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Belonging Together: Reflections on Lived Experience to Promote Inclusivity in the Design Classroom

Published by raplanch

By Liese Zahabi

Central to the word belonging is the word longing. As social creatures, most humans long to be part of a group, to be understood by people with common perspectives and values, to have the support of others. The concept of belonging also suggests a sense of inside and outside: when you belong you are part of a group of some kind, whether a small circle of friends, an extended multi-generational family, a school full of students, a company full of employees, or a town
full of citizens. Either you are within this circle, inside, or you are on the
outside of these designations.

Putting ideas, objects, and people into categories is a fundamental human tendency: this is a spoon and it belongs in this drawer, this is an aeonium succulent and it belongs in this classification of plants, this is an idea that does or does not fit within my value system and therefore does or does not belong in my worldview. Academic disciplines and fields of practice perform categorization in even more refined ways, taking in new or unfamiliar ideas and slotting them neatly into an understanding of the world. Design is certainly no exception. One design might remind someone of works from a particular time period or designer, the use of a color might be reminiscent of a specific style, the particular use of language might suggest a specific audience. The ideas of a designer might be so incredibly different from what we typically see in the field that we reject them, or try to art-direct
them, demanding they change to fit the status quo, because they just don’t seem to belong. This categorization, this sense of what belongs and what does not is necessary for making sense of the world, but it is also fraught and tends to reinforce stereotypes, tropes, cliches, and the ossification of monolithic perspectives.

Finding my way

My own journey of finding a sense of belonging was a long and winding one. The earliest feelings of belonging were centered within my family; these are usually our first experiences of feeling inside or outside of a group and are often the most deeply rooted. My experience of the world then spread out to school classrooms, friend groups, activities on the playground at recess, athletic teams and music ensembles, the cast and crew for school plays, identity markers and labels (am I a freak or a geek or a jock or an artsy weirdo), fields of study and majors in college, job titles, and then later to apartment buildings and neighborhoods, geographic locations, status symbols and social class distinctions. As we move through life we are constantly shifting our sense of where and how we belong, both in our own perceived understanding of our place in the world, as well as how we believe others perceive and treat us. As an awkward, weird, and sensitive child I spent much of the beginning of life feeling left out, outcast, and misunderstood. Like many teenagers, my sense of self was in opposition to the groups and structures I saw in the world around me, my identity was wrapped up in defining myself outside what was normal and accepted.

In college I spent two years as a very undeclared major (the problem was that I was interested in everything), taking classes in psychology and poetry and acting and writing and history. The summer after my sophomore year I worked part time as a receptionist for a credit union and was determined to figure out a direction for my studies. While flipping through the enormous printed course catalog (easily a thousand pages…these were the days before this content was published online), I discovered this thing called “graphic design.” Wholly unfamiliar with this term and the field itself (this would have been in 1997) I excitedly read about what designers do. From the description I understood design as a marriage of things I enjoyed and had some skill with: visual arts, creativity, writing, and computers. I began my junior year as an art major, started wading through the numerous pre-requisites and associated art classes, added a fifth year to my undergrad experience, and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art with a concentration in graphic design (and a minor in writing) in 2000.

While I was a creative child, engaged with the visual aesthetics of the world, my small rural high school required students to choose between studying music and studying art (I would have loved to do both). Rather than taking advanced level art classes throughout high school, I played the clarinet in marching band and concert ensemble (although I did take journalism for four years and served as the co-editor of our yearbook, an activity that absolutely shaped my novice understanding of design.) This meant that when I decided to major in fine arts, I didn’t have the same training or artistic confidence many of my classmates had. Some of my professors did a wonderful job of trying to make all students feel welcomed and supported, but the majority didn’t seem to know how to work with students like me, who lacked the advanced vocabulary, who didn’t already have a baseline set of skills, who couldn’t immediately comprehend all the ways they were unable to see their own work clearly and objectively. While I absolutely felt that design was the right field for me to pursue, I never felt a sense of belonging while I pursued my undergraduate degree in design.

After college, I worked as a designer for eight years, for two different small design agencies. These years were full of trying different things: learning about video production, instructional design, branding and promotional design; attending and directing photoshoots, going on print-checks, working on catalog designs, managing backup tapes of client work, figuring out how to function as a team member within a small creative office, tackling ways to deal with overwhelming feelings of imposter syndrome and how to deal with crappy co-workers and fickle bosses and clients. Working for a smaller firm meant wearing a lot of different hats and getting to see every project go through the process of being produced. Just as in college, I knew design was what I wanted to do, but I still struggled with feeling like an outsider. In the third year at my second position, I knew it was time to move on, but I wasn’t sure what to move on to. During a dinner party with friends, one of them was talking about their job teaching graphic design at a local university, excitedly sharing what it was like to work with students. Like the proverbial lightning bolt, it struck me that teaching might be what I should pursue next. I spent the next year researching graduate programs, designing work for a grad-school-worthy portfolio, writing and re-writing and re-re-writing my letter of interest, and applying to a handful of programs. The day I found out I was accepted to the MGD program at NC State was one of the best of my life, and I will never forget the sense of achievement, pride, and excitement. 

Graduate school was overwhelming in the beginning: moving to a new state, settling into a new apartment, hoping my spouse would successfully find a new job, getting to know an unfamiliar school, new classmates, and professors. I was thrilled and terrified in equal measure. After a bumpy first semester, I began to find my place and gain confidence in my abilities to think, write, and make design at the graduate level. This was the place where I finally started to feel like I belonged in the field of design, and this sense was reinforced every time I was able to work with students, as I had the chance to learn from and collaborate with some of my classmates, as I researched and wrote my thesis project, and as I conducted the search for an academic job. I have been teaching on the tenure track for 12 years (at three different institutions in very different parts of the U.S.) and have never
looked back.  

Making way for others

As a design educator, I constantly think about creating inclusivity within my classroom. Having felt like an outsider many times in my life, and certainly within the world of design, I begin with belonging as a core value. The ways we structure our classroom activities, our syllabi, our projects, our lectures, our curriculums, our programs, our spaces, and our design communities can have an enormous impact on whether new designers and students feel welcomed. These choices and practices can encourage new designers and students to become and remain engaged with design, or they can shut them out and throw up invisible barriers. Over the years I have experimented with different ways of creating a sense of belonging with my students, and have continued to refine and revise these approaches for different programs, institutions, types of students, and changing student expectations and values. It is certainly work, and the work will never be finished, but it is work well worth doing.

