By Rebecca Knowe

After working as an in-house graphic designer for several years, I was bored. Entering the MGD program looking for more challenging design work, I found it through design that embraces complex problems, systems thinking, and research (of all stripes). One project aimed to design learning content for middle schoolers. My collaborator and I got the chance to observe a middle school classroom and interview the teacher. It brought the whole project to life for me—to see the people that would use the design I created, and more easily imagine what the design could help them do. Next, I took a class in Qualitative Research Methods to learn how to ask better questions and gather more actionable information. The research for that class seamlessly informed an additional design studio project—and I was hooked! Design work was brought to life for me when I could connect it to real people, and to solving their concrete problems.

I credit NCSU, my hardworking professors, and my talented peers with giving me the tools to build a career based on work I love. I did not feel very confident upon entering the program (nor during it), but applying those tools to real-world problems later on showed me how powerful they were, and boosted my confidence like nothing else could. Specifically, I saw that skills like systems thinking, a design thinking mentality and process (to iterate with several ideas and evaluate what works), knowing how to lean on frameworks and theories derived from research, building the skills to do my own research, and continually revising and evolving my understanding of the world applied very clearly and directly to work as a user experience designer. 

Ten years ago I began working at IBM, initially as a user experience designer who did research—now as a researcher who is also a designer. In the beginning, I designed user interfaces and asked lots of questions about who would use them—but found few answers that would tell me whether I had created a “good” design or not. Shifting quickly into more research work to answer my questions, I focused more and more on collaborating with users to determine what would best meet their goals, and worked with the UX designers to shape findings into design principles. Now user research makes up the majority of my work, and I’ve also gotten to see the discipline mature and its demand increase in the industry.

For me the most exciting part of a new project is learning about the people who will benefit from it. It’s exciting, in a very anthropological way, to learn about the worlds of people who are different from me. People ask if I miss “doing design work,” but I still consider myself a designer—just one who works at the “fuzzy front end” of new problems and concepts, to point our explorations in a direction with the most possibility of success. I design experiences that let me learn more about people. And communications to demonstrate the value we propose creating for them. And bridges between what they say and do, and what my team should do about it. I love marrying design work with the work to understand people who will use it. 

In my design philosophy, design is educating. Design is communicating, helping others understand new perspectives, and leaving a legacy. For me design can be practical, as well as beautiful or challenging. It took me a long time to realize and accept this. If you are inspired to solve utilitarian, concrete problems for real people, you are no less a designer, no less creative, than our brilliant colleagues who create unequalled beauty, speak to the culture, or challenge the intellect. There is a place, and a need in this world, for the thoughtful contributions of every designer. Don’t get discouraged thinking you must fit into the same categories of the designers who have come before you. This was a struggle for me for a long time, but the work I love dearly now did not really exist yet when I began my journey as a designer. You have unique gifts. Keep working to find the places to use them—they will reveal themselves.

 

By Rachael Paine

In my experience as a creative director, I found unleashing the talents of others the most rewarding aspect of my position. I took opportunities to create intense working environments that required peoples’ best thinking and doing. I am motivated by helping others to see obstacles as opportunities. After thirteen fulfilling years in the business realm, I decided that teaching and mentoring are significant drivers for me. With my passion for creative leadership and direction, I have a solid understanding that the purest form of liberal, creative thought happens in education. 

I view both intelligence and talent as continually developing. I believe that an individual’s intelligence and skill can grow in circumstances where they are challenged. As an instructor, I find opportunities to push students to open up new possibilities within their work. I work individually with students to draw attention to areas of potential investigation, prompting them to dig deeper and push harder in developing their final projects. These methods came directly from my work as a creative director where I devoured business leadership books. Leadership in business helped prepare me for leadership in the classroom.

Under my instruction, students are encouraged to focus on their process over the final product. I’ve led several typographic workshops where I facilitated an “iterate towards discovery” approach. I prompted students to find visual surprises to exploit in future iterations with statements such as, “Look at what you have made and respond to that.” 

In the studio environment, I practice guiding students to discuss their work with a simple four-step lead-in (one I learned from watching Professor Denise Gonzales Crisp): Here is what I was interested in. Here is what I explored. Here is what I discovered. And here is where it might go next. By encouraging students to remember that design is never “done” and to embrace the process, the work is richer in concept, depth, and delight. Students report unexpected results that they would not have produced if they focused only on the end goal. 

Also fundamental to my teaching philosophy is the principle that design education should train students how to think and problem solve in addition to how to make and visually design. I guide students to think critically about visual design decisions by asking, “To what end?” and, “How will this enhance the experience of the user?” I encouraged research of precedents and plenty of concept mapping to hash out ideas. 

