Leaderboard

Carma Gorman chaired a session at CAA Conference 2020 that was very well attended and incredibly insightful. I'm hoping that a bunch of organizations (Design Incubation, Design Studies forum, AIGA DEC) can come together to develop a single document that cover's the majority of the Communication Design depts in the country. In speaking with Carma, she proposed a flexible document, almost a document wizard, that could support any dept at a variety of institutions to help develop their own standards. For instance, if you are a community college in the midwest that is situated within a business dept, select the options that are important to you... One thing that was brought up in the CAA conference session was the double-standard, higher bar which we must go through, as compared to other disciplines. It is not enough for us to secure a project from a major company, we need to also win an award. She pointed out, as I have always argued, that the vetting process a client does of us is peer review. And payment for our work is a grant. What also frustrates me is that everything we do is always considered "Service", because our skills and expertise falls within a service industry and field of study. Only if we then win an award, is it suddenly scholarly.

"Present Yourself" is the Society for Experiential Graphic Design's newest initiative connecting students to their future careers and providing mentorship opportunities for professionals to engage the next wave of talent. Each Thursday in May, beginning 05/07/2020, SEGD will host a virtual meeting via Zoom where graduating design students will meet SEGD professionals for candid portfolio reviews and career advice—something vitally absent from our community at this moment. "Creative people are resilient problem solvers" says SEGD Director of Education Hilary Jay. "When Covid-19 struck, educators from around the world told us how their students wouldn't have capstone exhibitions or a chance to receive professional feedback and career advice. That's how Present Yourself evolved. It's exactly what we, as an association, can do and want to do for our members." Design leaders from across the country and around the world will support student members as they get ready to enter the design world full-time starting with 15-minute sessions. Together, they’ll review capstone projects, discuss presentation pointers, and share career insights. "Present Yourself fills a professional development need for students where they, our design future, can meet global industry professionals, their mentors and design heroes," says Jay. "In this difficult period, there's some good news: We can roll out an international platform where students have direct access to experts who are willing and able to provide insights and expertise about the EGD field." Reviewers will select their availability and sign up for one or more three-hour sessions. SEGD will then send a link to join a virtual room (via Zoom) where professionals will meet their mentees. Sessions will be recorded, and later edited for pearls of wisdom that may help any student or newly minted designer entering the EGD field. Post-meeting, students will complete the process by adding their resumes to SEGD JOBS, where potential employers can post positions or purchase a “Resumes Only” package. SEGD will accept reviewer and student applications through the month of May, however, time slots are limited! In order for students to participate, they must become SEGD Members—for just $30 a year—and post their resume to the SEGD JOBS board that is visible to all job posters. +++ Professionals, for more information on how to become a reviewer, click here. Students, for more information on how to submit your portfolio and resume for review, click here. Not an SEGD member? Consider joining! First time members receive a 50% discount off the first year. Apply here.

From the internets... this collection of resources "Teaching in context of COVID-19" is being shared by Jacque Wernimont (Dartmouth College). The resources are very relevant for design educators. Access can be requested via this Google Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjwkKjPQLGpLwd7ZlT3AN9h0e0EVPsbVRSi71HlfKNZX8eQg/viewform

Hi there! I’m based in Hong Kong and, one week before the start of the semester, our university told us to convert our subjects to online for at least the first five weeks of the 13-week semester. We were hoping to (after a 2-week recess period that was scheduled after the first five weeks of the semester) return to face-to-face teaching for the remaining eight weeks of the semester, but we have just been informed that we have to continue with online teaching until further notice. This is quite impossible for some subjects, as you can imagine. But we’re trying our best. It has been tough not only to convert subjects in the last minute, but also to familiarise ourselves with online tools. Most importantly, we had to learn (and are still learning) what works and what doesn’t, in terms of student engagement, online discussions, lecturing, tutorial sessions, critique sessions, etc. My colleagues and I have each adapted to online in our own ways, depending on the nature of our respective subjects. As you can imagine, especially studio classes are difficult to move online. My combined seminar and studio subjects on Exhibition Experiences and Experience Design have been most challenging. You can imagine that it is hard to teach such a subject without making field trips to experience actual exhibitions. Also, (later on in the students’ design process) it will be difficult to have students design exhibition experiences when they are unable to experience the spaces they’re designing for or test the (often interactive) experiences they design. The combined subjects normally lead to a fully curated and designed student exhibition with different interactive installations. Under the current conditions, we are not sure if we can have a physical exhibition in the end. So, let me share what we’ve done so far to still get on with the combined subjects. Because I have a relatively large class of 40 students, I have chosen to pre-record weekly lectures via Zoom and upload them on a subject website that I created with Google Sites (on this website, students can find everything they need in one location). When I record my lectures, I break them up in smaller clips of 8-15 minutes each (like chapters) so that students can click through them more easily. Also, I try to keep the lectures under an hour as students seem to have even less of an attention span online. Via the subject website, students can also click through to Slack (an instant messaging platform) where I post weekly “discussion assignments” that respond to the topic of the respective lectures. I would ask students to partake in these discussions during the set seminar time. Some discussion assignments have worked out, others less so. I’m still trying to find ways to have students interact with each other productively. Slack allows you to open different channels and threads of messages, so in that regard it is quite convenient to team students up in smaller discussion groups and give them something to discuss or analyse in their own “threads”. As this is a combined subject, including a seminar and a studio component, the seminar is aimed at researching and conceptualising exhibition experiences and the studio is aimed at designing them. We are currently still in the research phase and concept phase, which is easier to do online. I am a bit worried about the design phase and how that will work out. For the studio (tutorials), I’ve broken up the class in smaller project teams and spend an hour per team (4-6 students) per week for live sessions—thus far we’ve only discussed their research and concepts/ideas. I use Google Hangouts for this only because it’s easy to use. I think I may soon change to Microsoft Teams (which is what most of my colleagues use) as it’s a bit more stable and the quality of the video and audio seems a bit better. If I could choose, I would probably prefer to use Zoom for this, as it’s easier to use and seems to have an even better video quality. However, across the different subjects in our programme, we’re already using so many different platforms. So, I will go for a platform that our students are already familiar with (so as to keep to some consistency in platform use, for their sake). We still have a little bit of hope that we can eventually move back to face-to-face teaching and actually developing an exhibition in full. So, what I did is write up a subject brief including a careful explanation of the students’ design challenge that could be rolled out into either Plan A (physical exhibition/group assignment) or Plan B (design concept only/individual assignment) and the related adjustments and alterations to the assignment if we need to go for Plan B in the end. Plan B is for various reasons not an ideal plan, but the best under the current conditions. Online teaching has worked to an extent. But it is certainly not ideal and particularly stressful (and pretty boring too). As teachers, we strongly feel the need for face-to-face interaction (for idea development, critical thinking and discussions, testing of design works, etc.). We have all encountered technical issues as well (e.g. poor network connections on the side of the students, students’ audio not working, etc.). What is the most challenging, however, is engaging with students during live sessions. In Hong Kong, students seem to be a bit shy and prefer not to show their faces and/or the backgrounds of their bedrooms/homes. So, we’re usually talking at profile pictures and are therefore constantly having to ask if everyone is still there, listening. A last thing I’d like to share is that some of my colleagues have gone out of their ways to convert subjects to online. Especially the colleagues who teach drawing techniques have come up with very creative solutions. They have set up a demonstration room with lighting and a camera fixed above a table, pointing down. In this way they can demonstrate live sketching and drawing techniques.

