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Dr. Milena Radzikowska

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writing

Capta by Juxtaposition: a Rich-Prospect Approach to the Visualization of Interpretation Project

June 16, 2020

2020—

In her seminal essay, Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display, Johanna Drucker points out that visualization design for the humanities has still not properly accommodated the nature of humanities scholarship. Given, as she says, that all data is actually capta, current approaches to data visualization are misleading in that they suggest more certainty and stability than is actually the case. Her proposal is, therefore, to revise the format of the framework of the visualization so that, for example, the x and y axis on a cartesian grid are no longer divided into uniform increments. In our project, we take up Drucker’s challenge by adopting a rich prospect approach, where the visualization consists of panels of displays, each of which provides a different insight based on a selected perspective on the capta. As a case study, we show how diagrams of the design process can accommodate a broader range of theoretical perspectives than is typically made visible, using only subtle differences in the image. Each choice is placed in a panel, and the panels are then gathered together for the purposes of comparison, analysis, and discussion.

Although there are dozens of design process models (Dubberly 2005), we are not interested in visual comparisons at that level: instead we chose one model as our starting point, and focus on the ambiguity of its being built from capta rather than data. The perspectives we show are: (1) the conventional six-stage model associated with “design thinking”; (2) the same model modified to suggest that earlier iterations are less successful than later iterations; (3) that the designer should not be invisible as the agent driving the process; (4) that the process is a collaborative one that involves an entire team rather than an individual; (5) that, despite the framing as design thinking, not all design projects are intended to produce a commodity; (6) that different iterations of the design cycle may privilege different choices among the 5 human factors; (7) that there are potential users of the design; (8) that the same process can be used for participatory design, where the potential users are present when design decisions are being made; and (9) that other priorities than the human could be placed at the centre of the process (these might include other creatures, various flora, and different aspects of the natural environment).

By giving comparable visual form to a number of different perspectives, priorities, or approaches to design we are both responding to Drucker’s call and also suggesting that design process models can have multiple interpretations. In some cases, what we are showing is already implicit in the diagram but we are making it explicit; in other cases we are representing choice among closely-related yet distinct alternative models of the design process. In these visualizations ambiguity is present not at the granularity of the individual panel, but rather in the interplay, overlap and, sometimes, mutual exclusion that exists between the interpretive perspectives made visible in the various panels.

Presented at The Canadian Society for Digital Humanities/ Société canadienne des humanités numériques (CSDH/SCHN) annual conference at the 2020 Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities.

Drucker, J. (2011). “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 5:1.

Dubberly, Hugh. (2004). How Do You Design: A Compendium of Models. San Francisco: Dubberly Design Office. http://www.dubberly.com/articles/how-do-you-design.html.

Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming.

IDEO. (2017, 07 05). Design Thinking. Retrieved from IDEO: /www.ideou.com/pages/design- thinking.

Gibbons, S. (2016). Design Thinking 101. Retrieved from NN/g Nielsen Norman Group: https:// www.nngroup.com/articles/design-thinking/

Where it’s been published/presented

Radzikowska, M., & Ruecker, S. (2020, June 1). “Capta by Juxtaposition: A Rich-Prospect Approach to the Visualization of Information.” [Presentation]. The Canadian Society for Digital Humanities/ Société canadienne des humanités numériques (CSDH/SCHN) annual conference at the 2020 Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities (moved online due to COVID19).

A Speculative Feminist Approach to Project Management Project

August 9, 2019

2019

We applied a speculative feminist approach to the design of software for project management. As we interpret it, speculative feminist design in human-computer interaction (HCI) demonstrates attention to the following six principles (as defined by Radzikowska, 2015): challenging the status quo; designing for an actionable ideal; searching out the invisible; considering the micro, meso, and macro; privileging transparency; and welcoming critique. In the context of project management, our approach to software design has therefore included the following priorities: all stakeholders have goals, but not necessarily shared goals; the line between an internal deliverable and an external project outcome is blurred; impacts can occur immediately or decades later; impact assessment methods need to be explicit in the project planning system.

In adopting the terms speculative feminism and critical feminism, we intend that our work be understood as situated within the territory of Critical Theory as applied particularly to the work of the Frankfurt School. We introduced our design, called It’s a Wicked World (IWW), as an example, although it is only the current iteration of one part of a larger, ongoing project.

Sample screen from It’s a Wicked World.

Team

M. Radzikowska, J. Roberts-Smith, X. Zhou, and S. Ruecker.

Where it’s been published/presented

Radzikowska, M., Roberts-Smith, J., Zhou, X. and S. Ruecker. (July 2019). “A Speculative Feminist Approach to Project Management.” SDRJ: Strategic Design Research Journal. 12(1).

7 pieces of advice to my grad students

February 22, 2017

In 2001, I quit my 50k job* working as an interface designer for Canada’s 1st interactive tv provider — iMagic TV in Saint John, New Brunswick — to start a grad degree at the University of Alberta. My boyfriend and I drove our trailor-pulling, AC-less Toyota Echo across the country, stopping only in Montreal, Thunder Bay, and Winnipeg.

I hated Edmonton on sight.

I started my first day of grad school by meeting the supervising design professor at his downtown condo — an Argentinian of some world renown. After making tea and pouring the wine, he pulled out a piece of notepad: “I have some advice for your life”, he said.

