Design for Social Change: A Pedagogical Approach to Prepare Students for Human-centered Design Practice

poster abstractThe discipline of design is changing. Today more than ever, there is a growing need for designers to utilize their skills, methods and processes to address complex social challenges. In order to be prepared for this evolving landscape, designers of today must value and carry out a human-centered approach—putting the needs and concerns of people first—and shape design activities that enable and empower people to express, make, evaluate and collaborate in order to creatively solve problems and develop meaningful solutions. Today, design students are being required to expand their skill sets to include design facilitation, and a deep understanding of practicing human-centered, participatory design. Due to this shift in mindset and approach for social innovation, the design education community must be continuously seeking ways to teach these emerging skill sets and provide learning experiences that prepare students to be successful in today’s professional design context. With this focus, research was conducted to shape a process and approach for allowing students to work in real contexts with real people, and build new skills for designing for social change. This poster will describe a pedagogical approach that utilizes a human-centered process to help students select, develop and deploy participatory design methods in order to identify and frame social challenges. In addition, this approach teaches students to collaborate with stakeholders while generating, prototyping and evaluating solutions to those challenges. For this research, visual communication design students engaged in this process for a social design project in their senior-level studio course, VC5: Design Methods for Innovation. The pedagogical approach, process, project outline, student outcomes, and challenges/implications for future research will be highlighted

Growing NearWest: An Urban Community Gardens Pilot Project

This is the story of the collaboration between Junior and Senior Visual Communication Design students, representatives from IUPUI’s Office of Neighborhood Partnerships and residents from four Near Westside neighborhoods in Indianapolis to develop, design and facilitate the creation of The Growing NearWest Urban Community Gardens Pilot Project: four distinct urban gardens in each of the four neighborhoods, creating a unique opportunity to foster community engagement, capitalize on existing assets, and build community capacity to address food access issues. The Near Westside needed help in envisioning, planning, designing and building these gardens, as well as the creation of a solid foundation to ensure their continued success. Within the senior-level "Designing People-centered Services" course at Herron School of Art and Design, IUPUI, the students conducted people-centered, participatory design research that included methods ranging from standard web and print-based exploration, to ethnographic research methods such as conducting contextual observation and interviews within the communities, and designing and facilitating engagements with community members using generative tools. This research informed the planning processes, design and development of the gardens. This experience through applied service-learning gave the students the opportunity to transform the way the neighborhood residents viewed engagement, working together, and even issues around food access. The process and methodology enabled citizens to actively participate in the planning and creation of something that would positively impact their way of life. This experience also gave the instructor an opportunity to facilitate the collaboration between diverse stakeholders in both higher education and local communities.IUPUI Center for Service and Learnin

A People-Centered Approach to Improving Interprofessional Communication in Health Care

poster abstractAs part of the objectives stated under the Interprofessional Collaborative Practices (IPCP) Model funded through a grant with the Health Resources and Services Administration and Indiana University School of Nursing, it was necessary to better understand the challenges around interprofessional communication across a hospital unit. To carry out this objective, research consultants from Collabo Creative, a design research company, partnered with the Renal Metabolic (B5C5) unit at IU Health Methodist. The main purpose for connecting design researchers with B5C5 was to assist the unit in utilizing a people-centered design approach in order to: 1) understand the current context of interprofessional collaboration and communication, 2) frame pertinent communication design challenges; and 3) develop solutions to improve interprofessional collaboration and communication across the B5C5 unit. Resulting from the 8-month research engagement, Collabo Creative and B5C5 identified four core challenges to interprofessional communication that appear to be relevant to other hospital units in addition to B5C5. These challenges include: 1) patient handoff of information; 2) doctor and patient two-way communication; 3) employee tensions as a result of PCA training; and 4) night-shift inclusion in plan of care. This poster will describe the people-centered design approach and methods that were used to engage B5C5, along with key findings and newly developed interprofessional communication tools resulting from the research project

Towards the development of a sustainable soya bean-based feedstock for aquaculture

Soya bean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) is sought after for both its oil and protein components. Genetic approaches to add value to either component are ongoing efforts in soya bean breeding and molecular biology programmes. The former is the primary vegetable oil consumed in the world. Hence, its primary usage is in direct human consumption. As a means to increase its utility in feed applications, thereby expanding the market of soya bean coproducts, we investigated the simultaneous displacement of marine ingredients in aquafeeds with soya bean-based protein and a high Omega-3 fatty acid soya bean oil, enriched with alpha-linolenic and stearidonic acids, in both steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and Kampachi (Seriola rivoliana). Communicated herein are aquafeed formulations with major reduction in marine ingredients that translates to more total Omega-3 fatty acids in harvested flesh. Building off of these findings, subsequent efforts were directed towards a genetic strategy that would translate to a prototype design of an optimal identity-preserved soya bean-based feedstock for aquaculture, whereby a multigene stack approach for the targeted synthesis of two value-added output traits, eicosapentaenoic acid and the ketocarotenoid, astaxanthin, were introduced into the crop. To this end, the systematic introduction of seven transgenic cassettes into soya bean, and the molecular and phenotypic evaluation of the derived novel events are described. Includes supplementary materials

