Open Access Kent State (OAKS)

Jessica Keup, JSTOR

Monographs are increasingly making the print-to-digital shift that journals started twenty years ago, yet many of the popular platform options for accessing scholarly books simply mirror the existing discovery structure for journals: books are presented as a sequential list of “journal article”-sized chapter files for downloading, a practice that “journal”-izes the book and arguably fails to take full advantage of the rich long-form argument that unfolds across chapters.

JSTOR Labs, an experimental platform development group, convened at Columbia University a group of scholars, librarians, and publishers in October 2016. Together, they tackled this design question: if we applied data visualization and design thinking techniques to the existing corpus of digitized monograph files, how could we improve the discovery and user experience for scholars, students, and general readers? Over the course of two months, we conducted an ideation workshop with the scholars, librarians, and publishers; tested sketches of various ideas with more scholars to decide which concept to pursue; iteratively refined and tested alternate design ideas with increasing fidelity over time; wrote a whitepaper about our findings; and completed a working prototype during a “flash build” that aims to help users currently assess the relevance of books to their research and quickly navigate to the relevant parts.

This cross-/multi-/inter-/trans- disciplinary digital scholarship project presented many design challenges and opportunities. The bulk of the presentation will focus on the design principles and the lean, user-oriented product design processes used to carry one of the product ideas through from concept to working prototype. We will show how design activities and principles proved indispensable in the quick and lean creation of a useful, quality product. There will also be a demonstration of the Topicgraph prototype that was created in November.

Jessica Keup is a User Experience Prototyper on the JSTOR Labs team. The team experiments with new ways to present, explore, and discover scholarship and Jessica works to design, test, and implement the user interfaces they create. She formerly taught Human Computer Interaction and introductory programming at East Tennessee State University, and she moonlights as a pianist.

This was a Long Paper Session: Print to Digital on June 2, 2017. 2:30–4:00pm (SCI 106)

Danielle Oprean, PhD, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Penn State University
Peter Lusch, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, Penn State University

Design communication relies on a designer’s ability to represent and present design ideas through multiple forms of visualization. From images to movies and now even virtual reality, designers are beginning to capitalize on newer forms of representation and subsequently in their presentations. With the digital medium becoming more prominent in the design disciplines, it is necessary to consider how representations across multiple modalities (visual, audio, etc.) can be presented in a digital format that is cohesive. So, how do we support presenting multiple forms of visualization? We build on our early development of a multi-modal interface to explore this question and what the implications are for multiple design disciplines. A proof-of-concept interface for exploring the potential of multi-modal presentations was developed earlier and has being further improved for intended use in design courses using a large-screen display that is virtual reality capable. This portion of this development research focuses on understanding student designer use of the alpha-version of the interface, where not all functionality such as loading student work into the interface are working. For this study, we focused on the role of student designer perceptions of the ergonomics of a large-screen display where the interface is being used and the perceived usefulness of the developed interface. We captured student interactions with the interface in its current state through simple user tests and asked students to elaborate on their perceptions of such a tool. We will present on the challenges faced by the sample of students engaging with the interface and how preliminary take-away from the study will be used for improving the interface.

Danielle Oprean is currently a post-doctoral research fellow in the Stuckeman School and Chorophronesis at the Pennsylvania State University.Her background is in 3D visualization and its intersection with human-computer interaction. She focuses her research on the relationship between immersion and presence and how that relationship is fostered through embodied experiences. Her work is highly interdisciplinary and allows for the study of different forms of technology to apply to different spatial and design applications. She holds a BS in digital media visualization and a MS in Engineering Technology  from East Tennessee State University, and a MA in Architectural Studies Design with Digital Media and a PhD in Human-Environmental Studies from the University of Missouri. 

Peter D. Lusch is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design in the Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Penn State. He instructs advanced and introductory courses in typography, studio design, and experience design processes and methods. Lusch has active research in design pedagogy, user experience design, and applications of technology and design for global humanitarian solutions in the developing world. He has studied and worked internationally with Shanghai University, China. He holds a B.F.A. from Eastern Michigan University, and a M.F.A. from Michigan State University.

This was a Lightning Round Session on June 3, 2017. 10:30–11:00am (SCI 108)

This panel will examine how critical practices in design are changing. Johanna Drucker, John Jennings, Michael Gibson, and Keith Owens will discuss how design educators and researchers can evolve their work, and find new projects and modes of publication.

This was a panel discussion at 12pm (SCI Lobby).

Dennis Doordan, University of Notre Dame
Brian Edlefson, University of Notre Dame

This project grew out of conversations between a Design Historian and a Visual Communications Designer. The focus of our conversations is a project to digitize and annotate an early twentieth century periodical called The Game. Between October 1916 and January 1923, thirty-four issues of The Game were published by Douglas Pepler; the calligrapher Edward Johnston and the artist and type designer Eric Gill worked with Pepler on the design of The Game.

