Twenty-First Century Design Scholarship

Roundtable DiscussionScholarship is a tricky thing for design academics, especially for junior faculty who are trying to build a body of work towards tenure. To stay relevant in a quickly changing field, we often fluctuate between creative practice and more traditional scholarly pursuits, all while attempting to build a cohesive dossier. At the same time, we work in an especially turbulent environment. Our institutions are under increasing pressure to define their worth and, in turn, are heightening their expectations around scholarship. The field is trying to distinguish itself (or not) from fine art, architecture, and others, muddying our dissemination outlets. Digital media is facilitating new and unproven outlets for publication. And, increasingly, the validity of our creative practice as a form of scholarship is under constant scrutiny. On top of this, we often enter academia under-prepared for the reality of serious scholarship and have to figure out what good work looks like as we go. Unlike other fields, the scholarship—and most importantly the writing—we do as graduate students does not necessarily prepare us for work as a professional academic. These factors all add up to cause many new design academics to struggle as they attempt to build a sound body of work. Luckily, we are not alone in this struggle. Our community of educators are all trying to answer the same question: what is good design scholarship in the Twenty-First Century? This roundtable will attempt to answer this question by bringing together academics with various levels of experience and from a diverse set of institutions. By opening conversation through the roundtable format, we can start to uncover the range of scholarship that is currently being done, how faculty are framing their work in dossier narratives, and how different types of work are being received by T&P committees. Each of our institutions will have its own set of standards and criteria but this discussion will start a dialog about our work that can help us all move forward as a community. One outcome of the conversation will be a plan to start an online community (via LinkedIn or a similar service) where design academics can continue the conversation about scholarship and post questions as they arise

Designing Digital Experiences: Getting started with user experience, user interface, and interaction design

Designing Digital Experiences is a one-time, full day workshop that covers the basics of designing people-centered websites and software. The processes, outcomes, and tools that are used to create digital experiences will be discussed to provide a succinct picture of the industry today. Hands-on activities will teach participants how to best utilize user insights in their designs, enable them to practice industry-relevant prototyping methods, and highlight the key differences in designing within print and digital environments

Participatory Innovation: A Pedagogical Approach To Help Students Reveal Real-World Problems

Full poster available from: [LINK]http://hdl.handle.net/1805/12144[/LINK]In the digital sector, ‘innovation’ is a frequently overused word. Entrepreneurs worldwide are trying to innovate within their market. However, the drive for innovation can blind the creators of these products, obscuring what people actually need and want to use. Countless applications struggle or outright fail because they are created without the user in mind. Digital technology can be a powerful tool in people’s everyday life but it has to be integrated in meaningful ways. Careful consideration must be placed on how these new products will integrate—and improve—life. When new products truly help people, they are more likely to resonate and succeed; this is real innovation. Everyone involved in the production of digital products—entrepreneurs, developers, and experience or visual designers (the focus of this project)—must abide by this philosophy in order for the product to be successful. Students who are preparing to be involved with the design or production of these products need to learn ways to more deeply understand their users, identify problems, and craft meaningful solutions. With this in mind, research was conducted to identify and test methods that allow students to acquire this deeper understanding. This poster will outline one pedagogical approach which utilizes participatory design methods to help students identify problems in people’s lives. For this research, visual communication design students utilized these methods in a project for the course Visual Design for the Web. An overview of the pedagogical approach, project, student outcomes, and implications for future work will be highlighted

Smarter User Interfaces

We’re all familiar with the buzzwords around “what’s coming next” in interaction design. The tech industry is bringing ubiquitous computing, wearable technology, augmented reality, and more precise sensors to the masses. Finally, the technological utopia we’ve been promised seems like it’s on its way. This is all well and good but we need to start having a more realistic conversation about how this new world will effect the visual design of user interfaces. This presentation is part of that conversation and will explore some of the opportunities and pitfalls that designers might encounter in the coming years