In the summer of 2021, as part of the AIGA Design Educators Community (DEC), I organized a panel of design educators to speak about issues connected to inclusivity and accessibility in the design classroom, entitled We Belong Together. This panel was recorded virtually, and served as asynchronous content published as part of the SHIFT{ed} Summer Summit. The panelists for this discussion included: Gaby Hernández (University of Arkansas), Meena Khalili (University of South Carolina), Dave Pabellon (Columbia College Chicago), and Gabi Schaffzin (York University, School of Arts, Media, Performance, and Design, Toronto, Canada). The recording for this session can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/5Y-YHsw03f0

The panelists discussed their thoughts about:

  • The different kinds of students they have worked with.
  • How differences in background, culture, economic means, as well as cognitive and physical differences affect student experiences.
  • How educators can ensure that we communicate and integrate otherness into the classroom and the design canon.
  • The importance of educators talking about diversity and inclusivity within not only the educational space but also the design workforce and the discipline itself.
  • How educators can try to ensure there is a path forward for different kinds of young designers and students.
  • The fact that academia as a whole is not accessible for disabled designers
  • The role of vulnerability in the classroom.
  • The importance of active destigmatization to create inclusive spaces.
  • Ideas around assessments and grading, and valuing the quality of ideas and a student’s ability to articulate individual design processes.
  • Ways we can course-correct when it is clear things aren’t working well
  • The importance of doing this work as a team effort that includes students, faculty, staff, and administration.

The session also offered some tips for educators, including:

  • Think about what to include in your syllabus that can enhance inclusivity.
  • Consider creating a flexible syllabus.
  • Consider using a mechanism for students to have a back channel for discussion and collaborative note-taking during class.
  • The use of closed-captioning can make a huge difference for many students
  • Make your critique sessions more inclusive and accessible.
  • Explicitly check in with students. (“Do you have what you need to keep going?”)
  • Consider flattening your class structure, use non-hierarchical structures in the classroom.
  • Use Zoom as an option for student meetings and office hours.
  • Try not to rely solely on official accommodations letters for students, but instead try to offer accommodations (as appropriate) for all students, and consider giving students flexible options.

As the design discipline seeks to bring in new voices and more diverse perspectives, it is imperative that design educators create equitable, inclusive, and accessible spaces for students. Young designers and design students face many barriers to learning about design, seeing themselves as designers, becoming part of our discipline, and feeling like they belong, I certainly did during my journey. It would be impossible for any of us to do the work of creating welcoming classroom and workspaces perfectly for everyone all of the time, but if we want to affect change within our field, it is imperative that we do the best we can to put ourselves outside of our own experiences and perspectives, to engage students and young designers where they are—to actually meet them there as much as is possible—and to help them feel seen, heard, supported, empowered, and welcome.

01 // Image of my studio workspace, NCSU COD 2009.

 

02 // Image of MGD studio workspace, NCSU COD 2009. Pictured here: Dan McCafferty, Tania Allen, Sam Kim (MGD class of 2010).

 

03 // Image of MGD studio workspace, NCSU COD 2009. Pictured here: Caroline Maxcy Fox, Lauren Waugh (MGD class of 2010).

 

04 // Image of author’s office, Weber State University, Utah, taken in 2011 in the first month of being an official Assistant Professor of Design.

 

05 and 06 // Images from design classroom at University of Maryland, 2015 and 2016.

 

07 // Image from design classroom (designed and organized by author) at the University of New Hampshire, 2022.

 

Liese Zahabi is a graphic/interaction designer and Assistant Professor of Design at the University of New Hampshire. She received her Master of Graphic Design (MGD) from North Carolina State University and her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from Eastern Michigan University. She has been working as a designer since 2000, and teaches courses in graphic design, interaction design, motion design and animation, typography, game design, user experience, and design research.

Liese’s academic research focuses on search as a cognitive and cultural process, and how the design of interfaces can change the experience of digital search tasks. Her creative design work explores how the nature of search manifests itself in visual patterns and sense-making, how the digital record influences memory and our understanding of history, and how language and image intersect within the context of the Internet. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Beyond the Search Engine: Design of the Online Search Experience, which is under contract with Routledge Publishing.

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On Belonging

Published by raplanch

By Lincoln Hancock

There’s a paradox at the heart of human understanding that makes belonging a tricky thing. 

The world before us is seductively full and present. We want this for ourselves, to manifest, to coincide, to be what we are. It seems so simple and foundational. But to apprehend a thing is to be not-it. We are a different kind of thing, a thing that apprehends the world. So we are in the world, but not of it. 

Our very awareness implies a distance or gap, an otherness. This is the necessary form of our knowledge of ourselves: our constructs of being and is-ness imply and contain a sort of emptiness, a void that serves as a constant backdrop against which we grasp the thing that is — its distance from us, and its distance from the other things in the world.    

So we know things through what they are not. Orange is not nothing, but it is also not-green, not-red, not-yellow. Yet what makes orange orange eludes us. We can go on at great length to describe visible spectrums and optical mixing and the behavior of light and the work of Matisse but to really get to orange we have to talk about what it’s not. 

This is strange but essential. It’s what makes us human. In the vast canvas of plenitude, all that is, we apprehend ourselves at a distance from the world. We can’t simply coincide, we can’t just be, like a color or a thing or even an idea of a thing. Through being aware, we sense we’re inherently other-than. We are other-than the world, other-than the people in it, other-than our very selves as we reflect on who we are. We exist as something elusive at core. In such a metaphysical lurch, how can we even begin to think about belonging?

This fraught territory is where we must begin. But for those of us who are artists and designers and musicians, the urge to define and understand ourselves against the backdrop of the world is even more intense. It’s not just a matter of ontological necessity, but a thing we desire. We must articulate our difference to ourselves, to others. The road to becoming who we are goes right through understanding what we are not. 

We reckon with the immensity of it all, feeling the weight of the things and ideas of things in the world fixed in the perilous gaze of others, who we know see us as certain types of things in a world of their own. We’re chased by those that want to name us, to pull us down into static, opaque, eminently describable thingness. Artists want nothing more than to escape such a fate.

We devise strategies to wriggle free of the traps others set for us. Italo Calvino posits lightness as an operating principle, a means of eluding “the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world” (Six Memos for the Next Millenium, 4). Against the calcifying heaviness of Medusa’s stare:

Perseus’s strength always lies in a refusal to look directly, but not in a refusal of the reality
in which he is fated to live; he carries the reality with him and accepts it as his particular burden (5). 

It is the blood of the slain Gorgon that births Pegasus and enables Perseus to take flight. The artist’s work, as a kind of jailbreak from a panopticon of prefixed meaning and moral surveillance, is not a wanton or random act. It is a meaningful and creative gesture, enabled precisely by an acknowledgement of one’s relationship to the world. As Calvino says, lightness is not denial of what is, but rather a means of seeing “from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification” (7). 

