Social Spheres (Asynchronous Session)
Curriculum Design Issues at the Intersections of Gender View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Katy Campbell
For at least forty years scholars from many disciplines have brought a gendered lens to instructional design theory and practice, the design of physical learning environments, and learning processes from multiple perspectives, including access, accessibility, usability, effectiveness, inclusiveness, and sociocultural and political perspectives (c.f. Ball, 2007; Littlejohn, Foss & Oetzel, 2017). More recently, critical scholars have become interested in intersectionality, in which “multiple oppressions” influence each other and create learning environments that exclude or marginalize various learning communities of women and girls, among them adults and youth whose native language is not English, who are living in poverty and/or in rural areas with limited access, indigenous females, and so on (c.f. Belkhir & McNair Barnett, 2001; Morse, 2003; Li & Kirkup, 2007; National Science Foundation, 2004). Using gender as a defining lens, we must also consider gender identity, a political, social, and cultural challenge that becomes a design consideration. What do we know about gender and learning with technology, and what questions still need to be asked? Has new research identified new challenges, new understandings; new directions? Has this knowledge affected how we design learning environments? This paper provides a quick review of research since 1990, and contrasting more recent research addressing questions and implications of intersectionality and design such as inclusion of sociocultural factors such as first language, geopolitical context, gender identity, and indigeneity.
Branding Nature: Design and the Inception of the Pacific Northwest Apple Industry View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cristina de Almeida
During the early twentieth century, the Pacific Northwest entered the imagination of Americans living in the Eastern and Midwestern urban centers of the United States through the branding of its natural resources. Among the most pervasive images were those related to the marketing of apples. Colorful labels, identifying growers and/or packers, were pasted on fruit crates that were shipped East through the new transcontinental railroads, and later put on display in the grocery shops. The graphics on these labels provide a window to begin to understand how design was used not only as a tool to support product commodification, but also as a means to negotiate the fears and contradictions brought upon by industrialized agriculture. This study explores the phenomenon of the branding of Northwest apples in the first half of the twentieth century, with a focus on design practices. While establishing differentiation between similar products–apples to apples–visual branding contributed to forge a unified identity for a region that was still culturally peripheral to Western society. This relative isolation can provide a microcosm from which to assess the potential and limitations of design as a mediator between systems of production and consumption.
Improving Engagement Tools to Enable Advocacy in Public Sector Activities View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rosendy Galabo, Mirian Calvo, David Perez, Leon Cruickshank
This research reports on the improvement of engagement activities with academics and public sector organisations in the northwest of the UK. Such activities are often supported by tools and resources public sector professionals use in their creative engagement practice. However, generic and prescribed tools do not ensure an appropriate engagement with the communities they work with. There is a need to tailor such tools for specific contexts to accommodate multiple design languages and skills of those involved in engagement processes in order to support them in design and decision-making processes. This paper presents a new design practice, where engagement practitioners develop their everyday activities through co-designing improvements of tools, enabling advocacy on the act of improvement. In this practice, engagement practitioners look at the instructions, functions, and flexibility of tools they use, provide suggestions for improvements, and make design decisions that enable better creative engagement activities through a series of co-design workshops. This research follows a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, where four case studies document the co-design process, and the planning and delivery of improvement workshops. The paper discusses the insights and lessons learned from the co-design process and the impact of the new improvement practice. The outcomes of this research include building design capabilities for improvement in participants, insights on the improvement of tools, and guidelines to conduct the design practice. This research contributes to the shift in design agency from ‘transferring improvements to’ to ‘co-designing improvements with’ individuals and organisations.
An Exploratory Analysis of the Visually Impaired Internet Users in Developing Countries: How the State of Law, Accessibility, and Design Affects E-commerce Internationalization and Inclusion View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Emilio Sosa
As the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated e-commerce, website accessibility is gaining relevance for establishing equal conditions for people with disabilities. Even if the regulations may be similar between Northamerican countries, the different states of law are generating problems regarding the internationalization of the ibusinesses and accessibility rights for the visually disabled. This study reviews the public policy effectiveness for the visually impaired to understand the implications of website accessibility in the country and to consider how these regulations may affect the internationalization of the Mexican firm. This exploratory research follows a mixed-method approach. The authors did n=6 semi-structured interviews with key players of the visually disabled community and then evaluated n=366 websites with a web scraping tool and using principal components analysis and non-parametric statistics to compare their accessibility by type of website that is paramount for complying with the current regulations. The authors found that even if there is a regulation for providing equal access to websites, the state of the law is insufficient and non enforced for private and public institutions. Regarding the quantitative analysis, the e-commerce websites were the worst evaluated. Both analyses showed that e-commerce sites that are not complying with the policies are less competitive for the visually impaired and may have trouble internationalizing to markets with a better state of law. This study is one of the first to analyze Mexican websites’ accessibility and the first to consider how private institutions are fundamental for enabling basic human rights for the visually disabled.