I see learning to give and receive critical feedback as an essential skill in design education. Each semester I offer a lecture on “collaboration within the classroom.” I encourage students to be fully invested in each other’s work and to give constructive feedback. I discuss the concept of critiques on the premise that if anyone loses, everyone loses, as it reflects poorly on the class as a whole if a peer gets all the way to critique with less than satisfactory work. In addition, I emphasize that critical feedback is a gift. I remind students to separate discussions of their work from their self-worth. Class time is given for informal discussions with peers to encourage the regular habit of talking about ideas and working with each other through all phases of the design process.

I see design as being an investigative study with classrooms full of curious minds. Instructors should give adequate room to students to ask questions and self-direct. I encourage students to be invested in creating expectations and serving as both learners and contributors. By allowing for this cooperative, flexible approach, students feel free to express themselves within the classroom and have opportunities to engage in activities that are meaningful to them. I strive to create learning environments that foster independent, self-motivated, creative pursuits.

Student Work

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Kelly Murdoch-Kitt & Dr. Denielle Emans

Introduction

Design for belonging has been the foundational value of our research, teaching, and creative practice since our collaboration began in 2011. Long intrigued by the intersection of design, education, and culture, we launched a study of remote intercultural design teams that continues to the present. Our research focuses on Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning (COIL), specifically in Intercultural Design Collaboration (IDC). Based on the belief that systemic challenges require multi-perspective ideas, we bring students together through IDC to collaborate on sustainability topics and related wicked problems. Like design practice itself, IDC is project-based and provides an experiential learning opportunity for students to explore themselves and their cultures through teamwork and design. 

Our study reveals that international collaboration on global challenges positively affects student engagement in these topics. Bringing different perspectives together for more creative problem-solving helps students compare how various issues manifest in different parts of the world and enables them to connect with challenges beyond their own cities. Students learn to build trust, belonging, and collaborative outcomes as they exchange ideas, conflicting views, and dissenting opinions. Alongside these highlights, of course, are plenty of opportunities for cringe moments. 

Our book: Intercultural Collaboration by Design

As an innovative approach to COIL, we create and utilize visual thinking and collaborative design methods within intercultural learning environments, which is detailed in our book, Intercultural Collaboration by Design, published in 2020 (Figure 1). Our ongoing study has engaged over 400 participants from 24 countries and seven different academic institutions. The visual thinking methods we describe in Intercultural Collaboration by Design have been implemented by k–12 and university-level educators across a wide range of disciplines (including biology, performing arts, urban planning, mathematics, physical education, English Language Arts, engineering, and others). 

A survey of design practitioners and educators initially informed our research. Like us, these early survey respondents believed that intercultural learning was essential to the future of creative practice. The subsequent study evolved to include developing, testing, and refining activities to connect and encourage collaboration between our distant design classrooms. At the start of our study, we were teaching in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and San Francisco, United States of America. Just your basic 11 to 12-hour time difference—and before the widespread use of videoconferencing or virtual whiteboards.

We continue to pursue our research in supporting intercultural collaboration as an integral part of our teaching at our respective universities and as co-principal investigators of our research group, ORBIT Labs. The interdisciplinary and multigenerational team of student researchers we supervise through ORBIT Labs (Figure 2) pursue a variety of projects related to bridging differences as a pathway toward social change. (Incidentally, ORBIT stands for Online Resources for Building Intercultural Teams.)

Getting comfortable with the awkwardness of collaboration across cultures

Our approach to teaching intercultural collaboration is about learning to “design for awkwardness.” Helping designers-in-training to give visual form and expression to the awkwardness of teamwork enables them to approach collaboration with more acceptance and work with “friction.” Scholars of innovation, organizational studies, and collaborative practices agree that this friction, sometimes called creative abrasion, is ultimately positive because of its potential to create unique new outcomes. Thus, learning to surface, discuss, and work through differences is an asset to creative practice and a starting point for addressing complex challenges such as the climate crisis. 

However, as humans, we tend to minimize our differences and seek commonalities to avoid conflict. Why incur the wrath of another living organism who could prove to be a threat? While seeking commonality is a natural survival instinct, it cannot help us address the larger threats we face today, such as climate change and social ills. We must learn how to work together with our differences to ensure the survival of all living things. To achieve this, we must also develop conscientious and regenerative creative practices that challenge the historically capitalist orientation of the design industry. Design scholar and futurist Tony Fry refers to this evolution of conscientious design as redirective practice.

Of course, this all sounds very romantic: “Let’s bring students from different countries and cultures together using remote tools and teach them to design a way out of our climate crisis!” However, in reality, it is thoroughly messy work. The self-consciousness of a typical, co-located classroom is magnified exponentially when students from different schools, countries, languages, and cultures are thrown together and asked to collaborate. Teams struggle to find a starting point, whether with each other, the design process, or a given problem. Moreover, friction is inevitable when combining disparate personalities, backgrounds, working styles, and life experiences. This inevitability can be intimidating, if not debilitating. To address these challenges, we have developed the Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork (Figure 3).

