Centering Collaboration (Asynchronous Session)
The Woods: Cooperative Augmented Reality Game View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kyoung Swearingen
‘The Woods’ is a local multiplayer cooperative game that employs augmented reality (AR) and 4-channel audio spatialization panning to produce a shared experience that is both digital and physical. It is designed to promote social interaction and encourages players to collaborate. As players choreograph their movement in real-world space, they interact with birds, clouds, and other objects in online space. Together, players experience an immersive sonic narrative of rumbling storm clouds and desperate voices that weave together stories of reconciliation. ‘The Woods’ provides positive social impact by illuminating our own connections to one another while inspiring players to talk, to move, and to collaborate in pursuit of a shared goal.
Learning from Traditional Practices and Products in India to Inform Design for Sustainability : . View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sejal Changede, Lisa Thomas, Stuart Walker
Mainstream design approaches to developing more sustainable ways of living are often underpinned by the very modern values that have been instrumental in creating our unsustainable world. These values include those of consumerism, economic growth, efficiency, and technological optimism – exemplified by mainstream Triple Bottom Line approaches, including the popular Circular Economy concept. Mounting criticism however suggests that such approaches are unlikely to lead to the scale of change required due to the emphasis they place on modern capitalist values. This paper is concerned with the nature of the products emerging from these approaches as these products often embody the aforementioned modern values, which can engender unsustainable practices by the end-user. The paper presents initial findings from an ongoing research project that examines what Design for Sustainability can learn from traditional products and practices that are not underpinned by modern, capitalist values. To do this, a range of traditional products and practices from India that are still in widespread use today are compared with their modern equivalents. The traditional products and practices from India were selected for their positive physical, emotional, and/or spiritual relationship with the environment. From this comparison, key features of the Indian products and practices are drawn out that are transferable to contemporary product design. We conclude that these key features can inform the development of contemporary products that address sustainability in a more comprehensive and holistic manner than is currently the case.
Speculating the Future of Collaboration in Design Education View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marty Maxwell Lane, Rebecca Tegtmeyer
Design educators teach and research in an ever-changing, complex, and global world. We need to educate future designers of their social responsibility in making valuable contributions not only in business and commerce but in healthcare, politics, sustainability, justice, etc. This expansive context requires new types of collaboration in the classroom that includes ways to work with large and diverse teams. To find pedagogical examples that prepare students for these types of collaboration, we solicited proposals from our peers and colleagues in Graphic Design. This work culminated in a wide range of international case studies of collaborative graphic design practice and pedagogical methodologies, both face-to-face and remote, and between individuals and groups. With this collection, we developed and published Collaboration in Design Education as a comprehensive guide for design educators and practitioners who want to take a collaborative approach in their design practice and studio. Our paper presentation will highlight structuring projects and curriculum, reflection opportunities, benefits, and outcomes, as well as the challenges that come up in collaborative work, such as cross-cultural exchange, or managing roles within a diverse team. While the examples we plan to show offer a current look into the graphic design education landscape, we will expand on the collection and speculate on the future of collaboration in design education.