That scrap of paper hung above my desk as I worked on my master’s thesis. It moved with me when I took a job teaching design in Calgary. I searched it out again when, a year after tenure, I started working on my PhD.

It’s now been 2 years since I got my parchment, 14 since I started that first teaching appointment, and almost 17 since the wine.

Last week I was asked to give a lecture to our graduating info design class. “I have some advice for your life”, I’ll say, and hope that it sticks…

1. Surround yourself with people who are smarter / better than you

I am not a people collector, but I love smart, competent, driven, interesting people. It’s taken many years, but I can now say with some confidence that those who are dear to me have at least one quality or piece of expertise (usually more than one) that I don’t have. My dear friends Stan and Susan, for example. Susan is the ultimate Renaissance woman. I have yet to be part of a conversation where she doesn’t hold some impressive depth of knowledge on the topic. And not in an obnoxious way. Stan grew up in Balgonie, Saskatchewan, and has 7 degrees. He can fly a plane, shoot a gun, and sew clothes. They would both take a bullet for me.

I know sex educators, novel writers, and politicians. One of my best friends (Scharie) would genuinely know how to hide a body; while another (Michelle) has managed me out of more messes than I can count.

These people inspire and push me to do better.

2. Become interesting / believe in something

In my 20s and 30s all I did was work. I was incapable of having a conversation about anything other than design and my depressing childhood. Not surprisingly, few people cared about either one. Slowly, and with some determination, I found other things to love: first it was embroidery, then feminism, politics, and tech. As I gained some experience, I gained confidence. More importantly, I began caring about things other than work and, more than just about anything else, the things I cared about have defined my design practice.

3. Write resignation letters

On your 1st day of that design job, sit in your cubicle / office and, even before you unpack the framed picture of your cat, type out a resignation letter. Then file it. The mere knowledge of its existence will, in particularly challenging times, remind you that you’re not stuck where you are — you are in control by choosing to stay.**

Bonus: Do the same for your relationship. It might save you from a costly divorce.

4. Find someone who believes in you / ask for help

Last week I called my boss after a particularly trying student email. I trust him. So much, in fact, that I would be willing to engage in this supreme act of vulnerability by asking him if I was overreacting. We all need those people in our lives — both personally and professionally — who believe in our worth, and can remind us of it when we can’t remember.

5. Move

Apply for a job in a different city, province, or country. Or try gradschool. Just go. Even if it doesn’t work out (hello, Nebraska!), you won’t be left wondering “what if”. Plus, you’ll become a much more interesting person through the effort.

6. If you’re afraid of it, do it anyway

Naked reading, for example.

7. Recognize your privilege

This is not about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Because you can’t. It’s about recognizing that other people are not you, that their realities are different than yours and that they matter.

To the designer you: Don’t buy into the myth of the universal user. Instead, please read Woodrow W. Winchester III’s paper on culturally responsive design tools, where he reflects on Elizabeth Churchill’s exploration of gender in design.*** Churchill asserts that designers “are not passive bystanders (of the process) . . . we design products with implicit or explicit assumptions about how products will be used and by whom” (n.pag.). Both Churchill and Winchester challenge the notion of the universal user as, somehow, representative of the diverse populations that typically engage with technology. Most product and technology designers are male, white, and most likely of a higher socioeconomic status (plus, further provoked by Winchester, tend to identify as heterosexual) (Winchester, 15). As a result, that “universal user” becomes an unexamined and unquestioned self reflection of the dominant group.

*In 2001 Saint John, NB, that was an impressive salary to a 24-year-old designer, one year after graduation.

**This piece of advice comes from my dear friend, Stan, mentioned above.

*** Winchester III, Woodrow. “REALizing Our Messy Futures: Toward Culturally Responsive Design Tools in Engaging Our Deeper Dives.” Interactions 17.6 (Nov./Dec. 2010): 14–19. Print.

+5 for a useless critique

January 25, 2017

This cartoon has been hanging outside my office door since 2006. Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, 2006.

Criticism, or critique, is a well accepted practice in design*: designers cycle (or iterate) through making-thinking-remaking, until they become reasonably satisfied with the emergent result, or they run out of time and energy (hopefully the former). At key intervals within this process, designers seek feedback on their work, usually from colleagues, classmates, superiors and, sometimes, from clients and others.**

In their most basic use, critique and iteration help designers improve functionality and target look-and-feel. When done well, critiques challenge assumptions, biases, and stereotypes; push against the status quo; clarify contexts of use; and raise expectations of quality, including accuracy, thoroughness of research, attention to detail, and justification of design choices.

No matter the intention, however, here are 5 ways to make any critique completely useless.

1. Focus on yourself, rather than the work.

When you let your ego get involved, any attempt at criticism will become an attack on your beautiful soul, rather than a discussion of the fit between design objectives and design choices.

Such an exchange tends to look something like this:

Feedback-Giver: Why did you choose an image of pigeons for the cover of this oil company’s annual report?

Designer: I spent a lot of time selecting just the right image for the cover page, so that the colours would match the company’s identity.

It’s hard not to get defensive when you perceive an attack. The trick is to practice not seeing a critique as an attack. It is, instead, a conversation where you have the opportunity to express your idea and, in return, hear how others understand (interpret) this idea’s physical form.