Our “particular burden” as artists is precisely this agency that springs from our difference. Calvino quotes Paul Valery: “Il faut être léger comme l’oiseau, et non comme la plume.” (One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather).
Don’t float, fly. 

A journey and practice in art, design, music is an ongoing dialogue and dance between is and is-not. It begins with an impulse, which might be spontaneous or reactive. A moment of clarity, an apprehension of oneself as a different kind of thing in the world. A glimpse of possibility there might be more to all this. Then, quickly, an awareness that there are others who see things similarly. Against the grain, a sense of belonging, a tribe.

But even here, we dance. We fit and don’t fit. We can’t live without each other, and we’re at each other’s throats. We make beautiful things. We make ugly things. 

It doesn’t matter. We make. 

The critic Calvin Tompkins described contemporary practice as “among other things, an approach to the problem of living.” I think about this a lot. In relation to belonging, it carries added resonance. The problem of living is loneliness, the problem is being lost. The problem is being misunderstood, the problem is systemic, the problem is poverty. Our approach as artists, designers, musicians, and humans is to answer the problem through the means we have. We organize, we compose, we diagram, we research, we experiment, we lobby. The problem is noise, we meditate. The problem is boredom, we make music. The problem is painting, we paint. The problem is something doesn’t work, we design something better.  

It is our situation in the world — as both part of things and part not — that is our agency. Against all that seeks to determine our station, we are free to interpret, to reconsider, to remake. Indeed, we have a responsibility to do so. But the project need not be grand. The decisions and commitments we make each day, each moment, are as critical and demand as much care and attention. This constant burden can be nerve-wracking, anxiety-inducing. Sartre and others described it as terrifying, as anguish.    

I don’t think it has to be quite so dramatic. I’m not sweating it as much as I used to, anyway. Art and design and music are psychic support structures. Projects and ideas are out there. Each one is a place to belong, even if only for a little while. They bring us together in a swirl of history, context, emotion, possibility, humanity. They make things, we make things. 

Then, soon, the space between us and the things we make reappears. This inherent restless dance of knowing and not-knowing, being and not-being, keeps us coming back to the questions at the heart of what it means to be here, to be alive, to be part of it all.  

 

Lincoln Hancock (MGD 2010) is an artist, designer, and musician with more than two decades of experience in creative fields. As a Senior UX Designer for the Lenovo Next UX Team,
he develops concepts for new experiences that contribute to thought leadership and influence product development across
the company. As an artist focused on installation and public practice, he leverages art and design to explore ideas and create spaces for new experiences. He has taught undergraduates and led projects across fields from product-focused design and research efforts to artist teams and rock bands. He is a co-founder of A Gang of Three, a multidisciplinary art and design practice focused on public projects. Hancock has a background in Philosophy and a Master’s degree in Graphic Design from North Carolina State University.

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On Belonging and Design Education

Published by scrkven

By Liz Chen

Belonging exists at the intersection of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Historically, the design education curriculum has been constructed by one demographic group: white heterosexual cis-gendered men. Despite the existence of diverse designers, Western design education is rooted in Eurocentric colonization, prioritizing design histories from Europe over histories of Indigenous and non-European origins (Andersen, 2017; Sales, 2021; Noel, 2020). In the U.S., design education curricula generally operates from a colonized perspective, largely ignoring the design contributions and histories of many countries around the world (Ikeda, et al., 2021; Sales, 2021). The pervasive teaching of European design history implicitly communicates to students with marginalized identities that white, Eurocentric design is more valuable than design from underrepresented cultural and social groups (Sales, 2021).

A rising number of undergraduate design students identify as belonging to a socially disadvantaged group (racialized [non-white], transgendered [non-cis], sexual minorities)  – a radical shift from early years of the profession’s students (AIGA, 2021). And yet, the lack of design curricula that includes texts by diverse populations (“by women and femmes, by Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, by LGBTQ and Two-Spirit folks, and/or by Disabled people”) have disadvantaged intersectional student designers through the reproduction of implicit racism (Costanza-Chock, 2020, p. 187). Unfortunately, as in design pedagogy and the rest of the world, marginalized groups are often pushed to the borders, unaccounted for in the design process and therefore unincluded, failing to dismantle systems of inequity.

Having an intersectional identity, or existing at the intersection of contextualized identities (e.g., an Asian queer non-binary person), heightens the effects of identity-based oppression, discrimination, and/or domination (Crenshaw, 1991). Thus, intersectional students (specifically Black, Brown, and Indigenous students), disproportionately experience identity-based oppression that is often not accounted for in curricula.

Though we cannot enact systemic or institutional change, we can provoke change on an individual level, with the hopes of sparking a larger social movement. To expedite change in design education, we must look to the people who directly interact with students, shaping their knowledge and understanding of the design world and its constituents: design educators. In other words, educators should act as trailblazers in implementing anti-oppressive design frameworks through their teaching practices.

Educators of all disciplines, including design educators, unintentionally embed their biases into their teaching practices (Staats, 2016). For example, failing to teach design history that extends beyond movements and their white characters, subconsciously suggests that designers of color did not exist. It erases the significance of racialized, queer, trans, and disabled designers as creatives in the industry and communicates to these groups of minority students that they are insignificant – that they do not belong.

Enacting more inclusive design curricula and improving intersectional student experiences entails prioritizing pluriversal approaches to design education. Diversifying perspectives in course reading and resources, using inclusive and accommodating language in syllabi, and valuing the exchange of personal experience through personal narratives in the classroom could be a good place to start. 

BIPOC Design History Resources, Anti-Racism Design Resources, and Decentering Whiteness in Design History Resources are comprehensive resource lists for those who are interested in furthering anti-racist design education. And for designers looking to build community with likeminded people, check out the Design Justice Network, Queer Design Club, and Where are the Black Designers? organization.

We must show students of all backgrounds, beliefs, and identities that they belong.

 

Liz Chen (she/they) is a queer multicultural graphic designer, writer, and editor based in Raleigh, NC. They received a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism (Reporting) with a minor in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2019 and a Master’s Degree in Graphic and Experience Design (MGXD) from North Carolina State University in 2023. Currently, Liz is the Managing Editor of the American Journal of Surgery, with plans to work in design education. Their research interests include design ethics and philosophy, design pedagogy, design justice, inclusive design, data visualization, and machine learning.

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Works Cited

AIGA. (2021). Design POV: An In-Depth Look at the Design Industry Now (p. 79, Rep.). New York, NY: AIGA, the professional association for design.

