribe has been in existence for centuries. However, this gentle race was completely cut-off from civilization, knowing no clothing, education, or health care. ‘Marathi' being the basic medium of education in the state of Maharashtra, the tribal children (whose mother-tongue is Madia which does not have the script) in the Gadchiroli district are unable to make sense of the study material when they are enrolled for class in government schools. As a result, in many cases, these children end up repeating the class more than once until they begin to make sense of the language itself. The main objective of the study is to design product or a platform, which would help the children of Madia-Gond society to understand Marathi alphabets.
Evaluating Modes of Viewing and Perceiving Space View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Tonya D Miller, Catherine Kendall, Eun Young Kim
Virtual reality is increasingly being used in the fields of architecture and interior design to help clients better visualize spaces. Likewise, academic programs affiliated with these disciplines are incorporating online reality into their curricula in an effort to prepare students for this emerging mode of design communication. The use of this new visualization technique is thought to facilitate better spatial understanding. However, when considering students’ perceptions of object sizes and spatial relationships, how does this new online reality viewing experience compare to other modes of design communication? The purpose of this study was to analyze students’ ability to judge dimensions and distances in a online hotel lobby. Students viewed a computer-generated model of a hotel lobby in one of three popular modes of design communication—printed on paper, on computer screen, or through a online reality headset. In all three modes, students exhibited a greater ability to determine height dimensions, compared to length or width dimensions. This difference was statistically significant for computer screen and online reality modes. Students were able to accurately judge heights best via the computer screen mode, followed by online reality then paper mode. Format also proved to have a significant impact on the students’ ability to provide accurate responses, with students scoring better on questions soliciting responses in feet, rather than inches. Overall, these findings provide valuable insight into how students perceive space and have the potential to inform how design educators shape future instruction, especially when implementing emerging modes of technology.
Collaborative Projects in Design Education: Strategies and Results View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Jillian Coorey
Collaboration is essential in the design field, yet doesn’t always translate as easily to education. This presentation will highlight a case study from a sophomore-level studio course where cooperative learning was used as a model for group project integration. The five basic elements of cooperative learning: positive interdependence, individual and group accountability, interpersonal and small group skills, face-to-face promotive interaction, and group processing (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith 1991), provided a springboard for project implementation and evaluation. Additionally, interviews with fellow design educators provide further tactics and methods for how to introduce and manage collaborative projects, including working with interdisciplinary teams.
Branding the Face of Online Voice Assistants: Analysis through DiSC Personality Framework View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Soo Hyun Shin
In recent years, online assistants were developed as platforms that connect devices using voice as its primary interface. As voice assistant leaders like Amazon and Google develop devices as social robots with personalities that the user can understand and engage with, the personality of the product became closely linked with the perception of its brand identity. Although the personality of the assistant is primarily expressed through voice, visual interface is an important factor that affords feedback, and adds a visual identity to the voice. Hence, the study aims to develop a framework to align visual and voice interface that communicates a consistent personality. The study employed the DiSC personality assessment tool, which centers on four different personality traits: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Conscientiousness (C). Traits from voice and visual interface of popular devices were analyzed and mapped on the double axis of the DiSC model. As this is a preliminary study for future studies previous empirical studies were analyzed. Furthermore, the study provides a future plan for empirical experiment to determine the validity of the framework.
Understanding Before Action: Student Engagement in Social Advocacy View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Camila Afanador-Llach
In graphic design education, an engagement with larger societal problems can start by exploring the role of visual communication in framing, understanding, and disseminating knowledge to inform and empower others. Design educators have the opportunity to engage students in dialogue about social advocacy and their role in promoting awareness and positive social change. The process of understanding complex issues can expose students to research and inquiry towards translating their understanding of complex topics to the creation of communication pieces to make it understandable to others. This lighting presentation takes the idea that design activism is a practice about better understanding the problem and not solely about producing single right solutions for problems (Thorpe, 2014). Through examples from two design courses: Information Design and Interactive Design, I discuss a pedagogical approach that engage students in exploring their agency as visual communicators to inform, inspire, and involve audiences in topics of current relevance. In this approach, the idea that graphic designers shape content for effective communication, is complemented with students working as researchers and editors, tackling multiple sources of data and information to create their work.
Designing Learning: Strategies for Effective Teaching in Studio-Based Disciplines View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Zinka Bejtic
The studio represents a learning space most frequently used within creative disciplines and the role of the instructor in the studio class is very much different compared to other traditional classroom models. Often considered informal and unstructured, studio setting imposes a greater responsibility on the instructor to develop appropriate teaching techniques and engage in frequent self-assessment in order to enhance students’ learning experience. Through qualitative research techniques and visual dissemination of the findings, this study uncovers and presents successful studio-based teaching methodologies. The findings are derived from the data collected through qualitative interviews with ten instructors recognized for their excellence in teaching. They emphasize the value of the instructor’s ability to give effective feedback, establish a relaxed and nurturing setting, and build positive relationships with their students and are within a collaborative, project-based learning environment.
Exploring Creative Co-ownership in Design Collaboration Between Designer and Maker: Autoethnography Research in the Garment District of Seoul View Digital Media
Online Lightning Talk Jang Sub Lee, Soo Hyun Shin
Designers often form a collaborative relationship with the technical masters of their field, especially in the production process. Yet, more often than not, the designer is solely responsible for giving exact and specific creative directions, and possess the right to full ownership of the creative work. Although this relationship is accepted as general practice in some industries, there may be missed opportunities for collaborative creativity. The aim of this paper is to explore new modes of creativity through challenging existing ideas of creative co-ownership in collaboration. This paper examines an experiment of collaboration between a graphic designer and a sample maker at the garment district located in Changshindong, Seoul, South Korea. The researcher of this paper participated as the graphic designer, and employed autoethnography research method to describe and reflect on her experience. Certain measures set this collaboration apart from others. First, the designer and maker set out to develop a fashion item for a viable business, rather than a student project. Then, they signed a contract promising equal rights to the profit. Lastly, the designer and maker were both involved from the design concept phase, and worked in tandem throughout the entire process. We found collaboration forced designer and maker to search for ways to find their own agreement on creative co-ownership, and the conflicts and negotiations lead to unexpected creative solutions. Finally, we proposed five questions designers can ask themselves during the design process to examine potential for collaborative creativity.