You’re not powerless.*** What ever the feedback, you have the chance to gather it up, take it home with you, think through it, and either accept it as valid or reject it (for reasons).

2. Hope-leap towards the finish line.

There are very few shortcuts in design. Most of those that do exist, come from practice and experience. And that practice is exhausting and time consuming. It is understandable that, sometimes, you just want to be fucking done; to hope that the hours you spent on that draft take you more than two steps in the “right” direction. When you’re tired, any negative feedback — or even perceived challenges to your thinking process — becomes disheartening to hear.

Before any critique, try to get some sleep. Eat a good meal. Put away those presentation boards, and take a walk. Talk to the pigeons; remind yourself that this stage in the process is now finished, you did your best and, tomorrow, you’ll get to try some more.

3. Talk, instead of listening.

The best way to avoid receiving feedback, is to monopolize the time with lengthy descriptions of your design process, research results, and creative insights.

That’s not what a critique is for. Whatever time has been set aside for the critique, less than a 1/4 of it should be you setting the stage for the discussion. The rest, is made up of you listening.

Pro tip: Don’t count on your memory; find an exit buddy. This person is charged with taking notes during your critique, so you can focus on the experience.

4. Ask for solutions.

If your critiquer identifies a problem with your design or your rationale (justification of design choices), don’t ask for ways to fix it. That’s your job. You are the one who has spent time and energy immersing yourself in all aspects of “the problem”. You are the expert, or should be. Asking for ideas turns a critique into design by committee (ick).

Pro tip: Asking for clarification or elaboration (👍) is different from asking for solutions.

5. Stop, just before you get to the good stuff.

If you’re in a critique with other designers, aesthetics-based feedback is low hanging fruit: whether a design shows unity or balance, uses hierarchy to structure content, or has enough white space. Functionality-based feedback is more complicated, requiring more time and commitment (user testing). Analysis and discussion based on connecting problem (the direction the design needs to take) to concept (the designer’s unique solution to the problem or intent) to physical manifestation (the design as presented for critique) is far more complex. Designers tend to encourage aesthetics or functionality-based discussion, but shy away from deep-dive interrogations of the design’s consequences and implications.**** If your colleague tells you they “like it”, ask them why; ask them to be specific; and ask them to comment beyond the visual.

Pro tip: Prepare for your critique. Write out your concept. Know what research and thinking went into your design — why you did what you did. Be prepared to present your case, then stand back and listen.

Final thoughts

A few years ago, I was asked to sit in on a skype between a client (a feminist, academic organization) and a design agency, tasked with re-designing said organization’s web site. The agency was in the early stages of the re-design project, having met with the client, conducted some preliminary research and analysis, and now presenting a set of moodboards for client review and feedback. The moodboards featured bow ties, typewriters, bicycles, and well-dressed young men. The agency wanted feedback about colour choices and typefaces. The colors were lovely, as were the typefaces. The design direction, however, was intensely problematic. As one of my colleagues pointed out, it was “as if they smeared hipster penis all over the place.” Not addressing the core of the conceptual problem — the agency’s lack of due diligence in trying to understand the organization, their user base, and the proposed purpose and content of the site — would not be fixed by debating serifs. This feedback had to be communicated and heard, if the project was to move forward.

Which it did, with a successful launch in 2016 and not a bow tie in sight.


Notes

* And in architecture, art history, cinema, fine art, music, writing …

** Occasionally, critique is made more formal through user engagement (focus groups, usability studies, interviews, and the like.)

*** I understand that when you have a boss or a client sometimes you are, essentially, powerless. If you need to eat and the client says “make me a boat logo”, you make her a damn good boat logo.

**** I write more about the need for serious, public critiques of design, here.

stretch quests: searching for discomfort, as design practice

January 12, 2017

I’m on stage. I’m nude, and I’m reading the first chapter of Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. This naked reading is my 40th birthday present to myself. I’m uncomfortable, keenly aware I am at least 15 years senior to all the other readers; that this post-baby, post-breakup body feels foreign to my senses. And I’m thrilled to be there.

“I am programmed at fifty to perform childishly — to insult ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ to scrawl pictures of a Nazi flag and an asshole and a lot of other things with a felttipped pen.” Kurt Vonnegut

I am a good reader. I have a presence in front of an audience that’s borne out of my academic practice. I’m confident in my decision to recite, not sing, the Star Spangled Banner allowing for the sarcasm, so beautifully weaved into Vonnegut’s text, to spill into the audience.

But I’ve never performed on stage*, I am very uncomfortable displaying my pubic hair, and even more uncomfortable with the idea of accidentally encountering one of my students…while naked, on stage**.

Incompetence, discomfort, and a mile in her shoes

I’ve been a designer for 20 years, and a design educator for 13. I consider moments of vulnerability — of deliberately stepping into discomfort — critical to my design practice.