Towards the development of a sustainable soya bean-based feedstock for aquaculture

Soya bean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) is sought after for both its oil and protein components. Genetic approaches to add value to either component are ongoing efforts in soya bean breeding and molecular biology programmes. The former is the primary vegetable oil consumed in the world. Hence, its primary usage is in direct human consumption. As a means to increase its utility in feed applications, thereby expanding the market of soya bean coproducts, we investigated the simultaneous displacement of marine ingredients in aquafeeds with soya bean-based protein and a high Omega-3 fatty acid soya bean oil, enriched with alpha-linolenic and stearidonic acids, in both steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and Kampachi (Seriola rivoliana). Communicated herein are aquafeed formulations with major reduction in marine ingredients that translates to more total Omega-3 fatty acids in harvested flesh. Building off of these findings, subsequent efforts were directed towards a genetic strategy that would translate to a prototype design of an optimal identity-preserved soya bean-based feedstock for aquaculture, whereby a multigene stack approach for the targeted synthesis of two value-added output traits, eicosapentaenoic acid and the ketocarotenoid, astaxanthin, were introduced into the crop. To this end, the systematic introduction of seven transgenic cassettes into soya bean, and the molecular and phenotypic evaluation of the derived novel events are described. Includes supplementary materials

<b>Message Journal, Issue 4</b>: DESIGN POLITICS What are the politics of your design and what is the design of your politics?

In the Message journal issue 4 we wanted to create an arena where our discipline could discuss the nature and context of its role from an overtly political perspective. Whilst we felt in our bones there was an appetite for this, we were far from certain about its nature, scope and size. Consequently, the call for Message 4 was, to say the least, somewhat of a gamble. Thankfully, our hunches and speculations seem to have been close to the mark. We received more submissions for this call than the previous three issues combined. There was also an anticipation (albeit in hindsight a rather naive one) that some submissions might be positioned around conventional left, right and/or sustainable ecological perspectives. This did not really transpire. Nonetheless, we are very happy to say that the creative, eclectic and diverse nature of the responses has resulted in a range of exemplars that reflect the varied nature, concerns and foci of our vibrant discipline. These extend from John Calvelli’s philosophical dialectic on the fundamental nature and origin of images, their use and effects, to Elizabeth Herrmann’s self-initiated craft-based approach, to do good locally and make a social contribution. Both of these papers are also examples of the higher than usual number of submissions from North America, a substantial proportion of which relate to the politics of cultural and/or racial identity, such as Omari Souza’s, ‘Racist Motifs in Everyday Branding’. Message is dedicated to the development of Graphic Communication Design research. Particularly (although not exclusively) through authors’ analysis of and reflection on their own practice-based research. Through peer reviewed submissions and occasional commissioned essays, Message explores, discusses and challenges the boundaries, roles, practices and outputs of Graphic Communication Design. Past, present and future.Introduction – Peter Jones Rethinking Graphic Design and the Design of Historical Arguments– Camila Afanador-Llach The Intersection of Electoral Politics and Design Education - Anne Berry & Sarah Rutherford Ecological Mourning and the Work of Graphic Communication Design – John Calvelli From High to Low and High Again – Kristen Coogan Speculative Graphic Design: The Idiot’s-Eye-View – James Dyer Free!* Reclaiming ‘freedom’ from the neoliberal lexicon - Cathy Gale Countering ‘Fake News’ in the Design Classroom - Anne M. Giangiulio Cards for Humanity: Constructing Meaningful Communities Through Unsolicited Do-Good Design - Elizabeth Herrmann Political Awareness and Engagement Through Banknote Design - Chae Ho Lee Personal value thinking in graphic communication design education – The introduction of a clarification tool for students - Gwen Lettis, Pamela Napier, Adam de Eyto & Muireann McMahon Passive, Brutish, or Civil? Racist Motifs in Everyday Branding - Omari Souza Countering the Othering of Others: Illustration Facilitating Empathy - Dave Wood Re-contextualising Illustration to Inform Sexual Consent – #JustSoYouKnow - Dave Woo