Hello all! Following on the heels of Jessica Barness's call for papers at CAA 2020 (Design Incubation is good training ground for getting our work out there for sure!), Lisa Mercer and I have a call for papers as well: Call For Papers (Deadline: July 23, 2019) DECOLONIZING DESIGN TOWARDS SYSTEMIC EQUITY 108th CAA [fka College Art Association] Annual Conference Hilton Chicago, February 12–15, 2020 Chairs: Jessica Jacobs, Columbia College Chicago and Lisa Mercer, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign The role of the designer is shifting from that of a service provider to an individual with an epistemological understanding of design and their role in the design process. There has been an increased acknowledgement of design’s role, both in practice and in academia, in perpetuating systems of inequity through the “colonization of knowledge, the colonial conditions that inform knowledge production and validation” (Abdulla, 2016). With its focus on empathic design solutions and user research, the widespread adoption of design thinking methods has shifted some power from the designer to the user. Furthering this, some practitioners are developing methodologies that seek to intervene in and disrupt the design thinking process with new methods to foster equity-based design solutions. Designers are shifting their focus from outputs (what gets designed or built) to outcomes (future, people-centered aspirations) for longer-term, resilient, sustainable impact towards desired futures. We continue to design products, services, and systems that increase inequity, including biased algorithms, automation that leads to planned obsolescence and deskilling, and limitations on access to technology and communication. How might a change in design methods or engagement models alter solutions to be more equitable? We are interested in hearing from individuals whose scholarship and research is focused on challenging the traditional Westerns ways of knowing (Wilson, 1999) and who are developing and advocating for decolonized systems, traditions, and ways of being and knowing (Biermann, 2011). How might designers add to the discourse of a “global village” where a homogeneous world culture is dominant (Fiss, 2009)? ---- To submit a paper for consideration, please review the CAA guidelines for participants, and then email session chairs Jessica Jacobs (jjacobs@colum.edu) and Lisa Mercer (lemercer@illinois.edu) the following by July 23, 2019: 1) a completed paper proposal that adheres to the CAA template (download the template hereor directly from the guidelines page), and 2) a shortened CV (maximum two pages). Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you, Jessica Jacobs

@Steven McCarthy – I am just seeing this post and curious about this since we are looking to write new guidelines for design faculty that are different from art faculty. Your chart looks like a good way to visualize the range of research. I'm wondering if there are guidelines you may be able to share?

https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-Be-Strategic-on-the/244863

I wish I could measure this. I honestly have no idea. Individuals in my department place different value in different deliverables. It's anyone's guess. On the university level, grants of any value are typically very highly regarded.

I am at a research university (top 10 public), we have qualitative assessment so it's hard for me to put numbers on them – they all have to be contextualized. In general, though, I think they are from high to low here – but nothing is so low to merit no attention. I'd be interested in other ways of assessing. Maria Published Book (highly respected, fluctuates based on press and peer review process) but demonstrates a high level of research contribution to the field Grant Base Research Project (varies based on source, amount, role) Peer Review Publication (helps demonstrate consistent contribution and more substantial than conference presentation) Peer Review Conference Presentation (these vary now, some in Europe are double blind peer reviewed full paper so this shifts how we think about conference presentations)

University of Minnesota design scholarship matrix.pdf This matrix is a useful tool for considering the diverse approaches to scholarship that design faculty engage in. My department has design faculty that are designers, humanists, social scientists, artists and engineers. Besides graphic design, we have programs in interior design, product design and apparel design.