I have 3 primary reasons for seeking situations that make me uncomfortable or that highlight my incompetence:

  1. While the act of design making is still, at times, excruciating, the process of meeting it head on, working through its problems, and trying out, testing, and executing solutions, has become second nature. Every problem is a journey, with some journeys simply more complex than others. As my level of proficiency in and comfort with design has increased, I have been prone to forgetting what it is like to do something for the first time and, most likely, to fail at it. Since I teach undergraduate design students, I need to remember — viscerally — trying, failing, and trying again, so I can have compassion for their journey.
  2. Unfamiliar situations place me at the mercy of others. I am no longer the expert in the room, nor the one who’s in charge. I have to listen to understand, follow directions, and trust that another person has best intentions.
  3. Living as a white, cis, middle-class academic in a major Canadian city, I have to be deliberate if I am to engage with people, communities, or situations that are outside of my micro universe. If I fail to step out of my carefully-constructed comfort zone, I will continue to perpetuate (and, likely, defend) elitist, privileged, and harmful design practice.

Stretch quests: deliberate forays into discomfort

I tend to gravitate towards the uncomfortable, but I’ve noticed that isn’t always the case for my design students. Most are local to our institution; many come from the rural areas surrounding the city. We will get a few mature students each year, but most enter the program right out of highschool, with little travel or diversity of experience under their belt. They are predominantly white and middle class.

This year I borrowed an activity from my colleagues in business and marketing***, assigning a series of reflective tasks to those in the 1st year graphic design class. They are asked to complete a series of quest(s) in each of the following 5 categories:

  1. Mental
  2. Physical
  3. Social
  4. Professional
  5. Curiosity Conversation

For each quest, they record their level of comfort on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 is comfortable and 5 is way out of their comfort zone). They rate each quest on the comfort scale, first, before they engage in it and, second, after they’ve completed the quest. Then, they are asked to reflect on the experience, with a focus on insights regarding their personal growth rather than a description of the activity.

The objective of these quests is to push against their comfort zone; to try new experiences or talk to people who they consider remarkably remarkable or very different from themselves.****

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” Anais Nin

How different is different?

While many of my own quests, and the examples I’ve seen from our students, might seem like breakfast cereal to some, the appearance of adventurousness isn’t the point. This exercise is intentionally designed to be a personal journey, though students are asked to share their process with their colleagues (with the option of elaborating, directly to the instructor).

  1. Each person, individually, brainstorms experiences that challenge their comfort zones. I then ask them to reflect on what scares them and why, and to consider stepping into some of those fears, if not directly, then through a “No, but…” alternative.
  2. Sharing our experiences provides us with the opportunity to consider quests beyond our radar. We are also reminded that every person has a “zone of discomfort” — what is familiar to one, is foreign to another.
  3. With each (some fingers crossed) positive experience during a stretch quest, we are encouraged to take new chances, try new things, and meet new (wonderfully different-from-us) people. This is the reward, and positive reinforcement to continue venturing outside of our little bubbles.

On being a tourist

The first time we try anything new we are all, essentially, tourists. And tourists, for fair reasons, have a bad rep: we can be loud, obnoxious, disrespectful asshats.

The problem isn’t the visiting, it’s the attitude. In the classroom, stretch quests provide me with the opportunity to talk about entitlement and privilege; to reflect on otherness; and to encourage learning that comes out of good will, and an openess to vulnerability.

Reading naked, while terrifying, meant that I shared the stage with women from different backgrounds, with different reading interests and body types, and with diverse reasons to want to be there. Each one brave. Each one vulnerable and exposed. And each capable of holding space for the others.

Notes

* Fine, I have, but I was five and I tripped over a giant, wooden rooster.

** This actually happened. She was there to support her roommate, who was one of the other readers.

*** Thank you to my dear colleague, Patrick Moskwa, for introducing me to this idea.

**** I will update this post with examples of what their quests as they complete them.

Also, a huge thank you to the YYC Naked Girls Reading and, specifically, Keely Kamikaze, for an amazing and very uncomfortable experience.

happy students, reading on lawns

October 20, 2016

In 2001, I was an MDes student at the University of Alberta. Having worked as a web designer previous to my switch to Academia, and thanks to the digital bewilderment of my professors, I got the gig of redesigning the University of Alberta’s Department of Art & Design web site. At that time, the U of A wasn’t yet as particular about its brand or as adamant to control every line of its code, and Art & Design was permitted to, essentially, do its own on-line thing.

Thus, I was encouraged to think through the redesign project as both an information architecture and a usability problem and as an Art & Design branding problem. Figuring out the site’s organization was, in fact, the easier task: system design + user needs + Departmental structure. But the visual design? That seemed subjective. Bounderless. Frankly, kind of flaky.

I was craving something that resembled process. Better still, a system that resulted in data; data that could be tabled and analyzed.

What emerged was a strategy for developing a set of project-specific visual paradigms (within a larger design process adapted from the methods discussed by Goto and Cotler).

Visual paradigm: a category of representational imagery, deployed to implicitly support the communication goals of the organization responsible for a design.

The complete design process consisted of 7 phases:

  1. Consultation and research;
  2. Site structure and content rework;
  3. Visual design exploration (iterative) and selection;
  4. Consultation and testing;
  5. Production and quality assurance;
  6. Site launch; and
  7. Post-launch evaluation.

How things look, counts

Previous academic work in this area has emphasized the functional value of aesthetics in attracting and retaining site visitors. Kristiina Karvonen, for instance, suggests that the aesthetics of a web site are an important factor for site visitors making decisions about their own actions, including “whether or not to trust a service enough to conduct business online.” Jorge Frascara argues that design aesthetics impact the following:

  1. Immediate response of attraction or rejection;
  2. Communication;
  3. Length of perceptual time commitment;
  4. Memorization of the message;
  5. The active life of the design; and
  6. The quality of the environment.

