Digital Commons Network^™

Ankara 2019: Insider Knowledge, Naz A.G.Z. Börekçi, Fatma Korkut, Dalsu Özgen Koçyıldırım

Learn X Design Conference Series

The fifth conference of the Learn X Design series, DRSLXD2019, was held in Ankara between 9-12 July 2019, hosted by Middle East Technical University (METU).

From Eyes To Ears How To Deal With The Acoustic Element ‘Voice’ As A Visual Designer, Daniela Hensel, Birgit Bauer, Stefanie Voß

Learn X Design Conference Series

As part of the ‘software evolution’ (Mens, 2008), acoustic rather than visual interfaces are increasingly developing into the decisive contact point in the interaction between the product or service and the user. Voices, ‘VUI’s, play an important role the design of communication, yet communication designers are not yet firmly established in this field and, for example, the process of voice selection is often described as a particular hurdle especially when the selection needs to align with strategic parameters of a brand. This raises several questions: What role can communication designers play in the future in the complex field of designing …

Framing Research Assistants’ Pedagogical Roles In Design Studio Courses: Initial Findings, Koray Gelmez, Pelin Efilti, Enver Tatlısu, Tuğçe Ecem Tüfek, Onur Yılmaz

Learn X Design Conference Series

Participants of a design studio regardless of the titles and responsibilities apparently influence both teaching and learning processes. Even though it is possible to find several studies focusing on design teachers and design students, scholars have been silent to investigate the teaching activities of research/teaching assistants in a design studio course context. This study is an attempt to understand and frame the perceived pedagogical roles of research assistants in design studio courses. In this sense, we designed a survey addressing in-studio roles and responsibilities, the relations with the instructors, the effects on the student learning process, the factors shaping pedagogical …

Transformative Teaching Practice Through A Design Thinking Approach In Social Settings: A Reflection On The Delivery Of A Design Research Methods Module In A Graphic Design Programme At Undergraduate Level, Janey Deng Klingelfuss, Markus Klingelfuss

Learn X Design Conference Series

An acknowledgement of the transformative nature of education; one in which design educators are seen as active agents of change, is not new. However, acknowledging the importance of such a phenomenon is fundamental to exploring academic practice in design education. In relation to social contexts and transformations, meeting stakeholders’ needs is increasingly significant to how universities set out graduate options and outcomes for students. Higher education is expected to play a key role in developing the multiple skills and capacities of design and creative subject students for future work in the creative and cultural industries (Ashton, 2017; Naudin, 2013; Nesta, …

Preparing To Introduce Design Thinking In Middle Schools, Michael Robert Gibson, Keith Michael Owens, Peter Hyland, Christina Donaldson

Learn X Design Conference Series

This case study critically analyses and describes knowledge gained and understandings constructed by a team of university-based design educators and researchers who engaged in the planning necessary to begin introducing specific aspects of design thinking in middle school classrooms in an Texas city of more than 140,000. (Middle schools in the U.S. typically educate students aged 11 to 14 years.) This piece articulates key insights about how and why the introduction of design thinking should be collaboratively and strategically planned if it is to function as an effective augmentation of a college preparatory curricula, and the learning experiences that constitute …

Problems In The Reform Of Design Teaching And Solutions :Taking Shandong University Of Art And Design As An Example, Lei Sun

Learn X Design Conference Series

This article takes the teaching reform of the undergraduate program in Shandong University of Art & Design as a case for study. Through surveys with students, teachers, and employers, it finds out three core challenges faced by the design majors, and proposes three correspondent solutions, namely to use “aptitude-based teaching to cultivate talents”, “learning-assisted teaching to classify the teaching system”, and “learning-promoted teaching to innovate lectures”, which lead to a philosophy for the reform, where student’s development is regarded as the very foundation of all learning, and their achievement as the orientation of all work. This article analyses the common …

Exploring The Experiential Reading Differences Between Visual And Written Research Papers, Bryan Howell, Asa Jackson, Henry Lee, Julienne Devita, Rebekah Rawlings

