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Data as Medium
No full textNicole Coleman, Stanford University
What is data? Dictionaries define it as structured information, chiefly numerical, scientific, used for calculation. That definition probably rings true for most of us. But it would be a poor description of the wide range of information at play in research laboratories across disciplines, not to mention the data generated and exchanged in our daily social interactions. We still tend to think of data as if it were controlled, measurable, and verifiable, even if we know it isn’t. It remains common practice in the humanities and social sciences to create data visualizations by feeding numbers through a set of instructions to generate graphics, giving those numbers form as bar charts, lines, bubbles, scatterplots, and network graphs. That approach to data visualization is well-suited to review and assessment because it is based on well-established and theorized statistical models and quantitative methods. But it ignores the way data responds to the instruments used to capture, manipulate, and display it.
Graphite in the hands of an engineer drawing precise technical plans produces a different result than a pencil in the hand of an artist capturing a moment in time on paper. The medium is the same. The purpose is different. We would not expect the two people to produce the same type of drawing simply because they are using the same medium, and we would not evaluate their skill based on the same criteria. So why hold historians, literary scholars, and statisticians to the same standards and methods, ignoring the epistemological intent of the data analysis?
At Humanities + Design, a research lab at Stanford University, we look to other domains for examples of how to engage with the complexity and uncertainty in data. From the “Information” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970 to digital artists working today we discovered techniques for interrogating the expressive qualities of data that influenced our design of instruments for humanities research. Historians mining archives and compiling data understand that data are imagined, that there is interpretation involved in the moment of choosing which information to capture and in deciding how to structure it. The structure of the data, in turn, influences the questions we can ask of it. As the questions evolve, the structures may change, too, and the data will flow into the new structure in a way that offers new or different answers. Data is not inert or neutral, it is potential. When activated it can be shaped and used to persuade. When we act on data, we are influencing the data and generating new data in the process. That is data as medium.
Nicole Coleman is the Digital Research Architect at the Stanford University Libraries as well as the co-founder and Research Director at Humanities + Design, a research lab at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis.
This was a Long Paper Session: Data and Information on June 2, 2017. 10:30–12:00pm (SCI 108)</p
Case Study: Disease Modeling as an Interdisciplinary Practice
No full textCourtney Marchese, Quinnipiac University
The Institute for Disease Modeling (IDM) needed insight from a graphic designer to make their disease modeling software a learning tool accessible to people beyond scientists. The institute asked me to create a visual overview of their public malaria model, available for research purposes primarily to students, medical professionals, and doctors. Their initial ideation was created as a collaboration between scientists on the frontlines of malaria research, scientific writers, and software developers. The biggest initial hurdle was the fact that the first draft was created by scientists – it made perfect sense to them, but it was difficult to dilute the information to the point of usability for a broader audience. Without an understanding of visual design, spatial relationships and hierarchy, their flowchart is almost useless. This case study echoes a common theme: scientists and designers WANT to work together, but they speak entirely different languages. How do we establish a working interdisciplinary relationship?
This paper presentation will include survey data from all participants on what is and is not working in terms of interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as what they have learned from the experience. It will also include details on the communication and feedback loop that has developed over the course of the project. In analyzing the relationship that I have formed with IDM, I hope to provide valuable insight as to how designers and scientists can successfully work together.
Courtney Marchese is an Assistant Professor of Graphic + Interactive Design at Quinnipiac University, where she teaches the theory and practice of topics including Web Design, UX/UI, Typography, Data Visualization, and Motion Graphics in both the undergraduate and graduate programs. She has done a number of presentations and publications regarding design in the health field, including information graphics for global diseases and UX/UI design for autistic children. She is also the Founding Faculty Member of the AIGA QU Student Group, and a recipient of a 2017 Quinnipiac Innovation Grant for launching “The Agency,” a student-run creative agency launching in fall of 2017.
This was a Long Paper Session: Data and Information on June 2, 2017. 10:30–12:00pm (SCI 108)</p
Co-eval: Rethinking Contemporary Approaches To Collaboration And Critical Inquiry
No full textNathan Matteson, DePaul University
Heather Snyder-Quinn, DePaul University
Eamon Duede, University of Chicago
Ian Lynam, Ian Lynam Design
Kelly Bjork, IDEO Chicago
The role of collaboration in the academy is ambiguous. As the landscape of academic work changes—the number and frequency of co-authored journal articles continues to increase; research centers see a growing need to apply results to real-world problems and communicate their value—finding methods to value collaborative effort and authorship becomes critical. But as it stands today, co-authorship, the preeminent form of scholarly co-creation, still carries the presumption of a primary author as maintaining the provenance of knowledge is crucial.