Beyond practical concerns, our conversations quickly began to engage with the larger questions raised by the Converge Call for Proposals. What, for example, is the role of design in generating new knowledge? We argue that designers generate new knowledge through the reconfiguration of existing knowledge. Reconfiguration involves more than increasing access through the digitalization of rare print materials; it involves the enrichment of existing knowledge by connecting original source materials with subsequent scholarship and contemporary commentary. While there are models for making rare early modern art journals available on line the project described here aspires to more than just scanning and posting material online. We propose creating an online research portal that constitutes a digital tool for thinking. What does thinking imply? Thinking requires active engagement with a body of material and ideas that positions various types of information within some interpretive framework so that the user can make connections between disparate sets of information. Beyond expanding the set of examples readily available to interested parties, thinking leads to the formation of new questions that previously were difficult to conceptualize or to answer within the existing arrangement of resources and examples. These observations are developed using examples from The Game.

Since both the Design Historian and the Visual Communications Designer are faculty members at the same university they were keenly aware of the necessity to articulate the scholarly nature of their collaboration in terms that could be clearly aligned with the tenure and promotion criteria at their institution. The values and definitions identified in university RPT guidelines help frame the way the project is described. For example, our institutional RPT guidelines identify history as a humanistic discipline which investigates the interface between art and meaning …Through the examination and analysis of objects that are both original creations and, at the same time, historically and culturally determined. This same document rather than defining design in narrow professional terms describes design as an enabling catalyst, collaboratively increasing advantage and expanding opportunity between practitioners of different disciplines. We thus describe our digital humanities project as a truly collaborative effort that combines the investigative skills of the historian with the equally necessary enabling skills of the designer in a form that – again using our institution’s own language – innovatively promotes understanding. Complimentary skills sets are critical to digital scholarship and to the degree that the design community can articulate the distinctive nature of design skills and design thinking the value of design’s contribution to emerging research in digital humanities and STEM education will only grow.

Dennis Doordan is co-editor of Design Issues a journal devoted to the history, theory, and criticism. Doordan has published books and articles on a wide variety of topics dealing with modern and contemporary architecture and design. In 1999 Doordan was on the organizing committee for the first international conference on doctoral education in design. He has spoken about design education and interdisciplinary research at international conferences and been invited to participate in workshops and seminars on various aspects of design education

Brian Edlefson co-founded Thesis, a design consultancy that helped product manufacturers connect with architects and interior designers.  As a member of Whirpool Corporation’s multi-disciplinary Global Consumer Design team, Brian was responsible for merging graphic design with the product design of household brands like Whirlpool, Maytag, Kenmore and Amana. He has also worked with the design team and curatorial staff at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and was a senior graphic designer for Herman Miller—where he redesigned the corporate brand and all of its applications.

This was a Long Paper Session: On Collaboration on June 3, 2017. 11:30am–1:00pm (SCI 106)

Daniel Jasper, University of Minnesota

Since 1999 I have been using the formal and conceptual language of products as a means of research, and creative discovery. This mode of production falls under the rubric of “critical design”. Critical design describes a process whereby a designed artifact, its use and the process of designing it perform as an embodied critique or commentary on environment, economy, politics, culture—or design itself.

For instance, in this scenario wall paper patterns I’ve had commercially produced call in to question basic assumptions about the purpose of textile designs for domestic applications. In addition to being decorative and aesthetically pleasing can textile patterns also be emotive and consciousness-raising with regard to current topics including the United States’ drone program or casualty rates among armed service members?

Former head of the Design program at Cranbrook Academy, Kath­ryn McCoy said ‘Design is not a neutral, value-free process; however, we have trained a profession that feels political or social concerns are either ex­traneous to our work or inappropriate.’ (McCoy, 1994 p.111) McCoy alludes to a sort of tacit knowledge (and knowledge production) that became codified within the Western academy after World War II in which formal design pro­duction typically results in concrete statements couched in positive terms, which celebrate consumerism, consumer products and the munificent cul­ture that produced them. Theorist Guy Debord characterized the psycho­-philosophical underpinnings of this mediated environment in the following terms, ‘Everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear.’ (Debord, 1967 p.15) In this regard design (graphic, product, apparel) acts as the process by which this self-congratulatory monologue is made flesh, expressed physically in the form of what seem to be ideologically in­ert objects. As design educators, practitioners and scholars in a historically incurious profession one might be forgiven for asking is this all there is? Is client-based practice the only prescribed outcome for our intellectual and creative endeavors and those of our students? In addition to critical think­ing and critical writing, is there room for critical design in design research, pedagogy and practice?

In one Writing Intensive graphic design course at the University of Minnesota students are asked to perform an examination of material culture—the very culture they propagate through work in their chosen profession. They critically examine their own patterns of consumer behavior within the simultaneous contexts of design, society, economy and culture. In a sequence of assignments, they express their findings not only with writing, but also the principles and practices of data visualization, using traditional 2-D com­puter-aided methods, or 3-D methods made more expressive through attention to materiality and physical presence. Without being expressly told to ‘make critical design’ the students nonetheless perform criti­cal practice not as an end unto itself but simply as a method of interrogation. It is within this context that critical practice works in tandem with the traditional writing and research processes as an extension of writing. Here students are asked to place themselves, as designers, within the broad­er framework of design, society, economy and culture not as an ancillary consideration but as something central to their role as authors and producers of culture. Within this context, students are taught that being critical isn’t a job description for cranky elitists—it is something that should be done by designers as a matter of course.

Daniel Jasper is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

This was a Long Paper Session: Practice and Process on June 2, 2017. 10:30–12:00pm (SCI 106)