MDXPD Magazine 2021

#MDXPD WELCOME “...bringing people and technology together (in meaningful ways) to create useful stuff and things.” Welcome, everyone, to our 7th Annual #MDXPD Magazine. Our 2020-21 academic year was dominated by the ongoing COVID pandemic. It has been a time of sadness and of difficulty, but also of innovation and inspiration. The creativity, compassion and resilience of our students and staff through this period shines through in the stories we feature in this issue of the magazine. We have continued to be lucky, in this period of fear, uncertainty and upheaval, to work and learn within an enlightened institution. The institutional ethos was captured by their statement of principles for staff and students at the beginning of the COVID crisis (see pages 03-04 of #MDXPD 2020 Magazine). This supportive framework continues to enable us to approach design and engineering within our philosophy that leads with insight, understanding and empathy, and values collaborative creativity and human and ecology centred innovation. Everything continued to change. And our students and staff confronted the changes with energy, dignity and support for one another. The staff and student co-design of the Product Design and Product Design Engineering structure, content and approach, highlighted in last year’s magazine remained a huge positive in developing our teaching and learning in the online space, through to hybrid live/online approaches and back towards fully live, digitally supplemented experiences for the approaching academic year. The focus on collaborative practice, studio ‘environments’ and team teaching, rather than traditional lecture-based approaches that was recreated in our 2020-21 ‘virtual studio’ practice, ensured that the hands-on and peer-supported experience was retained and refined in a positive and meaningful way. There were challenges during this period and in the coming return to live activity, but the creative and collaborative mindset of all staff and students surmounted the challenges, and we are optimistic that the new challenges will be equally well resolved. This year’s magazine contains our usual mix of inspirational final year major projects, staff and student stories and projects from across the year, alongside three special features: reflections on Teaching & Learning throughout COVID (see pages 3-16); ‘5 Years On’ reviews and reflections from our 2016 graduates on life in industry & at MDXPD (see pages 29-54); and a comprehensive collection of insights and advices from industry on Design Portfolios (see pages 75-105). Good luck to all our brilliant graduates for the future. Welcome to all our new students. Take care of yourselves & best wishes to all readers of the magazine

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

Columns Spring 2022

Features information about elder care, Southern Adventist University\u27s arboretum, and the importance of internships.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/alumni_newsletter/1189/thumbnail.jp

User experience in cross-cultural contexts

This dissertation discusses how interdisciplinary UX teams can consider culturally sensitive design elements during the UX design process. It contributes a state-of-the-art meta review on UX evaluation methods, two software tool artifacts for cross-functional UX teams, and empirical insights in the differing usage behaviors of a website plug-in of French, German and Italian users, website design preferences of Vietnamese and German users, as well as learnings from a field trip that focused on studying privacy and personalization in Mumbai, India. Finally, based on these empirical insights, this work introduces the concept culturally sensitive design that goes beyond traditional cross-cultural design considerations in HCI that do not compare different approaches to consider culturally sensitive product aspects in user research

NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition

What is on the five-year horizon for academic and research libraries? Which trends and technology developments will drive transformation? What are the critical challenges and how can we strategize solutions? These questions regarding technology adoption and educational change steered the discussions of 77 experts to produce the NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition, in partnership with the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Chur, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), ETH Library, and the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six developments in technology profiled in this report are poised to impact library strategies, operations, and services with regards to learning, creative inquiry, research, and information management. The three sections of this report constitute a reference and technology planning guide for librarians, library leaders, library staff, policymakers, and technologists

I Think There Is a Place for Small Programs: Advocating, Implementing, and Sustaining TPC Programs in Small US Institutions

Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) programs in small institutions compose of over a third of all programs in the US, yet this space has been understudied by most scholars. To fill this gap, this dissertation presents findings from one-hour interviews with twenty-six TPC program directors in small US institutions with undergraduate populations of less than six thousand. The results of this dissertation include the ways that small institutions are advocating, implementing, and sustaining their TPC program in unique ways with implications for how any TPC programs regardless of size can learn from these findings

2022 NSU Fact Book

The 30th edition of the Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Fact Book provides perspective on the university’s character, growth, and accomplishments. The 2022 Fact Book includes narrative, numeric, and graphic representation of the university, including history, characteristics, and development of the institution. Data are presented in both tabular and graphic formats to provide pertinent detail, and general trends are highlighted. Like all previous editions of the Fact Book, this edition is a snapshot of the university during the academic year that concludes in the year of its publication. Therefore, the 2022 Fact Book represents NSU from fall 2021 through spring 2022, unless otherwise noted.https://nsuworks.nova.edu/nsudigital_factbook/1031/thumbnail.jp

RISD XYZ Spring/Summer 2014: Natural Instincts | Full Issue

As ANIMALS, WE\u27RE ALL PART OF NATURE, sharing DNA with fish, trees, rocks—everything that came to be with the big bang. We’re also dependent on nature for everything: water, oxygen, food, life. And as the animals currently at the top of the food chain, we’re responsible for respecting and caring for it, too... So what do we do when faced with both the fury and fragility of nature? Do we shrug it off, thinking: “the planet is ruined and we’re screwed,” as Associate Professor Damian White asks (page 52)? Or do we take science seriously and recognize that whatever we do to the earth we do to ourselves? This is just the tip of the iceberg fueling a resurgence of interest among RISD artists and designers who are grappling with matters of human folly, sustainability, global warming and more... . From the editor\u27s message by Liisa Silanderhttps://digitalcommons.risd.edu/risdxyz_springsummer2014/1004/thumbnail.jp