Ruecker et al. concentrate on the role of the aesthetic in encouraging user confidence in the site and its designers. They characterize confidence as a composite state of mind that involves three factors:

  1. Trust;
  2. Willingness to persevere; and
  3. Satisfaction.

So, assuming that these fine folks (and over two thousand years of aesthetic-related scholarship) have a valid point, and how something looks — what decision we make in terms of graphical content — matters, how do we (designers) make this decision?

My focus on the identification of possible visual paradigms should be understood within the context of meeting the communication objectives of the particular project / organization under design. Web sites are a form of public communication. In the case of web sites for university departments, two of the primary goals of that communication are to inform and to invite: to inform existing and potential students regarding relevant details of their program; and to invite potential students or faculty into the department. This combination of agendas often results in a hybrid Web site, with sections that contain more formal material (such as calendars, statements about policies and procedures, and forms), and informal material that is designed to set the tone for the department, conveying something of the culture that the newcomer can expect to find.

But who are you, really?

Setting the tone of an academic culture may involve a number of factors, including the intellectual and pedagogical goals of the institution, the physical environment of the classrooms and labs, and information about the various people in the department and their areas of research interest. How a department or other organization chooses from among the various factors in order to portray itself in the public sphere will naturally be construed by some viewers as an indication of the nature of the department. Within these larger choices of aesthetically-related material, there will be other detailed considerations of design, from decisions as to colour palette, navigation system, and so on, to the choice of which material to emphasize in various ways, and which to background.

These details, while significant, will nonetheless fall within the context of the larger paradigm that has been used for the site. The elements that have been chosen to suggest the organizational personality will in essence establish the bounds of discourse for the rest of the site, and by implication, will communicate to site visitors some key information about the department.

Identifying the suite of possible paradigms already in use by similar organizations prior to beginning design of the web site can provide information in a number of areas:

  1. It constitutes a form of competitive analysis — how similar organizations have attempted to position themselves in the public mind;
  2. May reveal a new opportunity, where the organization will be able to establish a strong identity by adopting a strategy that has not already been used. This analysis tends to prevent the organization from selecting a set of imagery for the Web site based on current trends or personal preferences, but rather to choose imagery appropriate to the organization’s own positive attributes;
  3. Help construct a strategy for discussing Web site design within a context that allows for objective analysis and debate. By foregrounding the issue of how the Web site paradigm will tend to establish bounds of discourse for the rest of the design, the significance of what might otherwise seem to be minor choices can be brought explicitly to the table.

How it’s done (method)

To research competitor sites (sites with a similar organizational model, audience, types of content), I used a modified version of Nielsen’s heuristic evaluation model that included aesthetic qualities. I created a web site review template to maintain consistency when reviewing sites.

Web site review template

After analyzing 25 American and Canadian Art and Design colleges and departments, 6 different visual paradigms appeared to emerge (3 of the 6 are described below).

Not every web site designer had chosen a single option; many sites combined attributes from more than one paradigm. On the other hand, several sites were relatively pure examples of a single option.

Figure out which sites to analyze by looking at sites that:

  1. belong to a similar organization;
  2. are within a similar subject area or with similar content;
  3. are within a similar subject area and geographical region;
  4. are of a similar size; and
  5. are within a similar target audience.

At the start of the analysis, the paradigm field contained a short description of the imagery found on the site. Eventually, however, a set of consistent categories emerged.

Happy students, on campus

Visuals falling within this paradigm consist of photographs of students engaging in enjoyable or thoughtful activity such as studying on school grounds, meeting with fellow classmates at the library, and attending classes.

Pros: Most institutions either have or can stage the appearance of happy students.

Cons: Students and their appearance tend towards the generic. It becomes challenging to communicate a unique sense of tone through this paradigm.

Misuse: In certain instances, institutions with a poor track record of inclusion have used — inaccurate —depictions of diversity as part of their on-line presence.

Two examples (on the right from 2016 and, on the left, from 2001, of the “Happy Students, on Campus” paradigm.

Pristine surroundings

Visuals are focused on the physical appearance of the school or department, and consist of photographs of buildings, classrooms, facilities, and school grounds.

Pros: Images of campus grounds can be both unique and welcoming, especially to those planning to arrive there for the first time.

Cons: The choice of pristine surroundings only works if the campus is unique and welcoming (which isn’t true for many that have been based on brutalist architecture, including the U of A’s FAB). An additional conflict may exist — the Department of Art and Design at the U of A, for example, shares the building with the Department of Music and the Department of Drama. No noticeable separation exists between these three areas. Hence, using the building, its rooms, or its hallways would, in this case, create a misleading view of the Department.

Departmental structure

Imagery which falls into this category consists of icons that have been selected to represent the different areas of a department. For example, painting is represented through an easel, photography through a camera, and design through a piece of lead type.

Cons: The understanding of an icon is based on previous experience, and text labels are often needed to reduce ambiguity. Since most departments have similar structure, it becomes challenging to move beyond the generic.

An example, from 2001, of the “Departmental Structure” paradigm.

