Focused Discussions
The Loss of Conversation at a Distance: Proximity and Conversation in the Design Studio
Focused Discussion Maxwell Dehne
Within the infrastructure of the digital studio, conversation is warped and distorted. However, the design studio thrives on spontaneity and epiphany, so when isolated, how do educators breathe conversation back into the studio? What methods are best suited for teaching design and fostering an environment that stretches outside the limitations of the screen? What strategies tap into the strength of our digital tools and recaptures the potential of the conversation?
Teaching Policy Design: Topics and Techniques View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Scott Schmidt, Michael Howlett
Policy design denotes a conscious effort to marshal governing resources and direct them towards the attainment of government goals. A design typically involves the creation of a mix or bundle of policy tools which can reasonably be expected to work together to attain a government goal or goals. Although a relatively old area of interest in the policy sciences, policy design remains in the nascent stage with respect to paedagogy in the academy. The purpose of the focused discussion is to examine aspects of how the subject is currently taught in policy schools and programmes and draw on those experiences to improve instruction and outcomes. Participants will set out the topics which existing courses typically cover, explain their importance to the field, and how they are typically addressed in coursework. This will include topics such as what is policy design and how it has evolved; policy tools and portfolios; persuasive design, targeting and compliance; who are the policy designers and how do they think and operate; what is meant by policy effectiveness; what are design best practices; how designs and designers deal with uncertainty, conflict and controversy; and also what are the future directions in which the field is heading, why and what this means for future design paedagogy and practice. The discussion will examine paedagogical techniques deployed in these courses across the globe dealing with differences between undergraduate and graduate level instruction, case-based instruction, and on-line and distance learning.
Delightful UX Design: A Semiotic-Rhetorical Perspective View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Omar Sosa Tzec
Designers recognize delight as a crucial element of the user experience (UX) of interactive products and services. Research has demonstrated that when a product or service elicits delight, its user is prone to develop affection and loyalty for it and its brand. Moreover, this kind of delight encourages the user to recommend the product or service to other people. The behavioral, attitudinal, and affective effects of the delight inherent in a UX suggest a connection between this emotion with the persuasive dimension of a designed object. This study focuses on this connection and discusses a semiotic-rhetorical framework of delightful UX design. This framework draws on the idea that a designed object works as a reified argument by which designers attempt to prescribe people’s lives. It also considers that designers carefully craft the signifiers that constitute the (interface) design of a (digital) product to fulfill this persuasive attempt. This approach regards delight as a function of the surprise, captivation, and fulfillment experienced by the user due to the appearance and behavior of one or a group of functionally related interface signifiers. This approach relates these antecedents of delight with the design’s capability to appear the user—in the Aristotelean sense: appealing to logos, ethos, and pathos—and promote sense-making and reassurance—connected by this framework with the notion of rhetorical argument, the enthymeme. This framework seeks to aid designers to explore the connection between delight, design, sense-making, and multimodal argumentation, providing a set of concepts that could work as a critical lens.