Andersen, M. (2017, August 20). Why can’t the U.S. Decolonize Its Design Education? Retrieved November 30, 2022, from https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/why-cant-the-u-s-decolonize-its-design-education/ 

Costanza-Chock, S. (2020) Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. The MIT Press.

Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039 

Ikeda, R., et al. (2021). Designing for Liberation: A Case Study in Antiracism Instructional Design. The Journal of Applied Instructional Design, 10(4). https://dx.doi.org/10.51869/104/rik

Noel, L. (2020) Envisioning a pluriversal design education, in Leitão, R., Noel, L. and Murphy, L. (eds.), Pivot 2020: Designing a World of Many Centers – DRS Pluriversal Design SIG Conference, 4 June, held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2020.021

Sales, K. (2021). Systemic Racism. In E. Lupton & J. Tobias (Authors), Extra bold: A feminist, inclusive, anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Staats, C. (2016). Understanding Implicit Bias: What Educators Should Know. The American Educator, 39, 29.

 

 

 

A Cup of Tea: Mindfulness and Belonging

Published by scrkven

By Amanda Williams

Imagine standing in a crowd. You may be standing slightly to the side by a wall, watching the crowd move and flow. What are you feeling? Perhaps you are feeling anxiety; there are too many strangers,  and you are questioning if it is acceptable for you to be here. Alternatively, perhaps, you feel a sense of calm. You may be waiting for some friends to meet you, or you have some relationship with the crowd, be it an event or shared goal. 

The feeling of connectedness that comes from a sense of belonging, much like the example of feeling calm in a crowd, is hugely impactful to our experiences. Standing in a crowd could be a calming, even invigorating experience if we feel as though we belong, or it can be anxiety-inducing and alienating if we feel out of place. The external factors needed to have a sense of belonging can range from having solid relationships with a few people to sharing a common interest or goal with a wide variety of people. 

However, there are internal factors that are just as important in creating a sense of belonging. These internal factors range from allowing ourselves grace in situations to working through thoughts and emotions to reach an inner calm. As such, they enable us to do one of the most critical acts needed to gain a sense of belonging — allowing ourselves to know and believe that this feeling is genuine and sincere. I am not disregarding the external need for validation from a group or community to gain and nurture a sense of belonging.  Instead, I am drawing attention to the internal factor of personal acceptance and inner stability needed to accept external validation and create a stronger sense of belonging. Without some inner personal acceptance, the sense of belonging created purely from external validation becomes a facade.  

To further explore inner personal acceptance regarding belonging, I look to my experiences of design and being present. The act of design inherently works as a medium between the personal and the community as it starts from the personal factors of the designer and is later extended to the factors of the community. Additionally, the act of being present takes on many forms and meanings, but the core of this act is acceptance, a necessary piece to achieve a strong sense of belonging. Through the creation of my designs, I gain personal acceptance of my belonging. With a sense of inner belonging, I share my designs with the community and in partnership am able to achieve feelings of external belonging. Although the stages of personal mindfulness leading to community belonging change over time, the core points stated remain the same. Through creating and implementing my designs, I use this personal acceptance that I find through being present with my designs and within the design process to form a bridge to others, leading to a multifaceted sense of internal and external belonging.

Past: Being Present = Feeling Happier

Watercolor, pencil, and gouache painting

Being present correlates to feeling happier, as seen in a study where participants were asked to listen to classical music: those who were told to try to feel happy while listening ended up in worse moods than those who simply listened (Oaklander, 2015). 

As a designer who struggled with being mindful, I began exploring how I could bring the experience of mindfulness in everyday moments to my audience. At the time, my medium was watercolor and graphite. I took inspiration from Raku ware tea bowls: hand-made Japanese tea bowls that emphasize the process of making and embracing the imperfections in the clay.  

Although my work was static by nature, I wanted to capture the stillness of a mindful moment. The creation of images that evoke thoughts of mindfulness first acted as a medium to explore and achieve mindfulness within me, in this case, invoking feelings of happiness. Upon completing my piece and the start of acceptance within myself, my work transformed into a medium to create a community sense of mindfulness through happiness: and through a shared sense of mindfulness, the feeling of belonging.

Past: Stages of Mindfulness to Inner Belonging to Community Belonging

Mindfulness: I gain personal mindfulness by focusing on creating still images that widely reflect calm and peaceful moments and objects.

Inner Belonging: Creating makes me happy as well as mindful. With this mindset, I settle into a sense of belonging in myself. I accept my place in what I have created and begin to feel acceptance for myself as a designer.

Community Belonging: Through sharing my painting with the community around me, I hope to encourage mindfulness in others. From this mindfulness, I hope my viewers will share in the experience I had creating my work. As a result, this process creates a sense of belonging within my community.

Present: Being Present = Being Still

Screenshots from a video exploring the tea-making and drinking experience 

For many, allowing the mind to rest in the moment does not come quickly. As stated in “The Power of  Now” by Eckhart Tolle, “the mind has continual conversations with itself that are difficult to turn off. It has lots of opinions, but they are all based on what has happened in the past. This makes it difficult to experience things afresh in the present” (Tolle, 2004). 

Growing up in a society that constantly focuses on the future and/or past trains the mind to think of everything but the present. A study in 2010 used a specialized app with which people could enter their thoughts and feelings throughout the day. The experimenters discovered that a person’s mind would wander regardless of the activity and that people were less happy when this happened (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). 

Thus, being present correlates with feeling happier and being still: although stillness should not be mistaken for motionlessness. Stillness can be full of movement and change, but these changes do not interfere with being mindful. Referred to as a “flow state” in psychological terms, this describes the optimal experiences that are most enjoyable in human life while fully engaging in an activity  (Csikszentmihalyi, 2009). For example, it is the state an artist or designer falls into when they are working on a piece, and suddenly hours have gone by without them realizing it. In this flow state, a  designer does not stop thinking, but time seems to become still while moving through their task.  Without the context of time, these mindful moments are marked by experiences and senses. With this in mind, I investigate the effect of mindfulness on the senses. 

Without meaning to, I found myself again drawn to mindfulness in the form of tea. As my design skills had grown and changed over time, I worked to craft this design through video. Outwardly, my video shows how to make a cup of tea. However, more than that, it gives insight into how to be mindful in each moment of making and eventually drinking the tea: applying all of the senses to be fully present 

As I worked to create this piece, I found inner mindfulness connected through the flow of the work: no longer was the sense of presence and acceptance gained through more concrete images. Part of this is from my change in medium. Before, there was no space between myself and what I created since I used watercolor and pencil to create my pieces directly on paper. By using video, the camera acts as a barrier or a screen, taking me one step away from the design. It is similar to the difference between cash and credit: the process is the same, but there is a disconnect. 