The six dimensions as a structure to build belonging

Through our study, we developed a theory that intentional visual thinking activities created for exchange enhance intercultural teamwork. We present our theory through a framework called the Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork. The Six Dimensions evolved from primary and secondary research on intercultural remote teams and the recurrent pain points in their teaming and collaboration processes. In addition to their benefits for teambuilding and design outcomes, implementing our visual thinking activities often boosts students’ curiosity, critical thinking, and engagement in cohorts of COIL students—compared to cohorts who did not utilize the activities. 

Contemplate: Discover Work Styles

The first phase of the Six Dimensions invites students to start small, focusing on themselves first as a prerequisite for becoming truly receptive and able to learn about others (Figure 4). This concept draws from Marcia B. Baxter Magolda’s constructive-developmental theory, which posits that self-understanding is a first step in understanding the world. Activities in this dimension help build self-awareness while cultivating community with peers in the same institution/geographic location. There are also reminders throughout this dimension that the collaborative experience is a shared journey of discovery.

Relate: Understand Core Beliefs, Establish Trust

From here, the following two dimensions help teams to scale up slowly as participants learn to understand core beliefs and establish trust (Figure 5). We don’t expect collaborative projects to happen immediately; instilling confidence and engagement must come first. These dimensions are thus focused on parallel activities across international classrooms to encourage community-building, sharing, and—ultimately—belonging. 

At these early stages, participants are not designing for the project yet—they are designing to understand themselves and each other better. They are designing the team dynamic and learning to work together before the project begins. Teamwork is the project within the project.

Investigate: Assess Information, Decode Communication Styles

The processes embedded in dimensions four and five help students come together and find a sense of belonging in exploring a shared topic (Figure 6). The activities in these dimensions encourage deeper sharing, content exchange, feedback exchange, and a focus on interpersonal skills. Teams typically begin to identify possible shared topics or problems within these phases. Activities that explicitly address teammates’ skills, ambitions, and orientation toward different types of goal-setting help move them into the phase of creative action. 

Create: Design Shared Goals

Design Shared Goals is the final phase of the Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork (Figure 7). Here, focusing on a shared concern, such as our earlier example of the climate crisis, is the basis for project-based learning. Collaborative projects bring people together and motivate them to share their different perspectives on the problem or ideas to resolve it. Also, it can be rewarding and fun!  

Belonging and difference in teamwork

The Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork build up to a “design phase,” but design is truly present throughout the entire process. It is the mediator between worlds and helps teammates build the necessary bridges that make it possible to develop a project together. In a sense, there are two projects at hand in a COIL course: the design project as an outcome AND the project of building the team—or belongingness—by establishing trust, exchanging ideas, cultivating cultural appreciation, and growing mutual respect. 

Design as a shared language

Because our human tendency is to first hunt for similarities, design can provide some common ground before veering into the more challenging territory of difference. Readers with a background in visual communication are probably familiar with the adage that design makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Leaning into this idea helps intercultural teammates understand how their unique perspectives can be perceived as both familiar and strange, depending on the context. In turn, they more easily overcome the initial awkwardness embedded in differences or socio-cultural barriers because of design’s ability to communicate and elicit diverse perspectives. 

In addition to the shared lexicon of design, we encourage teams to create and exchange boundary objects—to inform conversation and topics for discussion. According to Arias and Fischer (2000), boundary objects can be physical objects that generate shared understanding across diverse teams and disciplinary boundaries. Instead of centering discussions on the individual or their so-called difference, the object becomes the center of attention. In other words, design becomes the starting point for discussion, reducing the awkwardness of a typical video call focal point: strangers’ facial expressions in digital rectangles. 

Belonging in the world

Focusing on belonging is vital to this ongoing research because it simultaneously underlies and propels responsible and conscientious ethnography, participatory and action research methods, and practice-based studies. Cultivating belongingness in creative practice is particularly essential for teams to channel their diverse perspectives into innovative approaches to build community. Even when differences arise, design helps create a shared language that unites our participants and enables them to discuss and value differences. Students gain the confidence to reveal not only what they have in common but also what makes them different from each other. 

In the bigger picture of creative practice for global challenges, the Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork and the skills we teach in IDC are transferable beyond the classroom. Collaboration, teamwork, and their synonyms are intertwined with the practice of 21st-century design. We see the inevitability of teamwork as a design problem that can be addressed by intentionally and slowly building relationships. Finding the courage to bring our differences to the table enriches the learning experience and our potential to push beyond our boundaries or typical approaches. 

As designers, we must find ways to proactively diversify the discipline because transformative social change requires multiple perspectives, ideas, and people. Only together can we begin to resolve the world’s most pressing challenges. And in taking responsibility for these problems together, we cultivate a greater sense of belonging in our shared world.