Designing digital experiences in 2020

Presentation at Nuts+Bolts: AIGA Design Educator's Conference. 15 June 2016. Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OHThe students entering school next Fall will likely graduate in 2020. Most of those graduates will enter the field as designers who create digital experiences—what we think of today as websites, apps, or other screen-based media. However, they will enter a media landscape that looks quite different from that of today. As the educators of these future designers, it is crucial that we understand the digital platforms of the near future and try our best to prepare them to design in these new environments. Today, many programs are still trying to figure out how to deeply integrate digital media into their curriculum. The academy rightly moves slower than industry and it has taken us several years to adjust to the new realities of digital design. In recent years, we have had some relief as designing websites and mobile applications has become much easier: our tools have improved, clear visual patterns have emerged, and interaction paradigms have matured. That said, a new wave of technologies is quickly approaching—or in some cases, already arrived—that will alter designers’ methods, processes, and outcomes in significant ways. Over the next four years, the screens we design for will multiply and diversify, virtual and augmented reality will mature, wearable and ubiquitous computing will become commonplace, and artificial intelligence will enhance or replace everyday tasks. On top of the hardware changes, security, privacy, and ethics will be ever-present forces on how designers make decisions about their work. Students cannot prepare for these environments by simply designing a few websites or apps in school. To be successful, they will require a unique set of competencies. As educators, we need to take significant steps to update and augment or curricula to prepare our students for this new world. This 20 minute talk will outline several emerging trends that will likely impact the design of digital experiences in the near future. The insights in the talk are derived from qualitative interviews with professionals, personal experiences, and an analysis of technology-centric literature. The author will unpack these trends for the audience to reveal recommendations about the core competencies that are needed to design next-generation digital experiences. From those competencies, learning objectives will be derived that educators could use to inform curricular updates

The forest and its trees: understanding interaction design through service design activities

Presentation at IxDA's Education Summit, Helsinki, Finland.Interaction design and service design have a lot in common. They both focus on improving the experience of people in real-world contexts. Service designers strategically plan the big picture of the experience while interaction designers focus on the tangible details within the user’s interaction experience. These two fields have a lot to offer one another and depend on each other to make a complete design. After all, a service experience is often a sequence of interactions that a person has with artifacts or people. For interaction designers, understanding how their work fits into the bigger picture can be of huge benefit. If the objective of an interaction designer is to assist a person in the achievement of their goals and improve their experience overall, they should widen their perspective and embrace the totality of the experience. Arguably, what happens before and after a person uses a website impacts the overall quality of their experience just as much, if not more, than the interface design elements or physical quality of animations on screen. Understanding the totality of people’s experiences needs to begin in school. Design professionals are too busy to constantly keep the macro and micro elements of the experience in mind. After all, that is why we have the distinct professions. An academic setting is an ideal space to enable interaction designers to consider a person’s broader experience and leverage that consideration into their work. In short, utilizing service design process, methods, and outcomes can improve interaction design students’ understanding of their user and, in turn, enable them to create more appropriate or innovative designs. This presentation will provide an in-depth case study on the curricular use of service design processes and methods to help interaction design students understand their own work. The course which will be discussed, titled “Designing People-Centered Experiences”, is an advanced undergraduate (senior-level) course taught at Herron School of Art and Design, Indiana University, IUPUI. This course is a preliminary, 8-week course that initiates students into their senior capstone experience. It engages the students in a discussion about the current state of the design industry, how experience design is defined and what are its parts. In total, the course teaches students how to assess user need and, with that information, design experiences from the the broad strategy to the tangible interfaces. Topics covered will include a framework for how to describe experience design activities, assignment structure for the course, examples of student deliverables, assessment techniques, and insights on how to improve the course experience moving forward

Visualizing progress: designing a people-centered Implementation Dashboard for Plan 2020

Communicating progress to stakeholders is a critical part of any project. As Plan 2020 implementation partners start to complete work leading up to Indianapolis’ bicentennial, it is critical that they share their progress with the city. This project will undertake the planning, design, and development of an online Plan 2020 Implementation Dashboard. This dashboard will be created using a people-centered design methodology that will ensure it is useful, usable, and enjoyable for all of its various users (citizens, government employees, implementation partners, and others as needed)

Exploring the curricular relationship between service experience design and interaction design

Connectivity in the contemporary networked society has required designers to shift their disciplinary focus from individual products to the entirety of human experience. The field of Experience Design (XD), pursuing an integrative flow of human experience, consisting of multiple dimensions [1],  and its subsets (interaction design, service design, spatial design, etc.) is growing in both size and complexity. Experience designers are starting to influence an ever-increasing scope of problem spaces. To be successful in today's experience design practice, designers must simultaneously approach problems from a broad, system level and a micro, tangible level and produce strategic design solutions. This work frequently involves the integration of many interconnected deliverables. Being influenced by cultural and social understandings of design, students tend to regard design as what they will make. This perception, with heavy focus on the solution phase in designing, causes a fragmented view in design education. In order to expand students’ integrative understanding of design, we have introduced a framework that is based on the tiers of human experience when engaging with design. We reflect on our experience from this experiment and discuss its values in student learning