Learn X Design Conference Series

Visual or pictorial research papers have emerged in recent years in academic conferences as a non-written archival contribution. Dual Coding Theory teaches us that visual knowledge is distinct from written knowledge and is arguably a universal language (Dreyfuss, 1984), with the ability to communicate complex ideas with clarity, precision, and efficiency (Tufte, 2001). This study explores the reading experience differences between a visual and written research paper containing identical content from design, engineering, and business disciplines. Reading experiences were assessed using a ‘think, feel, and do’ survey, and comprehension was assessed with a quiz. Participants tracked time spent reading and …

Designing Criteria For Developing Educational Multimedia Games, Chaitanya Solanki, Deepak John Mathew

Learn X Design Conference Series

Increasing research is being done into the relationship between learning and games in recent years. Player engagement and intrinsic/extrinsic motivation have shown to be pertinent in improving the quality of knowledge retention in game-based learning environments. Similarly, the use of multimedia in game-based learning environments has also shown to have significant potential for effective learning; however, it is unclear whether a generalized criterion can be designed for it. This work presents a review of theories and guidelines that pertain to learning environments, game design, and multimedia learning, in an effort to distill the key elements which can help develop design …

It’S The Cultural Difference That Makes The Difference: International Collaboration In Multidiscipline, Transcultural, Design Pedagogy, Clive Hilton, Muxing Gao, Rong Wei

Learn X Design Conference Series

For three years, the Communication University of Zhejiang (CUZ), China, and Coventry University (CU), UK, have been collaborating in an annual project that sees multidisciplinary, transcultural groups of undergraduate and postgraduate design students engaging in projects that help prepare them for future employment as culturally aware global designers. Its focus is on an enhanced under-standing of the importance of cultural dimensions, research led collaboration, and the need for em-pathetic, coordinated communication. In these accelerated, Collaborative Online International Learn-ing (COIL) projects, the students self-direct their actions to rapidly break down initial inhibitions in becoming effective, creative problem solvers who, by the …

Assessment Of Ideation Effectiveness In Design Thinking: The Impact Of Morphological Analysis In The Process Of Creative Problem Solving, Farzaneh Eftekhari, Mohammad Jahanbakht, Farnoosh Sharbafi

Learn X Design Conference Series

Creative problem solving (CPS) emerged as a critical soft skill for students, yet the evaluation and effectiveness of the CPS methods is not fully understood. This study examined the ideation effectiveness of junior design students. Students are asked to ideate for a complex challenge, a 1000-floor elevator in two phases, with a morphological analysis (MA) method introduced to them as an intervention after the first phase. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the MA method in the students’ ideation process and their creative thinking by using four measures of novelty, quality, quantity, and variety using the quantitative and qualitative methods. …

Between Yarn And Electrons: A Method For Designing Textural Expressions In Electromagnetic Smart Textiles, Erin Lewis

Nordes Conference Series

The design of smart textiles presents a discrepancy of scale where the designer works at the level of structural textile design while facets of the material express at scales beyond one’s senses. Without methods to narrow this gap, certain expressional domains of the textile are closed off from design possibilities. The aim of the research has been to design a method for observing, visualizing, and describing expressions of electromagnetism in textiles. Through a method of textile surface scanning, one can produce a visualization of its electromagnetic field. Woven textile samples observed through this method reveal a textural quality that exists …

Scaling Up Diversity And Inclusion: From Classroom To Municipality, Annukka Svanda, Martina Čaić, Tuuli Mattelmäki

Nordes Conference Series

This paper investigates opportunities for scaling up the diversity and inclusion of international residents at the level of municipality service offerings. The starting point is a set of small-scale service design projects actively involving municipal representatives and university students. This collaboration was part of a service design course at Aalto University addressing challenges faced by the municipality of Espoo, Finland. Through triangulation of three data sources i) precourse meetings, ii) email surveys during the course, and iii) semi-structured interviews with participating municipal representatives after the course, this paper offers insights on how smallscale service design collaborations can facilitate the scaling …

Flip, Split Or Extend – Helping ‘Mum And Dad Developers’ Navigate Housing Design Processes, Nicholas Temov

ServDes Conference Series

How do we apply service design theories to improve the way ‘mum and dad developers’ navigate housing design processes to achieve more liveable house designs in Australia's middle-ring suburbs?