The more significant reason for a change in my journey to inner acceptance is a better understanding of my mindfulness. In the past, I strove to put mindfulness into my work. However, I realized that the mindfulness I gained from my designs was in the flow state I achieved while creating, not the finished piece. Thus, once I shared it with others the experience was centered on connection and togetherness rather than working collectively to find mindfulness.

Present: Stages of Mindfulness to Inner Belonging to Community Belonging

Mindfulness: I gain personal mindfulness from the flow state I entered in my creative process.

Inner Belonging: Gaining mindfulness in my flow state encourages feelings of inner belonging, not from the finished piece but from the process. By trusting my choices made during the creation process I begin to find inner belonging through trusting myself.

Community Belonging: I once again connect to the community around me by sharing my video. However, the shared experience that connects me to the community is not the end state of gaining mindfulness like before. Now I gain a feeling of belonging from the community by sharing in the process to a state of mindfulness: through my video guiding the viewer through the process of being mindful through tea drinking.

Future: Being Present = Accepting uncertainty

Digital painting from a photograph

Using more digital mediums opened my work to the unknown influences of various technologies. This is inevitable, and I welcome it. After all, the effect of being present means accepting change.  Furthermore, adding the unknown into my design makes my job as a designer more compelling since it gives my design space for what I know and what I do not know. With this in mind, I venture into a new idea: being present corresponds with accepting uncertainty. 

Much like achieving mindfulness, accepting uncertainty is much easier said than done. Thích Nhất  Hạnh, a Buddhist monk and a significant influence on Western practices of Buddhism and mindfulness, stated, “People have a hard time letting go of their suffering out of fear of the unknown.  They prefer suffering that is familiar” (Rasheta, 2016). Studies show that intolerance for uncertainty is a significant factor in developing anxiety and depression. Much evidence also suggests that mindfulness is an essential factor in improving mental health (Nekić & Mamić, 2019). To explore this new concept, let me walk you through a scenario. 

Imagine you are a tea drinker. You are visiting me, and I offer you a cup of tea from a pot I have made. If we dissect this scenario, it is full of uncertainty. You can see the cup that holds the tea, but you do not know what kind of tea is inside it. You cannot see the pot which brewed the tea, so you do not know if I just made the tea, and so the tea is boiling, or if it has been sitting a while, so the tea is cooler and possibly, stronger. You do not know if I have added sugar, milk, or any additional ingredients to the cup or if I will offer these after you take the cup. You have not touched the cup yet, so you do not know if there are places on the cup that are too hot to touch. 

The uncertainty of this scenario seems overwhelming. However, although some of these thoughts may have crossed your mind, you would accept the cup and take a sip of tea instead of falling into indecision. If you are a more cautious tea drinker, you may have asked me what kind of tea it was. Nevertheless, in the end, you would have accepted the overall uncertainty of the situation with little to no worry, confident that you would discover the answer to these questions soon, or you would not know the answer, and this would be okay. 

Keeping this scenario in mind, I digitally painted the image of the offered cup. The drawing is still my personal experience, and I still find moments of mindfulness through the flow of the creation of this drawing. However, the drawn cup is a photo of a cup, a relic from the shared experience of drinking tea together. It is a shared experience that involves the acceptance of uncertainty in the situation and the present experience of enjoying the tea/enjoying the image of the teacup. We share in the uncertainty and the acceptance of the uncertainty even though our paths toward this shared experience differ.  Moreover, through the creation of this experience and by personally accepting uncertainty, we can reach out to each other to share and accept validation, creating a sense of belonging.

Future: Stages of Mindfulness to Inner Belonging to Community Belonging

Mindfulness: I gain mindfulness through accepting uncertainty.

Inner Belonging: I gain a sense of inner belonging when I accept uncertainty. 

Community Belonging: Unlike previous experiences, I gain a sense of belonging from my community in tandem with the stages of attaining mindfulness and inner belonging. Through the shared experience of uncertainty and validation created in the tea-drinking scenario, I gain a sense of belonging from my community. The design and creation of the design serve as a piece of the shared experience as opposed to what drives the experiences. 

 

Amanda N. Williams is a graphic designer and multimedia artist in the Raleigh NC area. She holds a master’s degree from North Carolina State University in the Graphic and Experience Design program. She previously received her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina Asheville with a double major in art (focus in drawing) and new media (double concentration in animation and video production). Aside from a newly found interest in data visualization creation, Amanda is interested in artificial intelligence and its role and implications in the design world as well as the possibilities it offers in designing for accessibility.

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Works Cited

Cheron, G. (2016, December 6). How to measure the psychological “flow”? A neuroscience  perspective. Frontiers in psychology.  

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5138413/#B22  

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2009). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper and Row.  

Gordan, K. (2003, April 1). The impermanence of being: Toward a psychology of uncertainty S. Sage  Journals. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022167802250731  

Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science,  330(6006), 932–932. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1192439  

Nekić, M., & Mamić, S. (2019, December 3). Intolerance of uncertainty and mindfulness as  determinants of anxiety and depression in female students. MDPI. https://www.mdpi.com/2076- 328X/9/12/135/htm  

Oaklander, M. (2015, October 1). Why chasing happiness might be making you miserable. Times.  https://time.com/4057287/why-chasing-happiness-might-be-making-you-miserable/  

Rasheta, N. (2016, November 22). The Fear of Uncertainty https://secularbuddhism.com/the-fear-of-uncertainty/.  

Tolle, E. (2004). The power of now: A guide to spiritual enlightenment. Distributed to the trade by  Publishers Group West. 

 

 

 

The Artist-Turned-Designer

Published by scrkven

By Kayla Rondinelli

What place does art have in design? As someone who defines themselves as an artist, painter, creator, and maker above all else, I often struggle with feeling like I truly belong in the design community, or if I even want to. Graphic design is a relatively modern field. The problems design looks to solve are taking place in a digital age, characterized by the extraordinary speed of technological innovation, in cyberspaces and in seemingly infinite realms as yet beyond human comprehension. Art is not a new field but a critical part of human history, ‘Art’ permeates all parts of life; society, culture, and professions of all kinds. While it seems to have withstood the test of time; proven by the fact that people still visit art that was created tens of thousands of years ago, the world as we know it is changing. Though traditional art will never be completely replaced by the digital medium, with the emergence of AI-generated art, the progression of VR spaces, and the development of NFTs in the art business, it is no surprise many artists like me are feeling lost and overwhelmed in this new environment.