We’re creatives here, you hear!

The web presence itself becomes a symbol of the department’s creativity. It becomes a canvas, often demonstrating a high level of technical proficiency and attempts at innovation.

As the GUI has moved out of infancy and usability and web standards have gained popularity (must instead of nice to haves) web designers have, thankfully, felt less of a need to demonstrate their technical and creative prowess through code and the use of this paradigm appears to have fallen out of favour.

An example of the “We’re Creatives Here, You Hear!” paradigm from 2001.

Sometimes mood boards aren’t much help

Last year, I was asked to sit in on a call between my colleagues, who run an academic entity in the Digital Humanities (the client), and an agency tasked with redesigning their web site. The agency presented a set of visual positioning mood boards, meant to express the agency’s pitch for the site redesign’s new tone. The boards consisted of bicycles, typewriters, bow ties, male figures in tweed coats, and books. This was for a site, run by highly-educated women academics, about digital scholarship.

As a way of constructive feedback, we suggested the following paradigms:

  1. Technology but not just old: production and consumption (e.g. notebook, pen, typewriter, iPad, digital stylus);
  2. Lone scholars looking scholarly;
  3. Collaborative scholars having academic fun: working, communicating, celebrating;
  4. Canadian identity;
  5. Scholarly environments (e.g. the staircase in the library; Nines; Gutenberg);
  6. Representations of the scholarly outputs (e.g. texts and images); and
  7. Abstract representations of core concepts (e.g. Erudit).

The end result appears both unique and specific to this particular agency and a good fit to the landscape of on-line presence for DH scholarship.

Original authorship and (full-of-gratitude collaboration on the text) made by Dr. Stan Ruecker.

questioning design: a strategy for the 21c

September 25, 2016

In his 1973 edition of Design for the Real World, Victor Papanek calls out advertising designers for persuading “people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have”, and industrial designers for creating unsafe, unnecessary, “tawdry idiocies” to be “hawked by advertisers”. Papanek pulls no punches, accusing design of putting “murder on the level of mass production”. As evidence he points to the industrial process and product-use that create exorbitant waste material, pollute our air and water, and are capable of causing injury and harm to a cross-global population.

It is at this point that I wikipedia Papanek and discover, to my great disappointment, that we can’t bond over whiskey and our shared design-related crankiness.

Web sites, while not the outcome nor the mass producer of industrial design, enable production, distribution, purchasing, and obsolescence of designed objects on a scale that does not have its equal in a physical counterpart. Take amazon.com as an example. In 2014, Amazon reported almost US$89 billion in net sales (Statista 2015), with almost 114,000 total office and warehouse units, 181.12 million unique monthly visitors, and 305,258,547 unique products.

While Amazon is not responsible for manufacturing all these products, the company and its web site do provide unprecedented access to them in terms of availability and lower cost, with little substantial information regarding the products’ origin or value. If I wanted to know which specific sheep helped to make my sweater, for example, I would be out of luck.

Furthermore, consumers gain little insight as to the consequences of their purchase. A 300 pixel image of a product says little about the extent of its packaging, the impact its manufacture has had on the environment, the wage of and community impact on its workforce nor, frankly, about its quality. We rely on fellow customer reviews for some of this information, but few are critically written and, those that are, are not tagged for reference or easy access.

Design as Politics

Central to this critique is the notion of design as an inherently (whether or not consciously or intentionally) political activity:

[d]esign is political because it has consequences, and sometimes serious ones” (Winhall 2006).

With the development and implementation of user-centred design methods and tools, designers have acknowledged our responsibility (and accountability) for the consequences of our design efforts. Furthermore, we suggest that we have the capacity to design things with consequences— intentionally — different from the status quo.

I suggest that designers, as active participants in the creation and/or the survival of design, begin to treat every design as a kind of cultural object, or in Derrida’s terms a “text”, that can be read and analyzed. Such reading and rereading will provide us with valuable insights into how a design may, subsequently, be read and understood by its others.

Design Critique

Reading and rereading is somewhat similar to critique — a practice that is fairly common to design. However, consider this a call for a more rigorous, visible, transparent, systemic, and iterative engagement with design criticism.

Criticism, or critique, in design most often takes place within the process of creation, partnered with the practice of design iteration. In iteration, designers cycle through making-thinking-remaking until either they become reasonably satisfied with the emergent result or they, simply, run out of the time that has been allocated for the project (hopefully the former). Too often, however, critique and iteration are used to make incremental adjustments to existing artefacts, too narrowly focused on the functionality or the aesthetics of the object, rather than to enable substantial challenges to or shifts away from the status quo.

In the place of design critique, I am proposing the use of critical design theory, which provokes designers to reflect on and critique existing cultural values, mores, and practices.

We have the opportunity to inject interpretation, questioning, and rigorous critique into every design instance, if we consider each one as an iteration (whether or not that instance has been made “live” or public).

Models for serious, expert-led critique abound in philosophy, film, literature, architecture, and even culinary studies. But, web and graphic design have tended to shy away from public critique not because, according to Steven Heller, they are “inherently uncriticizable, but because designers have neither a critical vocabulary, nor the means to address work in a public forum”.

Commenter asks why the photographer or creative director are not treated as people who should be held accountable for the outcomes of a design project.

