Innovation Showcases
(Asynchronous - Online Only)
What is Your Process?: My Own Lens View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Terri Rodriguez Hong
This presentation is about how to invest in yourself. Too often I hear people dismiss themselves from what they want to do. There is this inner voice we listen to most of the time. It is negative or positive. To be fair, we take this inner voice and change it. During the session, we will examine questions and how we can dive in in our own process and learn new ways to invest in us.
Increasing Capacity of Innovative Synthesized Melanin as Textile Substitute through Genius Pattern Design to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Khajornsak Nakpan
Global crises affect life in many ways. Evolution is a survival instinct to find a safe environment. Human beings are capable of developing intellect through various structures, such as social, cultural, or critical thinking, in order to satisfy needs. Floods, pollution, rising temperature, or pandemic, are some of the crisis humans have never faced at this scale before. We have all contributed to it. It is therefore important that we start to change our lifestyle and preserve what remains of the nature. Ecology system needs recovery. This can be achieved through zero-waste production and consumption management such as use of biodegradable material and substitute materials. A recent study has successfully resulted in producing textile substitute by synthesizing melanin from soil. This is an alternative material. Every substance used in the process is natural rendering a biomaterial which is environment friendly. The material is made from a clean production process and is biodegradable. The researcher has further increased capacity of the innovative material by creating a genius pattern through which there is minimal waste from pattern cutting. It is designed based on a physics shape, amplituhedron, which is used to quantify matters. Amplituhedron is a geometrical shape created mathematically. The purpose of the shape is to explain relationship between particles, the smallest point of an object. This is an innovative garment fit for the future. It demonstrates a balance of utility and humility to the nature. Most importantly, it symbolises a return to simplicity, safety, and sustainability.
Less (Bad) Design: A Toolkit for Uncovering the Unintended Consequences of Design Solutions View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Matthew Manos
The Less (Bad) Design toolkit is a framework introduced to students in design-driven innovation classes that call for the development of new products or services intended for a diverse array of stakeholder groups. The framework includes "12 Principles For Bad Design", a series of prompting questions that challenge students to uncover the unintended consequences that may be residing behind their concepts. This framework has been used across numerous courses in the USC Iovine and Young Academy, inspiring students to dig deeper into the ethical considerations behind their designs, all within about 30 minutes. In addition to academia, as the method is now available in an open access manner, the framework has been used by nearly 1,000 practitioners across the globe to better evaluate their design work. In this innovation showcase, we examine the toolkit and its use cases within design classes.
Design for Dementia : Principles for Experiential and Environmental Design View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Maria Mortati
Our aging population is on the rise and dementia is along with it. Their needs for enrichment are profound. What might design principles look like when creating environments and experiences for this population? What practices can we bring to be to understand and evaluate their complex needs? We will share work from a years-long research and development project creating multi-sensory, real-world interactives for people living with dementia in a memory care facility. This project focused on improving the quality of life through fostering immersion and delight. We will share the evolution of standards and design principles for this realm.
You Can't Be Serious: Undoing the Myth of the Designer Through Depictions of Fun, Failure, and the Messiness of Process in Design Media View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Sean Schumacher
Most contemporary media about the field of design centers on problem solving, and voices of designers are presented in serious, often journalistic ways. The designer-client relationship, when depicted at all, is centered on conflict. Process—when it is shown at all—is heavily curated to be depicted as tidy and straightforward as possible. These depictions lead to misunderstandings about the function of design, the role of designers, and even the fundamentals of practice for students entering the field, clients, and the public at large. This session explores a different, more expansive approach to depicting graphic design practice in media as the fun, weird, failure-filled creative mess it actually is to the public as learned through a decade of design teaching practice. New media platforms like live streaming and new approaches to established media like podcasting are discussed.
Mind Space XR View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Zi Siang See, Nicole Carroll, Jack McGrath, Jamin Day, Benjamin Matthews
This research project involves the creation of MindSpace XR - an assistive technology based virtual reality (VR) simulation that supports users to experience emotion-focused skills training based around mindfulness, emotion regulation and compassion in a low-risk environment. In this study, we experiment with the interaction design process of configuring a high-fidelity nature-based virtual reality environment, ideally perceived to be easy and useful to work with by the users. Various studies by VR researchers with a focus on restorative and relaxation applications have shown positive findings in improving mental wellness, especially in the context of supporting a cohort with a physical illness or disability. We speculate that combining physical activity and exposure to digital nature can provide additional health benefits compared to therapeutic activities alone, and the prototype is to be demonstrated in the peer-reviewed Sixteenth International Conference on Design Principles and Practices. This project is supported by the RAPID grant provided by the School of Creative Industries, University of Newcastle. The main contribution and goal of this project is to achieve a platform with the flexibility to integrate new assessments and skills-training approaches for the creation process of a prototype.
Repetition Is a Form of Change: Dissipate, Regenerate, Repeat View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Brian Franklin, Ladan Bahmani
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a shift in the vocabulary that we absorb, process, and speak back into the world. The term “social distancing” and the parting words “stay safe,” among countless other idioms, quickly became familiar additions to our communal vocabulary conveying our lived experience. “Sacred Texts” engages this dialogue as an installation pairing popular pandemic phrases with vinyl-cut illuminations from ancient manuscripts to explore how repetition can participate in both the generation and the destruction of meaning. As each phrase is repeated throughout the installation, the letter-forms increasingly break apart into fields of illegible markings. The designs that surround and connect the bodies of text draw from the artists’ backgrounds, combining patterns and imagery from Persian and Irish illuminated manuscripts. While the decorative elements in the Sacred Texts installation strive to elevate the text’s self-importance with sacred cloaking, they simultaneously undermine its value with cheap digital materiality and the overt absence of a painstaking handmade process. The fields of dissolving characters prompt viewers to consider repetition itself as a medium and how this medium navigates the complexities of semantic satiation, in which repeated words lose their meaning, and the illusory truth effect, in which repeated statements construct and reinforce meaning. This tension reflects the way we filter the constant streams of information broadcast at us and questions whether this repetition helps us to remember or encourages us to forget as we block out redundancies.