I recognize that my art practice and my design practice are rooted in the same place. The way I see the world and experience the visual universe around me comes directly from my background in the fine art disciplines. However, as I enter the professional design field, which is eager to tackle a newfound problem sphere, I cannot help but wonder how fine art can play a role. In its most basic interpretation, art provokes emotion and needs no purpose, while design solves a problem and requires a purpose (Philips 2018). But this is only a surface level analysis. Surely design can provoke emotion, and art can solve problems. But then why is there such a growing disparity in the fields? Are all artists designers? Are all designers inherently artists? In which camp do I belong?

Analysis of the concepts of design and art reveals that there are obviously distinctions between the two. Design has to function, while art does not. Art relies on evoking emotion, design does not (Suhad 2020). A painter would explore a personal journey in the making process while an interface designer would implore a data-driven, wholly structured, research-guided process. However, art and design have been developing throughout human history in tandem; they are interconnected, no matter the distinctions in process and thinking. So, at what point does art become design and when can design be considered art?

True fine art is not simply a flippant display of visually pleasing elements. Art is a philosophical inquiry, an intense observational practice, an attempt to present stimuli to arouse emotions, and it provides an opportunity for expression utterly essential to the human experience. Successful design serves people. It has an inherent purpose in its process. Design is testable, data-driven, research guided, created within a context, anticipatory, personalized to the user and developed for a particular audience. Naturally, there are things that art can accomplish that are not required of strong design, just as there are things that design can do that art is not capable of doing.

So where does that leave the artist-turned-designer? Perhaps with a serious case of imposter syndrome, stuck in a limbo between each field, never able to be as free-thinking as an artist and not data-driven enough to be a successful designer, now feeling like a fraud in each discipline. My artistic practice informs my design, but in doing so, must I choose to forgo data exploration, use case scenarios and context in favor of risk-taking, inventiveness, and creative expression? What if the way I have been taught to think and see the world throughout my fine art training has destroyed my full potential as a designer?

While this is clearly a debatable matter in both communities, further investigation reveals that an art education and background can inform design practice. Instruction in fine arts is important for many disciplines: It can promote more effective creative thinking, aesthetic awareness, exposure to culture, and allow for a deeper appreciation of the visual world (M. 2020). My background as a fine artist has provided me with a variety of guiding principles through which to approach my work, something that has been integral to my design education.

My first exposure to the critique atmosphere was in an art classroom. This is a valuable tool within a design environment as well. Just as getting new insight and perspective gives you a better picture of how an audience is perceiving your art, utilizing a collaborative atmosphere in design research can reveal what your stakeholder is getting out of your design. Similarly, through my exploration of acrylic painting, I was able to adapt to a mindset where art is never truly finished, I could always go back and rework parts of the piece. This approach has shaped how my design process functions best. I am always prepared to make new sketches and iterations as a way to further advance and develop my design. Additionally, I was introduced to the elements and principles of design in a fine arts context. It was easy to understand that there are ways of highlighting or emphasizing particular components depending on the message you want the viewer to understand. The psychology and physiology of why the human eye reacts to certain visual stimuli the way it does, and why we as human beings respond accordingly has been very applicable in my design work.

Furthermore, my studies in high detail and textures as a painter has certainly made me more analytical in my design work. I understand how manipulating small artistic design elements, such as type setting or line thickness, can have a drastic effect on the overall design product. Finally, being educated in a variety of mediums allows me to think more critically about different tools and platforms used in design. Understanding that there are better mediums for conceptualizing what an artist wants to make in an art piece is the same principle as leveraging specific tools and programs to best fit the needs or objectives of a particular design.

         As I begin to look forward to a career in graphic design, I know that the future spaces I’ll work in will come with their own affordances and difficulties. Lamentably, seemingly everything created has a digital version of itself or makes use of some technology, and fine arts is no exception. There is now AI trained to make art faster and more accurately than humans ever will. However, just because we are entering the most digital age the world has ever known, does not mean that the human drive for expression and mark-making will become obsolete. While some might argue that design is more relevant than art for it must have a purpose and a function to exist, art still holds a significant place in the human heart, mind, and culture. Often fine art’s purpose is exploration itself. It is the making process of true art that enables it to be extraordinary. And perhaps art has a purpose too; after all, art should inspire. Art is one of the most fundamental ways we connect with our history and with the human experience. If not all design is art, and if not all designers want to call themselves artists that will be just fine. But for me, the very act of painting, designing, creating, and making is what makes me a part of something greater than myself, not the title I choose to live under.

 

Kayla Rondinelli is a UX designer, graphics illustrator, and artist based in Raleigh, NC. She graduated magna cum laude from Ohio Wesleyan University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2021. The Fine Arts Department awarded her Departmental Distinction for her concentrations in graphic design, painting, textiles, and printmaking. Currently, Kayla is a Master’s Candidate in Graphic and Experience Design at North Carolina State University and works as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Design College and as a freelance graphic designer. Her interest in reducing the carbon impact of the built environment has pushed her work to focus on sustainable design practices. Kayla hopes her work provides a platform for conversations concerning environmental conservation, equitable distribution of the burdens of climate change, and preservation of the natural world.

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Works Cited

Camplin, T. (2019, April 12). Art and the Elites. Medium. Retrieved April 5, 2023, from https://medium.com/conscious-paradoxalism/art-and-the-elites-e783ce12eb8b

M, S. (2020, May 7). The Difference Between Design and Art. Medium. Retrieved April 5, 2023, from https://uxplanet.org/the-difference-between-design-and-art-d9b293360ed2

Philips, M. (2018, May 8). Art vs design – A Timeless Debate. Toptal Design Blog. Retrieved April 5, 2023, from https://www.toptal.com/designers/creative-direction/art-vs-design

The Professional Association for Design. (n.d.). What is Design. AIGA. Retrieved April 5, 2023, from https://www.aiga.org/what-is-design

 

 

An Ecosystem of Knowledge

Published by And So

By Ashley Cook

I take a behind-the-scenes look at a few of the ideas, conversations and reflective connections between many of my projects from the 2020-2021 school year. These connections only show snapshots of paths of thought that I can still recall — there are many missing gaps and links from forgotten conversations and personal events, not only from myself but from all of the students and faculty, that would show an entire ecosystem of knowledge flowing between minds. It’s the unnoticed side conversations and sharing environment that helps us to get to those deeper insights in our work.

Ashley Cook (MGD ‘22) is a Master of Graphic Design Candidate at North Carolina State University. Her research interests include speculative interfaces, UI dark patterns and marginalization within design.