In the face of these aging notions of authorship, the very processes of writing as we have traditionally known them are undergoing massive and systemic change. Distributed online tools allow for a far richer process of team-based authoring than ever before. The same applies to publishing, with increasing avenues for self-publishing and a growing ubiquity of online open-access journals.
These changes have analogs in the industry as well. The tools of design thinking and agile development techniques have transformed the workplace. The increasingly digital world that has driven many of the changes in design process (‘coding in pairs’ anyone?) has also changed the nature of the design industry and engendered the identity complex of the ‘designer as author’. The client–designer dichotomy is failing as an organizational principle, and ‘co-designing’ rises from its ashes.
Occupying the hinterlands between the between the industry and academy are tools like MIT’s PubPub, approaching the event horizon of continuously integrated publishing. The intellectual products of contemporary design are more akin to Theseus’ ship than a canonical landscape of established theories. But the ways in which we assign value to authorship, and the determination of who assigns value, continually lag behind this pace of rapid change.
The panel contains representatives from the ‘academy’ (with a bent towards applied research), the ‘industry’ (with a bent towards defining its future and impact), and from the ever-important if uncomfortable area between the two.
Through an exploration of the divergence among their values and priorities, they will explore possible futures of how we define and maintain scholarship in an increasingly digital and mutable environment. Their discussion and interaction around these questions (e.g. What defines a peer group? How do we assign value to material that cuts across multiple domains of knowledge? Is it possible to exchange value from one ‘marketplace’ to another? Is collaborative authorship a zero sum game?) will be organized, documented, and distributed online to the entire conference to stimulate a massively co-authored manifesto of the future of digital scholarship in design and beyond.
Nathan Matteson (co-chair) is an Assistant Professor at DePaul University, College of Computing and Digital Media, School of Design. Nathan has been teaching and working in Chicago since 1999. His work often ignores accepted boundaries amongst disciplines. Currently he is obsessed with computational methods of typeface generation and letterform modification. He is a founding member of the design collaboration Obstructures, and a researcher with the Center for Robust Decision Making in Climate and Economic Policy, at the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago. When not teaching, he oversees the design and development of ATLAS, a web application interfaces that enables the discovery, visualization, and analysis of global, gridded data.
Heather Snyder-Quinn (co-chair) is a Professional Lecturer at DePaul University, College of Computing and Digital Media, School of Design. Heather is an award-winning creative director and educator. After she received her BFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1996, she began a 20+ year career in in multi-channel and multi-disciplinary projects at the forefront of design culture and commerce. Her clients have included Northwestern, Harvard, MIT OpenCourseware, and OpenPediatrics, among others. She is currently pursuing an MFA in graphic design at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Eamon Duede (panelist) is Executive Director at Knowledge Lab, University of Chicago. Eamon directs the research activities of Knowledge Lab and is the interface between the center and its industry partners. Recently Eamon has designed and spearheaded a major strategic and technical shift to cloud implementations of Knowledge Lab’s exploratory research tools and datasets. Eamon holds undergraduate and advanced degrees in philosophy and has served as an instructor of various logics, and a lecturer in philosophy (ethics, epistemology, and the history of philosophy). His academic interests are focused on the constellation of problems fixed around the concepts ‘perception’, ‘belief’, and ‘knowledge’.
Ian Lynam (panelist) is an American designer and educator working in Japan. Ian’s paths for digital scholarship are mainly non traditional—self publishing including books, zines, blogs and sites like Medium. He also writes for Idea Magazine. Through his blog he often interviews other designers and invites dialogue. Through the VCFA blog he encourages more creative contributions and material that is non traditional—sometimes even unedited—all with the idea of pushing creative norms, boundaries and what is considered “acceptable” or “traditional”. Ian encourages self publishing bc it allows for more creative freedom.
Kelly Bjork (panelist) is currently a design director at IDEO Chicago. Prior to joining IDEO Kelly worked as an Executive Creative Director for VSA Partners, where she led teams of designers in the development of brand systems, corporate communications and environmental experiences for companies like IBM, Motorola, and First Data. Over the past 5+ years she has seen the the professional field of design move toward a norm of co-authorship / co-designing. She has personally participated in this transformation during her time at VSA working with IBM, and now at IDEO where all work is tackled by a cross-disciplinary design team. Collaboration amongst the team working to solve a challenge is a core value we uphold with each other and is critical to a successful outcome.