With over 300,000 people migrating to Australia’s capital cities in 2018/19 alone (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020), there is pressure on our middle ring suburbs to house many of these people. Joining established architects and building designers are ‘mum and dad developers’ who are inspired by their family, friends and reality TV to ‘have a go’ at developing their own land – either by building in their backyard or replacing a …

Synergy Through Making: Co-Designing With Educational Stakeholders In Northeastern Nigeria, Gretchen Caldwell Rinnert, Kathleen Campana, Marianne Martens, Davison Mupinga, Joanne Caniglia, Grace Malgwi, Tsukuru Kamiyama, Allyson Filippi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Nigerian educational statistics reflect a country in crisis. Several factors drive this trend: early marriages; poorly-trained and underpaid teachers; and extensive armed conflicts. This paper describes a collaboration between three universities on a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) grant-funded project to intervene in this crisis. Focusing on the educational system in two states, the project aims to improve educational materials and teaching strategies in 200 schools. Our research team employs a co-design methodology informed by the “co-creation” work of Sanders and Stappers (2008), Druin’s (1999, 2002, 2005) work on “cooperative inquiry,” and Martens, Rinnert, and Andersen’s (2018)’s work …

Multidisciplinary Design Collaboration In The Lenses Of Cscw And Current Technology Enablement, Mimi Nguyen, Céline Mougenot

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper aims to better understand team dynamic aspects in multidisciplinary design collaboration in reference to the CSCW discourse. We present an exploratory literature review and co-occurrence analysis of emerged themes from the studies. Then, we juxtapose the findings with technology-enabled tools suggested for CSCW. Finally, we review the industry relevance of the proposed tools. To illustrate our recommendation for future research, we discuss and suggest a matrix evaluating existing collaborative systems based on the identified team dynamics aspects. We identified two critical aspects, that are vulnerable in the digital channels: shared understanding and trust. The results allow us to …

Over The Rainbow: Sharing A Cross-Disciplinary Philosophy Of Waste Through Spectrum Visualisation, Manuela Taboada, Alice Payne

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Waste is a material problem and a cultural condition. Many philosophies and visualisation resources exist for addressing waste such as waste hierarchies and circular economy diagrams. These diagrams, however, are not always enough to represent the intrinsic complexities related to waste systems or the interactions that exist between current and potential interventions. In this paper we contribute an original framework for understanding waste and propose a visualisation of waste as a spectrum of possibilities rather than as a series of discrete, disconnected interventions. The Waste Rainbow invites users to “plot” interventions and to think about these interventions and their relationships …

Drs2020 Editorial: Theme Education, Rebecca Cain, Stella Boess

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The theme of Design Education always attracts a great number of submissions at DRS conferences, and this year is no different. The call for papers asked for contributions which explored how design education is changing and needs to change, and how working designers and design researchers update their skills to meet the challenges of the present and the future.

Whiteness In Design Practice: The Need To Prioritize Process Over Artefact., Meghan Kelly

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article will interrogate the issues associated with non-Indigenous designers working with Indigenous knowledges in commercial design practice. It will analyze the position of ‘whiteness’ to appreciate the ongoing impact of colonialism on Indigenous representation and identity creation. The article attests there are times when non-Indigenous input into design outcomes is not suitable. However, if non-Indigenous engagement in the design process offers benefit to Indigenous stakeholders, the International Indigenous Design Charter serves as a guiding document on the best practices to follow. There is still a concern that regardless of the extensive consultation, strong industry support and the best intentions …

Auckland Plan 2050: Rethinking The Future Of Design Education In Aotearoa New Zealand, Tatiana Antunes Tavares, Marcos Mortensen Steagall