The Work/Life Portal: An Innovative Navigation Tool for Faculty Benefits & Policies

Project Benefits and policies of large academic medical centers can be challenging for faculty to navigate. A recent survey of faculty at our institution reported large gaps in their knowledge about and use of benefits and policies related to career flexibility. For example, nearly half of our faculty didn’t know about clock stoppage policies and expressed concern about how polices were communicated. Thus, the goal of this project was to develop a web-based solution to clearly convey work life benefits and policies. Methods In partnership with our school of art and design, a two-phase project was developed to design a new web portal for benefits/policies. In phase one, we conducted qualitative, usability testing of current web and print resources with the goal of further explaining the survey results. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with new and veteran faculty, as well as campus HR staff. They reviewed the current resources; provided feedback on what was unclear or hard to find; and finished by drawing their “dream website.” Results In phase two, the team used the design-thinking methodology to develop a prototype of the website. After systematically testing ideas, the team settled on a modified natural language user interface, where a faculty member types in a question or idea (e.g. “I’m having a baby”) and a series of policies is returned, associated with keywords within the question. The simple design of the interface allows faculty affairs office staff to assign word tags to policies/benefits that may appear in the user’s questions. A free online tool (http://wordpress.org) was used to create the portal. Conclusion The new portal allows our institution to create a clear online presence for work life benefits and policies, demonstrating our institutional commitment to supporting faculty. At the same time, the program uses resources efficiently. The only expenses incurred have been faculty and staff time to conduct the study and develop the portal. Implications While the portal is still in development, it demonstrates a promising shift in how faculty affairs offices can collaborate with faculty and internal partners. By designing and testing ideas with faculty and HR professionals, we created buy-in for the project early on. These individuals have the potential to become early adopters of the new portal, sharing their positive experiences with others

The Feasibility of a Using a Smart Button Mobile Health System to Self-Track Medication Adherence and Deliver Tailored Short Message Service Text Message Feedback

BACKGROUND: As many as 50% of people experience medication nonadherence, yet studies for detecting nonadherence and delivering real-time interventions to improve adherence are lacking. Mobile health (mHealth) technologies show promise to track and support medication adherence. OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of using an mHealth system for medication adherence tracking and intervention delivery. The mHealth system comprises a smart button device to self-track medication taking, a companion smartphone app, a computer algorithm used to determine adherence and then deliver a standard or tailored SMS (short message service) text message on the basis of timing of medication taking. Standard SMS text messages indicated that the smartphone app registered the button press, whereas tailored SMS text messages encouraged habit formation and systems thinking on the basis of the timing the medications were taken. METHODS: A convenience sample of 5 adults with chronic kidney disease (CKD), who were prescribed antihypertensive medication, participated in a 52-day longitudinal study. The study was conducted in 3 phases, with a standard SMS text message sent in phases 1 (study days 1-14) and 3 (study days 46-52) and tailored SMS text messages sent during phase 2 (study days 15-45) in response to participant medication self-tracking. Medication adherence was measured using: (1) the smart button and (2) electronic medication monitoring caps. Concordance between these 2 methods was evaluated using percentage of measurements made on the same day and occurring within ±5 min of one another. Acceptability was evaluated using qualitative feedback from participants. RESULTS: A total of 5 patients with CKD, stages 1-4, were enrolled in the study, with the majority being men (60%), white (80%), and Hispanic/Latino (40%) of middle age (52.6 years, SD 22.49; range 20-70). The mHealth system was successfully initiated in the clinic setting for all enrolled participants. Of the expected 260 data points, 36.5% (n=95) were recorded with the smart button and 76.2% (n=198) with electronic monitoring. Concordant events (n=94), in which events were recorded with both the smart button and electronic monitoring, occurred 47% of the time and 58% of these events occurred within ±5 min of one another. Participant comments suggested SMS text messages were encouraging. CONCLUSIONS: It was feasible to recruit participants in the clinic setting for an mHealth study, and our system was successfully initiated for all enrolled participants. The smart button is an innovative way to self-report adherence data, including date and timing of medication taking, which were not previously available from measures that rely on recall of adherence. Although the selected smart button had poor concordance with electronic monitoring caps, participants were willing to use it to self-track medication adherence, and they found the mHealth system acceptable to use in most cases