I call upon designers to set a higher bar for our discipline. Not only should the artefacts we have a hand at creating be held subject to rigorous critique, but we should as well.

Too often designers become invisible, standing behind the companies who employ them, the clients who pay for their work, or the marketing team. When the work is considered successful, it may receive awards or accolades in design annuals; when it is bad, the work may be shamed, but the designer can simply move on to another client or project. Yes, a designer’s reputation may suffer, and we are still primarily employed on the basis of the strengths demonstrated through our portfolios, but the judgment we receive comes from a very small, specialized community, with little actual recognition for the origin of work that may be harmful.

I do understand that, often, the larger the project / campaign, the greater the number of cooks. I also understand that a designer or a creative director may not have the final say in the nature of a design outcome, independent of the size of the project or its budget (I’ve been there).

There are many potential benefits to accountability, aka rigorous critique. Some have been already outlined by Jeffrey Bardzell: “informing a particular design process, critiquing and innovating on design processes and methods more generally, developing original theory beneficial to interaction design, and exposing more robustly the long-term and even unintended consequences of designs” (“An Introduction to the Practice”, 604).

I believe that accountability allows us to add credibility to our discipline. Even more importantly, we can be of useful — and much needed — service to our communities by critically and with justification celebrating the good and condemning the harmful.

{Originally published as: Radzikowska, Milena. Looking for Betsy: A Critical Theory Approach to Visibility and Pluralism in Design. Diss. University of Alberta, 2015. Print.}

Still Curious?

I teach, design, and research as a feminist scholar, usually located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I am on twitter as @DrRadzikowska.

but first, what is design?

September 19, 2016

2014, Susan G. Komen partnered with Baker Hughes, a leader in hydraulic fracturing equipment, to raise breast cancer awareness among (mostly male) oil field workers. Baker Hughes donated $100,000 to the Foundation, then painted 1000 drill bits used in fracking the specific shade of pink trademarked by Susan G. Komen. Given the carcinogenic nature of fracking chemicals, the cost involved in painting pink these many drill bits, and the cost of the Baker Hughes’ marketing campaign (versus the monetary benefit to breast cancer awareness and research), this activity becomes silly, if not ethically questionable.

Bad design is frustrating, dull, or unpleasant. It is the itch at the back of your throat. It is an obstacle instead of an enabler. Bad design is more than meaningless decoration. Bad design can cause harm — emotional, physical, social, intellectual; it creates negative outcomes or situations. It obscures. It deceives.

So, what is design?

For many, and quite unfortunately, design is synonymous with ornament, style, decoration, or pattern. The shadows made by leaves on a wall are thus described, by some, as a design instead of an attractive pattern in light and dark.

Identifying naturally-occurring phenomena as design places nature or the divine in the role of active creator, with the potential consequences that all perceived entities then become design. Designers have attempted to narrow this definition of design to any physical result of some kind of plannedhuman activity, thus positioning naturally or nonintentionally occurring phenomena (independent of their aesthetic value or perceived intentionality) outside the design field.

To some, design is pretty pictures, determining its value solely in terms of the quality of its form (or its aesthetics). But design is, in fact, much more than form or aesthetics.

(Can we define design without even a brief foray into history? I think not.)

Though form quality is an important concern to designers, most practicing designers would argue that aesthetics are not the primary focus of their work but are, in fact, subservient to a wide range of other factors (the functionality or usability of the artefact, for example). Most late 20th century designers (and many of the 21st) would argue, instead, that concerns over form should follow concerns over function.

This discussion — of form vs. function — has its origins in the tensions that emerged out of industrial manufacturing. At the end of the 19th century, mass manufactured products became more widely and more cheaply available. Production quality decreased, and came under increased scrutiny. Many considered the newly mass produced objects to be overly decorated (in an attempt to make them appear more familiar and mask their manufactured origin). In a counter movement, William Morris, Arthur Macmurdo, John Ruskin, and others argued for a celebration of natural forms, a truth to materials, and a return of the artisan (both designer and creator). Two schools of thought emerged: one that argued for a revival of classical forms and one that argued for a return to agrarian regional design.

Form follows function emerged out of Louis Sullivan’s “Form ever follows function”. While form follows function suggests form’s subservience to its use and purpose, Robert Weitz proposes that when we consider “Form ever follows function”, neither come first but both exist in a delicate balance, created through equal emphasis. Form ever follows function allows designers to begin the design process with a random connection, emotion, or experience — imagine the seemingly impossible — then figure out how to make it functional.

In my humble attempt to extend Weitz’s argument, I propose that aesthetics have function: that form and functionality are so intricately intertwined that it is impossible to speak of one independent of the other. While Sullivan’s (and Weitz’s) statements suggest a positive value to both form and function (good form follows good function), my argument relies on the notion that when form exists, so does some kind of function, and vice versa. Whether they exist for good, and what kind of good they exist for, calls for further interrogation.

Returning to the central theme of this post — the definition of design

It is more accurate to describe design as a series of subdisciplines and professions, all with a diverse set of practices, tools, and traditions. Most design fields have a rich history, with ongoing theoretical developments and debates. Most offer and require extensive and specialized training, either institutionalized or through practicum. Some design fields have an extensive academic underpinning and have made valuable multi and cross disciplinary partnerships, while others are squarely grounded in industry practice.

