Much of my work takes place on the University of Waterloo, Mount Royal University, and University of Illinois Urbana Champaign campuses. My collaborators, colleagues, students, partners, and I pay our respect to the First Nation and Métis ancestors of the lands where we live and work, and reaffirm our relationship with one another.
My home institution, Mount Royal University, is located in the traditional territories of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) and the people of Treaty 7 which includes the Siksika, the Piikani, the Kainai, the Tsuut’ina, and the Îyârhe Nakoda. The campus is situated on land where the Bow River meets the Elbow River, and the traditional Blackfoot name of this place is “Mohkinstsis” which we now call the City of Calgary.
Our work has received support from:
LONG BIO
Dr. Milena Radzikowska has presented her research in 17 countries across 6 continents, and been an invited speaker for academic researchers, graduate students, and industry 26 times.
She is a member of the Design Concepts Lab research group, and one of the founding members of the qLab (qcollaborative.com), an Intersectional Feminist Design Research Lab, located at Mount Royal University, University of Waterloo, and University of Illinois. She sits on the Executive of the Canadian Society of Digital Humanities (CSDH/SCHN) and on the education committee of the Registered Graphic Designers of Canada. Radzikowska also serves as a reviewer for She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation; the Journal of Design Research; and the Digital Humanities Quarterly.
Since 2005, Dr. Radzikowska has collaborated on over 30 design research projects that extended anywhere from 2 to 7 years; 4 of those with budgets in the millions. Her research work is transdisciplinary and informed by working with researchers from over 30 different fields, undergraduate and graduate researchers, industry partners, and not-for-profit agencies.
Dr. Radzikowska’s research is iterative and experimental—meant to challenge existing design conventions and explore unique alternatives to complex problems. She has led several teams in digital-material remediation, with physical and immersive exhibition components. She is also part of a team examining how to use prototypes in research, first to formulate research questions, then to produce theories, and finally to test them.
Radzikowska’s work contrasts design thinking situated within engineering and computing science through its grounding in humanities-based praxis. She treats design thinking as a kind of cultural object or, in Derrida’s terms, a “text” that can be read from and considered through multiple, diverse perspectives (in the tradition of Buchanan, Ruecker, Forlano, DiSalvo, Verganti, and the Bardzells). This approach allows her to re-design design thinking by introducing new elements to the theory and practice. This insight builds on her PhD project that examined the absence of the human in human-machine interfaces for the oil industry.
Her research is functionally feminist, and she is currently working on such “wicked” design problems as marginalization through data display and reconciliation in post-conflict zones.
Dr. Radzikowska has more than 75 publications and presentations on data visualization, aesthetics, interaction design, interaction theory, design methods, and design research. She is the co-author of Visual Interface Design for Digital Cultural Heritage (Routledge Publishing, 2011) and two upcoming books, Design + DH and Prototyping Across the Disciplines: Designing Better Futures (Intellect Books, 2021).
SHORTER BIO
Dr. Milena Radzikowska is an established researcher in humanities-based data visualization, feminist human-computer interaction (HCI), and interface design for decision support. Her major contributions have been in the development of humanities-based approaches for oil extraction; experimental interface design to help protect Alberta wildlife; and materializing digital tools for content analysis. Since 2005, she’s been the PI or Co-I on over 25 interdisciplinary design research projects, four of those with budgets in the millions, extending over longer periods (anywhere from two to seven years).
Dr. Radzikowska has co-authored more than 75 publications and presentations on data visualization, aesthetics, interaction design, interaction theory, and design for large text collections, including the following books: Visual Interface Design for Digital Cultural Heritage (Routledge Publishing, 2011), Design + DH, and Prototyping Across the Disciplines: Designing Better Futures (Intellect Books, 2021). She has designed or designed and developed over three dozen websites, interactive tools, and interfaces. In 2018, Dr. Radzikowska won the prestigious Design Educator of the Year Award from the Registered Graphic Designers of Canada. Radzikowska is currently a Full Professor for Mount Royal University’s Information Design program.
SHORTEST BIO
Dr. Radzikowska has 75+ co-authored publications and presentations on data visualization, HCI, and information design, including Visual Interface Design for Digital Cultural Heritage (Routledge Publishing, 2011) and upcoming in 2021, Design + DH and Prototyping Across the Disciplines: Designing Better Futures (Intellect Books, 2021). She has designed 36+ interactive tools and interfaces and, in 2018, won the prestigious Design Educator of the Year Award from the Registered Graphic Designers of Canada. Dr. Radzikowska is a Full Professor in Information Design at Mount Royal University.