“Scaling Up” and Adapting to Crisis: Shifting a Residential UX Studio Program Online

Our undergraduate UX program at Purdue University launched in 2016 as one of the first UX-focused undergraduate degree programs in the United States, intentionally designed to support the unique characteristics of a residential, research-intensive, land-grant institution. We designed multiple overlapping studio experiences that formed multiple connections among cohorts, supporting mentorship, cognitive apprenticeship, the construction of social bonds, and reflection on one’s own development as a designer. Our program was experiencing quick growth, with our cohort size growing from 20 students in 2016 to 50 students in 2021. With the onset of pandemic restrictions, the challenges of “scaling up” and the challenges of building a virtual studio pedagogy thus met. Our “hidden curriculum” of peer feedback and tacit learning, critique as a means of socialization and feedback, emancipation of the self, and allowance for identity formation pointed towards studio properties that were central to our pedagogy and needed to be reformulated or rethought. I describe the resulting “dimensions of crisis” that impacted our pedagogy and practice, the new supports for studio learning practices that we designed, and how these changes may lead to lasting changes to our residential program once the restrictions of the pandemic subside

Externalizing Normativity in Design Reviews: Inscribing Design Values in Designed Artifacts

The design community has discussed issues of ethics and values for decades, but less attention has been paid to the question of how an ethical sensibility might be developed or taken on by design students. In this analysis, we explore how normative concerns emerge through the process of design reviews—where a developing designer’s normative infrastructure is engaged with the artifact they are designing. We focused on the normative concerns that were foregrounded by two undergraduate and two graduate industrial design students across a series of five design reviews, addressing the possible relationship between the emergence of normative concerns and the inscription of norms in the final designed artifact. We used several critical qualitative techniques, including sequence analysis and meaning reconstruction to locate areas where normative concerns were addressed. Normative concerns only arose in explicit form in the earliest review sessions on the graduate level, if they were going to arise at all, and end-user research appeared to be the primary mechanism for introducing norms into the design process. Neither instructor actively engaged or foregrounded the normative infrastructure of the design students, and all of the normative concerns discussed in the four cases were brought to the conversation by students. Implications for including awareness of normative concerns as part of a student’s developing design character are considered as part of a systemic approach to ethics and values in design education

Higher order thinking in design reviews

In this study we have grappled with how higher order thinking emerges in early stage design reviews, using an undergraduate dyadic review and a graduate review in a small group setting. Narratives, gambits and justifications emerged through a content analysis as forms of higher order thinking common in the reviews. We then mapped these reviews onto common frames of reference employed by teachers and students. Results depicted stark differences in the linguistic routines of the two teachers and two different sets of students. Each focused their higher order thinking from a primarily different frame of reference. Conclusions relate to opportunistic teaching strategies and the instructional tensions that the design review poses as a method for teaching the linguistic routines of the design review to early stage designers

Integrating Liberal Education Perspectives in a Transdisciplinary Design Studio

Short Abstract: In this presentation, we describe the evolution of our approach to integrating liberal education perspectives within an innovative transdisciplinary learning program. Our experiences are used to illustrate challenges in systematically incorporating liberal education perspectives, including instructional and student barriers to viewing the world from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Full Abstract: The increasing complexity of design outcomes requires students to develop deep competence in communication and interpersonal skills, including an understanding of how technology is intertwined with societal and human needs. Locating and synthesizing information is crucial to solving interesting and worthwhile problems, but may not be obvious from a solely technical or solely humanities perspective. However, there is relatively little guidance as to how liberal education perspectives might be systematically integrated. In this presentation, we describe the evolution of our approach to integrating liberal education perspectives within an innovative transdisciplinary learning program located at the Purdue Polytechnic Institute. This evolution has included a merger of existing courses, a dual-strand seminar and studio learning experience, and most recently, an integrated studio experience that encapsulates a multiplicity of disciplinary perspectives from liberal education and technology. Our program design experiences are used to illustrate the challenges in systematically incorporating liberal education perspectives in a transdisciplinary learning environment, and the instructional and student barriers to viewing the world through multiple lenses from a variety of disciplinary perspectives

Factors That Shape Design Thinking

A wide range of design literature discusses the role of the studio and its related pedagogy in the development of design thinking. Scholars in a variety of design disciplines pose a number of factors that potentially affect this development process, but a full understanding of these factors as experienced from a critical pedagogy or student perspective is lacking. In this study, the experiences of six first-year design students were examined as they evolved in their conceptions of design. Data was collected during a series of three interviews. Analysis of data confirmed and recontextualized factors identified in the literature. Additional factors relating to group work, culture shock, critique, individual versus group identity, and the design influence of professors, mentors, and curricula are identified and reported. Opportunities for future research are identified

Transforming User Experience Design Education Through Integrated Learning

Short Abstract: We introduce the program design of a new studio-based undergraduate program in User Experience (UX) Design. The program includes several curricular innovations, such as an integrated studio pedagogy in which six topical strands are interwoven across two types of studios, spanning five semesters of the undergraduate experience. Full Abstract: The rapid growth of the UX design profession has led to an increased need for qualified practitioners and a proliferation of UX educational programs offered in both academia and industry. In this presentation, we introduce the program design of a new studio-based undergraduate program in UX—the first of its kind at a large, research-intensive US university. The program includes several curricular innovations, such as an integrated studio pedagogy in which six topical strands are interwoven across two types of studios. These studios are interconnected and span five semesters of the undergraduate experience. We present the curriculum model and the foundational principles that informed its design. We describe the two types of studios and their interconnection, and present early evaluation data showing that students are building valuable skills

Editorial: Ethics, Values, and Designer Responsibility

As we rely upon increasingly complex sociotechnical systems to support ourselves and, by extension, the structures of society, it becomes yet more important to consider how ethics and values intertwine in design activity. Numerous methods that address issues related to ethics and value-centeredness in design activity exist, but it is unclear what role the design research and practice communities should play in shaping the future of these design approaches. Importantly, how might researchers and practitioners become more aware of the normative assumptions that underlie both their design activity and the design artifacts that result

Introduction to the Student Design Case SLAM

At the 2016 Association for Educational Communications and Technology Convention in Las Vegas, the IJDL editorial team hosted a Student Design Case SLAM. The focus of the one-day workshop was to engage graduate students in writing a publishable design case. Nine graduate students participated in the Design Case SLAM. Each graduate student brought the beginnings of a design case. Students were assigned to groups of three and assigned to an editor. Editors provided design case prompts and students completed free writing exercises which included feedback from the editor and group members

Dark Patterns and the Legal Requirements of Consent Banners: An Interaction Criticism Perspective

User engagement with data privacy and security through consent banners has become a ubiquitous part of interacting with internet services. While previous work has addressed consent banners from either interaction design, legal, and ethics-focused perspectives, little research addresses the connections among multiple disciplinary approaches, including tensions and opportunities that transcend disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we draw together perspectives and commentary from HCI, design, privacy and data protection, and legal research communities, using the language and strategies of "dark patterns" to perform an interaction criticism reading of three different types of consent banners. Our analysis builds upon designer, interface, user, and social context lenses to raise tensions and synergies that arise together in complex, contingent, and conflicting ways in the act of designing consent banners. We conclude with opportunities for transdisciplinary dialogue across legal, ethical, computer science, and interactive systems scholarship to translate matters of ethical concern into public policy.Comment: 18 page