Works Cited

  • [1] Anderson, Kelli [@kellianderson]. (n.d.). Posts [Instagram Profile]. Retrieved 1 May 2021. https://www.instagram.com/kellianderson
  • [2] Camille, M. (1992). Image on the edge: The margins of medieval art. London: Reaktion Books.
  • [3] Cranefield, Jocelyn; Yoong, Pak; and Huff, Sid L. (2015) “Rethinking Lurking: Invisible Leading and Following in a Knowledge Transfer Ecosystem,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 16 : Iss. 4 , Article 3. DOI: 10.17705/1jais.00394
  • [4] Ghosh S., Shruthi C.S., Bansal H., Sethia A. (2017) What is User’s Perception of Naturalness? An Exploration of Natural User Experience. In: Bernhaupt R., Dalvi G., Joshi A., K. Balkrishan D., O’Neill J., Winckler M. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2017. INTERACT 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 10514. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67684-5_14 
  • [5] Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.
  • [6] Lupi, G; Posavec, S. (n.d.). Dear Data. http://www.dear-data.com/
  • [7] O’Neil, C. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. New York: Crown Publishers, 2016.
  • [8] Peterson, M. (2019) Aspects of visual metaphor: an operational typology of visual rhetoric for research in advertising, International Journal of Advertising, 38:1, 67-96, DOI: 10.1080/02650487.2018.1447760
  • [9] Peterson, M. (2019) The production of narrative through static imagery: examples from a peculiar medieval illustration. Visual Communication. 18(2):279-293. doi:10.1177/1470357217749998 
  • [10] Rigau, A. (2009). Design as choice architecture: informing consumers about debt-related behaviors. [Master’s thesis, North Carolina State University].
  • [11] Rose, D. (2014). Enchanted objects: design, human desire, and the Internet of things. First Scribner hardcover edition. New York, NY: Scribner.
  • [12] Wendt, T. (2015). Design for Dasein. Author.
  • [13] Wilson, M. Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 9, 625–636 (2002). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196322

The Wild Unknown

Published by And So

By Isabel Bo-Linn

I

write everything down. I write in my planner, in note apps, on post-its, and spare envelopes. During my time in graduate school, I managed to fill four large notebooks with my writings. To an outsider, these notebooks are nonsense. Overly detailed, top-to-bottom handwritten notes, odd drawings, and nonsensical frameworks. The answer(s) to what lies beneath the surface of my work lies in these notebooks. I flipped and flipped and flipped and flipped and found – questions. 

These questions are not always explicitly answered, but their presence drives my work. These inquiries push my creative boundaries and help me reflect on past and future work. In her book How to do Nothing, Jenny Odell discusses how curiosity and rabbit holes are both painful and joyful to experience. “This way of looking, in which we are Alice and everything is a potential rabbit hole, is potentially immobilizing (103).” The see-saw of the known and unknown can be debilitating to the design process at times. The unknown, brought on by curiosity and exploration, could hold the answers we crave. I created a cartomancy with my questions and pictorial symbols to guide other designers through their processes and through the thick of the unknown.




 

Isabel Bo-Linn (MGD ‘21) is a recent graduate of North Carolina State University’s Master of Graphic Design program. Her research interests include design education, data journalism, and design fiction.

Works Cited

  • Odell, Jenny. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Melville House, 2019.

What Are Some Forgotten Things?

Published by And So

By Ashley Anderson & Randa Hadi

Our visual essay responds to the question, “what are some forgotten things?” We ask this general question of ourselves (and each other) as a way to uncover ideas and themes hidden just below the surface. The process required us to visually communicate an idea, interpret, and respond to what exists on the page. It was an exercise in sharing but also listening with intentionality. The visual essay contains three points of view: Ashley’s, Randa’s, and the interaction of our two voices. This process has shown us what unintentional and intentional influences could look like.

Drawing from principles of conditional design, we initially decided on the structure of communicating but not the content; instead, we allowed themes to emerge organically through visual and written dialogue. The themes that emerged through making were time, power, privilege, perspective/perception, and the role of the designer. 

We communicated with each other through Miro, an online collaborative platform that allows users to manipulate images and text on digital whiteboards. We set up a shared board and individual boards to use as workspaces. The individual boards allowed us the space to write and reflect on each other’s contributions, while the shared board provided a place for ideas to come together. We chose to create individual boards to separate the initial intention of our contributions from each other’s interpretations. The result is a complex and multi-layered visual dialogue.

Figure 1. This visual dialogue responds to the question “what are some forgotten things?” using text, photos, and drawings.

 

Figure 2. Randa and Ashley’s points of view, fragmented and separated before coming together and creating a multi-perspective view in visual essay form.

 

Figure 3. Miro board setup with separate boards and the combined board in the center.

 

Ashley Anderson (MGD ‘20) is a recent graduate of North Carolina State University’s Master of Graphic Design program. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at NC State, where her research interest is in mediating existing art-based therapy interventions through design. 

Randa Hadi (MGD ‘20) is a recent graduate of North Carolina State University’s Master of Graphic Design program. She is interested in uplifting and sharing stories, especially ones that deal with underrepresented, marginalized, immigrant, and transnational identity.

LOOP–Designing a more circular future

Published by And So

By Lauren Burnham & Emily McGalliard, Illustrations by Eric Pryor

Introduction

Over the spring semester, we investigated issues that arise when designing for physical or digital social interactions within communities. Initially, each student was tasked with identifying a wicked problem, defined by Jon Kolko as a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve (Kolko). Working in groups, we began studying the specific problem area through direct social science and design research methods such as interviews, focus groups and demographic data with relationship to community. Much of the semester consisted of exploring and discussing the chosen problem, interviewing experts and individuals with lived experience and finally reframing the issue based on this research. Consistent points of reflection were key throughout the semester, leading us to our final project proposal, where we narrowed our original problem scope of recycling and sustainability by looking to design itself. In seeing how designers contribute to the problem of waste generation through products and materials, we are able to look at ways the issue can be mitigated. This led us to the exploration of a circular vs. linear economy and to the development of an educational workshop tool for design students to equip them with information to carry forward into their design practice.

Background

We began our investigation into the wicked problems of waste and sustainability by researching current measures to mitigate waste generation. However, this investigation consistently indicated that strategies aimed towards the end of the waste life cycle are insufficient to address the inherent problem. The search for intervention opportunities within the current system involved grassroots advocates, local organizations, individual behaviors and attitudes, and municipal recycling managers. Yet each of these stakeholders pointed towards the same types of underlying issues, which stem from the complex and flawed system surrounding the production and consumption of goods in the United States. 