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper describes a Social Design student’s project conducted during 12 weeks in a Communication Design degree in Aotearoa New Zealand. The project employed a studio-driven educational structure that integrates social, technical and cognitive dimensions of knowledge construction. In this sense, the aim of this paper is to present our experience in order to shed light about Social Design as a context for studio activities in Design teaching. The brief employed a pragmatic framework to problem-solving to develop design outcomes capable of impacting local and global society. As a result, there was increased student engagement within the paper, a fact …

Social Media Research And The Impact Of Graphic Design: A Case Study Examining An Indonesian Political Campaign., Fanny Marcellina Suhendra, Nicole Wragg, Carolyn Barnes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Outside imagery, graphic design is largely invisible to the research fields most interested in communication campaigns, seeing negligible research conducted from a design perspective. In an era of participatory culture, social media analytics offer new ways of quantifying audience engagement, but the blurring of the boundaries between producers, consumption and audiences through the phenomenon of ‘produsage’ offers richer, more contextualised insights into the impact of the designed aspects of campaigns. In examining Berakar Komunikasi’s campaign supporting the 2014 and 2019 election bids of Indonesia’s President Jokowi Widodo, our paper examines how qualitative social media research offers fine-grained insights into the …

Enhancing The Student Learning Experience Through Engagement With Community: A Transdisciplinary And Collaborative Approach To Wil, Petra Perolini, Naomi Hay

DRS Biennial Conference Series

LiveSpace is a transdisciplinary work-integrated learning (WIL) design studio unit at Griffith University. The studio has worked on a broad spectrum of community engagement projects from its inception in 2014. Design staff mentor students in a scaffolded WIL environment allowing for authentic engagement with community, industry, government and not-for-profit groups for an enhanced student learning experience. As such, collaborative approaches to live projects are examined for potential benefits to learning and teaching, student engagement, and to the wider community. This paper provides an overview of the studio, outlines the team development phase and participant involvement, highlights two highly successful community …

Transforming A Public School: A Case Study Of Tongji-Huangpu School Of Design And Innovation And Its Search For Synergy, Yubei Gong, Yongqi Lou

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In response to the changes of technological and sociological landscape, education policies and experiments are emerging globally. Tongji-Huangpu School of Design and Innovation (THDI) is a newly reformed educational institution in China. It operates in the Chinese public education system and is designed to model 21st-century learning practices by applying a design thinking (DT) methodology and problem/project-based learning (PBL) pedagogy. This case study gives an overview of the school, outlines the practice of the past 27 months since its establishment and elaborates the tensions during transition phases. Synergy, the concept of the whole being greater than the sum of its …

Toward Deeper Understandings Of The Cognitive Role Of Visual Metaphors In Emerging Media Art Practices, Kyungho Lee

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In this paper, we explored the role and impact of a visual metaphor and the metaphoric-thinking process in emerging media art practices. We also examined how designers can leverage the metaphoric-thinking process to empirically create a visual metaphor. Our primary focus was to explore what kinds of design considerations are involved and what types of cognitive operations are performed to support designers as they create visual metaphors. By employing a critical analysis method, we probe how participants used metaphors to leverage their prior knowledge, expertise and experience when creating visual metaphors from an information-processing perspective using a cognitive task analysis …

Processes That Cause Invisibility For Women In Australian Graphic Design., Jane Connory

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Graphic designers are generally invisible as the authors of their own work. A deliberate effort must be made in order for them to be seen and acknowledged. The collaborative nature of design, associations with clients, and the involvement of production teams further hinders an individual graphic designer’s visible authorship. However, gender also has a major influence on the invisibility of women in the history of this industry. Historically, the most celebrated practising graphic designers in Australia have been men, as evidenced by their overwhelming presence in books and on Hall of Fame platforms. My research has explored and addressed the …