This was a Panel Session on June 2, 2017. 1:30–2:30pm (SCI 108)</p
Assuming Roles That Help Empathize, Translate, and Improve the Visibility of Design Research
No full textDavid Wang, James Madison University
One of the many ailments design education faces is self-isolation; encouraging rebellious behavior by working outside of common conventions to break contextual norms greatly limits our opportunity to share knowledge and participate a collective world. For digital scholarship, contributions to collaborative research requires becoming a member of an interdisciplinary environment. Designers need to relinquish self-imposed restrictions that require visual artifacts and irrefutable recognition. With the growth of STEM education and an expectation for worldwide digital connectivity, we need to elevate AIGA’s commitment to ethical practices and advocate for a broader role of design by redefining the role of creative thinking in academic research.
Collaboration is not a foreign concept for designers; AIGA’s standard of professional practice encourages responsibility in our client relationships and respect for the public; Commitment to a civic role beyond our community is not common. As many academics, I encourage students to read, share a variety of viewpoints, and contribute to worthy causes to improve understanding. Commonalities are shared across many disciplines, including business, communications, engineering, humanities, medicine, and science. Engaged learning is gaining prominence in higher education, but for the field of design, maintaining a continual role as a member of a research team is unexpected. Our need for specialized degrees and industry-specific training in the United States creates niche cultures with limited vocabularies and indecipherable dialects, which hinder acceptance among digital natives.
As universal design guidelines quietly expand, we have more opportunities to share and communicate without translation. Breaking traditional forms of publication review and media production, we are empowered to restyle our own worlds; Anyone can curate content with expert control to provide new interpretations and valuable feedback. Open access to archives provides a greater need for designers to assume global roles to help empathize and improve the quality of academic research. Asking questions, demanding responses, and contributing to society are primary goals for every designer (and scholar).
Interdisciplinary, collaborative research projects need to encourage support for larger collective groups with more diverse contributors. Many faculty with backgrounds in design continue an unsustainable quest to find an idealized research agenda focused on opportunities to create a beautiful product. If we assert our value as design experts, we can become active members with responsibilities based on the needs of our community. Power to concept, share strategies, and develop creative solutions that do not focus on commodities, but rather the value of creative thinking and meaningful relationships.
The following research questions will examine opportunities and potential challenges for designers & scholars who assimilate research agendas with more diverse backgrounds.
Are co-authored works from peer-reviewed journals or conferences outside of design acceptable contributions for tenure and promotion?
Can the inclusion of student contributors and classroom activities for research-based projects be viewed as scholarship, rather than teaching, service, or engaged learning?
Are design scholars interested in embracing equality to create a culture of co-authorship, which allows contributions from all levels of education?
Examples and documentation will illustrate the following themes:
self-isolation & rebellious behavior in design education
universal design guidelines to improve conventional design patterns
open access principles with commonalities for cross discipline research
pilot research based on a designer as member
Slide References:
Feature Image & page 1: A close-up of an educational installation at the Denver Botanic Gardens
https://www.botanicgardens.org
Image page 2: An image JMU’s quad by Mike Miriello, University Photographer
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipN5V11k3IFALvoJ478k6wPsjHImfaC471FfEmB2eaixAtVAxboj-M9uxIBBV69L1w?key=TWJkd0E3dnZoYkRtdHBITnVjZ0QwYVFmNHlFM253
More information about SMAD: http://www.jmu.edu/smad/our-program/index.shtml
Image page 3 & 4: Found Wallpaper Sample from the 1970s.
Image page 5: Places of the imagination: an exhibition catalog at the Lilly Library https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/6554522
Something not discussed:
http://www.aiga.org/aiga/content/tools-and-resources/aiga-standards-of-professional-practice/
Universal Design Principles & Guidelines
http://google.com/design
https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/overview/design-principles/
http://fluent.microsoft.com
Design Example 1 – Tellart
http://www.tellart.com/about/
http://www.tellart.com/project/chrome-web-lab/
https://vimeo.com/219839030
https://www.youtube.com/user/tellart
Design Example 2 – Viget
https://www.viget.com/about
http://www.massgeneral.org
https://www.viget.com/work/mass-general
https://www.viget.com/articles/how-to-create-more-accessible-content-part-2
Survey Link for Presentation Feedback:
https://goo.gl/CL0TUC
David Wang is an assistant professor in the School of Media Arts & Design at James Madison University. He lives in the Shenandoah Valley in the state of Virginia after living in the Deep South and five Midwest states. He studied fine arts and design earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Drake University and a Master of Fine Arts in Communication Design from Louisiana Tech University.