While recycling remains the primary method of diverting waste from landfills, recycling rates remain low due to frequent contamination, low participation, high prevalence of non-recyclable materials, and the high expenses associated with recycling programs (“Recycle Right N.C. Factsheet”). Successful programs targeting waste reduction are those that shift responsibility to producers and focus interventions on the supply end of the process. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which has been adopted in some European countries, has proven effective at reducing supply-side waste generation and improving reuptake of recycled materials. In the United States, however, much of the burden of contending with waste remains with consumers. Furthermore, materials cannot be recycled indefinitely, and while recycling keeps them in circulation longer, these materials ultimately end up in landfills. 

Figure 1. A linear economic model of the product life cycle.

A solution to the waste problem requires a solution outside of the linear “take, make, dispose” product life cycle, within which interventions typically prolong the disposal process. While effective policy change remains the most impactful way to influence waste production by producers, a re-envisioning of the product life cycle provides opportunities for lasting change in waste reduction and creates room for interventions on the micro and macro levels.

Process

Recycling is not a long-term solution, but simply a delay in the process from creation to landfill. Our interview with a representative from North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality pointed towards the issue of how few produced goods actually are recyclable and how contamination often leads to recyclable goods ending up in landfills.  We also discussed the changing economic landscape surrounding recycling and the representative emphasized that recycling is a way of dealing with only a small portion of North Carolina’s waste stream.

Our interview with a community director of the Raleigh branch of Toward Zero Waste, a North Carolina non-profit focused on environmental policy and minimizing household waste generation, underscored the problematic nature of relying on personal choices and lifestyle changes on the part of individuals and households in tackling the issue of waste. Making consistently sustainable choices can be expensive and time consuming, and, as each of our interviewees touched on, much of the control of waste generation is out of the hands of individual consumers. Our stakeholders all indicated that the solution is not as simple nor as straightforward as bringing a reusable bag to the grocery store. The solution, therefore, should not be targeted towards shifting the behavior of consumers, but instead towards shifting the types of things that are produced, and the way stakeholders on the production end of our systems think about how things should be made, used, and disposed of. 

Figure 2. A circular economic model of the product life cycle.

Our interview with the founder of Circular Triangle, a Research Triangle Park non-profit educating on the linear to circular economic model shift, framed the issue not only as one of policy, but of the mindset behind our current models and our relationship to consumption. This interviewee emphasized the distinctions between our current linear economy, in which a product is made, used, and disposed of, and the circular economy, which makes efforts to keep an item in use as long as possible, shifts responsibilities for waste away from consumers and towards manufacturers, and redirects much of the waste stream back into manufacturing. They pointed out the challenges to shifting towards a circular approach, including the issue of adoption by businesses. The interviewee pointed out that through a combination of altered business models and policy changes that economically incentivizes waste reduction, a circular approach could be made economically beneficial to businesses. This step is essential in order to create buy-in with businesses and change the supply side of the waste problem. Such changes to business models would likely require a different approach to the way individuals think of purchasing and consuming goods, and the interplay between buy-in by businesses and buy-in by consumers. 

Figure 3. DIKW (Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom) visual assessment of stakeholder interviews.

Overview

Figure 4. Workshop facilitator resources page with artifact cards, diagrams and materials

After interviews with stakeholders, and processing these interviews through a DIKW assessment, which places concepts in a Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom framework, we took a design-centered approach to the problem. Designers are poised to play a pivotal role in transforming the systems of production and consumption in unique ways. Individuals in design roles may be actively involved in  how a product is made, what the product is composed of, and may be in positions to create, market, and popularize new models of producing and consuming goods. 

Circular design solutions, which provide alternatives to the “take, make, dispose” linear model, require a different approach to the way individuals think about and interact with products. Effective solutions require buy-in by both businesses and consumers, highlighting the importance of thoughtful designs that eliminate waste without alienating consumers or business partners. 

Such a design problem requires a holistic awareness of the issue on the part of the people who design our products and services, who, while not responsible for many of the grander economic and policy-based decisions that are largely responsible for stemming the waste stream, are nonetheless uniquely positioned to design products and services that can challenge consumer outlooks towards consumption while expediting  the transition away from the linear consumption model. 

Current design education for many students may not provide the system-level perspective necessary for advocating for such solutions, and may not address issues of sustainability at all. Providing a concise way to engage design students with the issues of waste and sustainability, and prompting them to hypothesize about system-level circular solutions, is crucial to equipping designers for a more sustainable future.

Proposal

The ultimate product of this research was a proposed design education module and accompanying workshop led by the instructor. We believe that an experiential approach is most likely to have a lasting impact upon design students to be carried with them as they continue in their career paths. While the statistics surrounding the issues of our waste system and of sustainability are staggering, simply reading this information may lead designers to feel discouraged or powerless about their roles. We want to encourage designers to alter their thinking surrounding design processes as it relates to sustainability. A creative workshop experience will support creative thinking outside of current methods of production and aid designers in thinking through designing out waste. This workshop can be applied to varying disciplines within design, such that individual participants can form their own takeaways that will prove applicable within their own career paths. 

The workshop and website experience should address three main goals:

  1. Familiarize participants with the issues of waste reduction as it relates to the design of products and services, as well as with the broader landscape of issues related to waste.
  2. Encourage participants to weigh their own potential roles and impacts, and ways in which they could be impactful within their future practice.
  3. Prompt users to engage in a creative process that encourages them to think outside traditional linear systems of production to consider large-scale and systemic solutions for addressing the future in creative ways.

Figure 5. Examples of downloadable workshop artifact cards.

Figure 6. Workshop storyboard page for facilitator use.

Moving Forward

Bringing awareness to issues that can and should be considered in design practice is a start, but learning how to engage with and holistically consider such issues is substantially more difficult. Design instructors must find creative ways to prompt students to think outside of their well-established patterns of thought. While readings — and even projects — may be quickly forgotten, new habits of thinking can stay with design students as they move towards professional practice. Equipping students to frame their design practice in the context of sustainability and system-level thinking is a great way to begin to orient the goods and services of the future to become more sustainable on a fundamental level. Towards this end, designers must begin to reconsider not only the context of the goods and services they design for, but also their own professional roles. Designers, and those in adjacent fields, are in a position to influence opinion towards more sustainable solutions. This cannot be accomplished, however, without asking design students to begin forming a clearer vision of the past, present, and future of sustainability, and without equipping them with the tools they need to begin to shape this future.

Lauren Burnham (MGD ‘22) is a Master of Graphic Design Candidate at North Carolina State University. She is interested in user experience design and research, as well as museum experience design.

Emily McGalliard (MGD ‘22) is a Master of Graphic Design Candidate at North Carolina State University. Her research interests include smart cities and design for social innovation.

Works Cited

  • Kolko, Jon. Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving: A Handbook & A Call to Action. AC4D, 2012.
  • The N.C. Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Service (DEACS). Recycle Right N.C. Factsheet, Alamance County, 2019.