Exploring Transdisciplinary Learning And Lifelong Training In Visual Communication Design Education, Jesvin Puay-Hwa Yeo, Chua-Tee Teo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The paper seeks to discuss how visual communication design education could be improved by incorporating transdisciplinary learning within design curriculum and providing lifelong training to professional designers and design educators. A review of literature indicates that design education needs to be adapted to allow future designers to solve the gradually complex design problems and work in non-design industries. In fact, design education needs to extend design knowledge to non-design disciplines to enable more people to generate innovation to work-related problems. On this basis, it is recommended that design education should offer graphic designers the opportunity to master skills and knowledge …

Visual Representations Of Taiwanese Endemic Bird Species On Digital Media, Chia-Yin Yu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study investigated the aptness of digital-media visual representations of Taiwanese endemic bird species. First, expert interviews were conducted to obtain crucial graphic design-related bird features. Second, we applied graphic rendering and overall-conformation extraction to three stylizations—2D design and color block, 2D design and gradation, and stereoscopic effect and gradation. Degrees of similarity were tested, involving 239 participants aged 20–45. The results showed that (1) the crucial features in bird-related graphic design are body-part color, overall tone, the conformation of individual body parts, overall contour and style, and wing color. (2) Graphic designs based on the 2D design and color …

The Hfg Ulm And Sustainable Design: A Comparative Analysis, Carolina Short, Tomas Garcia Ferrari

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article presents a comparative analysis between ideas of the HfG Ulm and the contemporary understanding of Sustainable Design. The Ulmer institution, through an innovative curriculum, an articulated discourse and a significant set of projects, manifested an avant la lettre awareness of social and environmental issues. Through a series of case studies, the research looks at the School’s approach to design problems, focusing on the design for transportation and systems. The purpose is to identify whether the concepts of Sustainable Design were present in these earlier developments. Considering the impact of its legacy, we propose the HfG as a predecessor …

Supporting People With Dementia- Understanding Their Interactions With Mixed Reality Technologies, Shital Desai, Alethea Blackler, Deborah Fels, Arlene Astell

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Emerging technologies such as Mixed Reality Technologies (MRTs) could offer possibilities to support People with Dementia (PWD). This study examined interactions of PWD with two MRTs - HoloLens and Osmo. Ten participants (MoCA = 18 to 23, Age= 63 to 88 years) played a game of Tangram on Osmo. Six of these participants played Young Conker on HoloLens. The study found that PWD used gestural actions in the physical world more correctly than speech. Audio prompts in human voice were more correctly perceived than visual prompts. Physical affordances, embodied actions and familiarity to verbal instructions contribute to this success. Visual …

The Graduate Professional Portfolio As “Synergy Tool”: Navigating The Complex Role Of Portfolios In Future-Focused Design Education, Deanna Meth, Melanie Finger, Dean Brough

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Development of a new design curriculum at Queensland University of Technology prompted a study to revisit the nature and purpose of portfolios. Always integral to design disciplines, more widely there has been rapid growth of portfolio use for student learning, assessment and showcase, with technological advancements adding impetus for these to move online. This aligns to pedagogic shifts linked to authentic learning, graduate employability, and fostering twenty-first century graduate capabilities such as collaboration and communication. Research findings conceptualise a Graduate Professional Portfolio as a living, digital “universal archive” for students’ storage, presentation of, and reflection on design processes and outputs, …

Fixperts: Models, Learning And Social Contexts, Paul Micklethwaite, Daniel Charny, Maya Alvarado, Julia Cassim, Yumei Dong, Ian De Vere

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Fixperts is a learner-centred, creative-problem-solving and project-based learning programme. In a Fixperts project, participants (Fixperts) team-up with an insight provider (Fix Partner) to identify a daily problem in the Fix Partner’s life that becomes the focus of a project aimed at delivering a solution or Fix. This paper introduces four pedagogic models developed via delivery of Fixperts projects at leading international design universities. It presents four approaches to the challenge of moving from the Person, to the Problem, to the Fix. These four models – Primary, Partnerships, Community, Public - represent the evolution of the Fixperts framework to better enable …