With more than twenty years of industry experience, he has worked as an art director, photographer, and interactive developer in advertising, business-to-business communications, and higher education. A constant researcher and technical guru, he hammers out solutions to direct and produce a wide variety of strategic projects.
He teaches foundation courses for undergraduate students with an emphasis on creative process and interactive design. His hobbies include, tinkering with antiquated electronics, listening to music, and visiting art galleries. He enjoys traveling and is most interested in exploring food and culture.
This was a Long Paper Session: Forming an Interdisciplinary Team on June 3, 2017. 9:00–10:30am (SCI 108)</p
1920, Business Women\u27s Club of Cleveland Campaign Signage in Support of Florence Allen
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/allen_gallery/26/thumbnail.jpgHandwritten by Florence Allen on the back of the photo: "at 2728 Euclid Ave -The B.W.C. (Business Women’s Club) did this of their own notion - has 1600 members." On Aug. 24, 1920, the state of Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote. Allen’s friends in the Woman Suffrage Party encouraged her to seek election to a judgeship on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. Since the primaries had already been held, the only way to place her name on the ballot was to gather the required number of signatures on a petition. In two days, party member gathered 2,000 signatures, and her name was placed on the ballot. Supported by the major Cleveland newspapers, community leaders and several unions, she was elected on Nov. 2, 1920, the first election women could vote except on local matters. Allen became the first woman elected to a judicial office in the United States. Source: The Supreme Court of Ohio, Florence Ellinwood Allen Biography</p
Brainchild 2016
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/brainchild/3/thumbnail.jp
Gordon Type Nonlinear Equations on Time-space Scale
No full textSine-Gordon Equation was originally introduced by Edmond Bour (1862) in the course of study of surfaces. This equation attracted a lot of attention in the 1970s due to the presence of soliton solutions. In this presentation, Gordon type nonlinear equations are deducted from the well-known Lax Equations using the AKNS (Ablowitz, Kaup, Newell, Segur) method. Further, solutions of these equations are provided with wave visualization using Mathematica.</p
Mouthpart Conduit Sizes of Fluid-feeding Insects Determine the Ability to Feed from Pores
No full textFluid-feeding insects like butterflies and flies are faced with the common selection pressure of having to remove and feed on fluids from porous surfaces. Insects able to acquire fluids from pores during drought conditions would have an adaptive advantage and increased fitness. We performed feeding trials using magnetic nanoparticle solutions to show that butterflies and flies have mouthparts adapted to pull liquids from pores using capillarity as the governing principle. The ability to feed from pores depends on a relationship between diameter of the mouthparts and pore size diameter; insects with mouthpart diameters larger than pores cannot successfully feed, thus there is a limiting pore size from which individuals can acquire liquids for fluid uptake. Given that natural selection independently favored mouthpart architectures that support these methods of fluid uptake, we suggest that the convergence of this mechanism advocates this as an optimal strategy for pulling fluids from porous surfaces.</p
Pocahontas: Disney’s History Versus Accurate History
No full textDisney intentionally manipulated the story of Pocahontas to create a favorable storyline that would increase revenue and be more favorable to audiences worldwide. The problem with this approach is that Disney is using an historical figure, where the history is known. Disney has committed to being culturally sensitive. The decision to change the history ultimately affects the future generations of the Algonquian tribe and children of other cultures. The film is a misrepresentation of historical fact. Disney has a responsibility to inform the viewers of the film’s inaccuracy. This paper is aimed at pointing out Disney’s responsibility to the viewers. </p
2016 Inductee, Nicolas Ferrante; Winemaker and Owner of Ferrante Winery
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/winehalloffame/15/thumbnail.jpgPhoto of the Ferrante family receiving two prestigious awards; the Ohio Hall of Fame and the Ohio Winemaker of Year award by the Ohio Grape Industries at the Ohio Wine and Grape Short Course in Columbus, Ohio. Nicholas Ferrante is shown holding both awards. Nicholas Ferrante, a third generation winemaker for Ferrante Winery in Harpersfield, is regarded as one of the state\u27s most respected winemakers. His wines have been awarded \u27Sweepstakes,\u27 \u27Best of Show,\u27 and \u27Double Gold,\u27 recognition from coast to coast. He has generously given of his time, serving on the Ohio Grape Industries Committees and on its research subcommittees. He has been a supporter and collaborator of research and innovation, be it through our universities or in his support or the Grand River Valley initiative or the creation of Pairings Wine and Culinary Experience. He has also been a speaker at nearly every major industry conference in the country. Source: Ohio Wine Producers Association Hall of Fame website.</p