Category: design thinking

• course development critique design design research design theory design thinking education Human-Centered Design information design Instructional Design learning objectives learning outcomes User experience UX

  Typography Class

  I’m going to be teaching a class on typography next week, and here’s how I’m planning the class: after a brief recap of the assigned readings for the day, we’ll do an informal critique exercise in which we look at different examples of typography whose meaning seems to conflict with…

  December 6, 2018
• design design research design theory design thinking HCI/d Human-Centered Design information design Interaction Design knowledge production knowledge tools learning research Understanding by Design

  You Can Always Start Designing

  Over the past few days, I have heard a few students and colleagues say a variation of the following: I don’t know enough to start designing yet. I want to challenge this idea. I don’t think that there is some threshold of knowledge that must be passed before one can…

  October 23, 2018
• art design design research design thinking HCI Human-Centered Design research scholarly communication sketching Uncategorized

  From Bibliographies to Iconographies

  Research through Design (RtD) can be influenced by written text (academic papers) and visual content (images of designs, photos, paintings). So, why not account for the latter in reference lists? Communicating RtD publications could mix bibliographies with iconographies, which would give image-based influences their due credit. Some sketch-proposals (made w/Adobe…

  October 18, 2018
• design design research design theory design thinking HCI HCI/d theory-practice gap

  Theory-Practice Gap

  Watch this video of a talk I gave at CHI2018 on the theory-practice gap:    

  August 6, 2018
• design design thinking education knowledge production learning teaching

  Reading

  James Baldwin is a wonderful writer. I’m working my way slowly through The Fire Next Time, and the following passage just punched me in the chest: Here was the South Side – a million in captivity – stretching from this doorstep as far as the eye could see. Ands they…

  March 10, 2017
• design design research design thinking HCI/d interaction design Interaction Design knowledge tools research writing

  Questions Designers Ask

  We can probably all agree that questions matter in designing. I’m a firm believer (along with many others) that ambiguity is a key characteristic of design problems, which means that posing good questions to clients isn’t just important. It’s essential. It’s these good questions that will bring clarity to the…

  January 4, 2016
• design design research design theory design thinking HCI/d karl popper

  Demarcating Design Research

  I’ve been thinking over these last few days about just what we mean when we say “design research.” Does saying we do design research or that we are design researchers imply that we do a different kind of research? Does it mean that as design researchers we make a unique intellectual…

  May 31, 2015
• design design research design theory design thinking HCI/d karl popper philosophy philosophy of science theory Uncategorized

  Knowledge Claims in Design Research

  One of my summer research projects has to do with knowledge claims in design research publications. The question stems from an interest in understanding the similarities and differences between how knowledge claims are formulated in design research publications as opposed to natural and/or social scientific research. One would expect there…

  May 15, 2015
• design design research design thinking HCI HCI/d Interaction Design philosophy philosophy of science science theory writing

  Summer Research Projects

  The academic year is over, and after having taken a few days off, today is the day I launch into several really exciting and interesting projects. Following are summaries of each major project. Hopefully, writing about each of them on the blog throughout the summer will provide (1) a modicum…

  May 12, 2015
• design design thinking interaction design Interaction Design learning online learning pedagogy teaching writing

  Writing | Quality as a Function of Utility

  Everybody writes. Emails, blogs, papers, journal articles, book chapters, theses, dissertations, books… So at the draft stage of writing, how do you know enough is enough? This question popped into my head today as I was sending a draft of a section of a paper to my co-author. I wrote…

  July 24, 2014