With its close relationship to drawing, design has also been described, more simply, as the plan or sketch for something to be created or constructed at a later date, as well as to “plan out in the mind”(Mirriam-Webster). Jorge Frascara’s definition of design focuses on it as action — the product as a final step of a journey (often called design process):

to invent, to project, to program, to coordinate a long list of human and technical factors, to translate the invisible into the visible, and to communicate.

Paul Rand’s definition highlights a view of design as a discipline in service to the needs of others, a view that has gained much prominence and buy-in over the past twenty years:

Graphic design — which fulfills aesthetic needs, complies with the laws of form and the exigencies of two-dimensional space; which speaks in semiotics, sans-serifs, and geometrics; which abstracts, transforms, translates, notates, dilates, repeats, mirrors, groups, and regroups — is not good design if it is irrelevant.

Herbert Simon’s definition attempts to encompass all the above-mentioned definitions: to design is to

[devise a] course of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.

While for Simon design is a science and the pursuit of design a scientific activity, Richard Buchanan roots design in the humanities: a contemporary form of rhetoric. The scientific perspective focuses on the empirical study of the effects of design activities and artefacts on people. The rhetorical perspective sees design products as “vivid arguments about how we should lead our lives”. Thus, design practice and scholarship, according to Buchanan, should act as facilitators who “organize conversations and debates about the values of a community and how those values may be implemented with productive results.” Simon’s position on design stands in contrast to that of Buchanan, together offering a useful snapshot on contemporary design. For Nigel Cross, design is neither science nor humanities, but its own category, with its own, designerly, ways of knowing.

Carl DiSalvo argues that design possesses three characteristics, regardless of whether you support Simon’s, Buchanan’s, or Cross’ views:

  • Design’s practice extends the professions of design, independent of whether that practice is defined as design or enacted by a designer (though it still remains a human activity). An activity becomes design when a deliberate and intentional approach has been taken to the creation of a product or service that shapes the environment.
  • Design’s practice is normative: “design attempts to produce new conditions or the tools by which to understand and act on current conditions”. Thus, design acts have an ethical, moral, and political dimension, whether practicing designers recognize or position it as such.
  • The practice of design provides an experiential (tangible) accessibility to human ideas, beliefs, and capacities for action. Even though the process and materials may be different depending on the specific design sub-field, the end result — accessible tangibility – remains constant.

It strikes me that DiSalvo’s characteristics pose a number of critical questions for designers, those who think about design, and those who engage designed artefacts.

How do we determine whether a design is intentional? Is this a binary characteristic, based solely on whether it is a deliberate, human act? Or, can the level and type of intentionality vary, be subsequently discussed or evaluated? Do characteristics act upon one another?

If we agree with DiSalvo that all design has a political, moral, and ethical dimension, is there an — assumed — connection between it and intentionality? Do we question designers about the political, moral, or ethical position held, demonstrated, or supported through their design? Or should we? Furthermore, as design has “accessible tangibility”, should as well the positionality of its intention?

Is design — like literature — relative, subjective, or agnostic? Are there no value distinctions in design; can anything be called good design, as long as it is intentionally created by human beings, it is normative, and tangible? Or is design value subjective; is its evaluation a purely personal matter? Is there a greater truth about good design that, while exists, our subjective value systems prevent us from knowing it? Is good based on usefulness or functionality; and are usefulness and functionality only valuable through tangible, measurable outcomes?

Are all opinions on design created equal, or are some more valuable than others? Ones, for example, emergent out of a designerly expertise and capable of building a valid case for an evaluation?

There is a value judgement — sometimes unspoken and at times transparent — placed within the definitions of design outlined at the start of this chapter. Consider in Frascara, for example, a designer does not merely invent, translate, and communicate, she must do so well.

Rand, Simon, and Buchanan are more direct, describing good design as one that is “relevant” (Rand), that creates “preferred” states (Simon), and that argues for better ways to “lead our lives” (Buchanan).

Dieter Rams believed that design could not be measured in a finite way; instead of a quantifiable metric, he proposed ten features of good (product) design: innovation, usefulness, aesthetic value, understanding, unobtrusiveness, honesty, endurance, thoroughness, environmental friendliness, and simplicity.

What is good design?

Building on these historical definitions, I propose not only that good design does exist, but that we should consider two additional characteristics to the three outlined by DiSalvo and ten developed by Rams: good design as nourishing and good design as veracious.

Nourishing design leaves a mark in our memories and hearts: it plants a seed, then grows. It is “not an expression of my beautiful soul” (a phrase sometimes used by University of Alberta’s Professor Gary Kelly). It challenges, but through that challenge it is of use. Design at its best is transformative; it combines aesthetics, emotional engagement, and functionality to spur metamorphosis and growth.

Veracious design is transparent about its origins, positionality, and privilege. It acknowledges that all design is iterative — it can always be subject to critique, contextual development and change. Thus, through its welcoming of iteration, veracious design becomes accountable.

{Originally published as: Radzikowska, Milena. Looking for Betsy: A Critical Theory Approach to Visibility and Pluralism in Design. Diss. University of Alberta, 2015. Print.}

Still Curious?

I teach, design, and research as a feminist scholar, usually located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I am on twitter as @DrRadzikowska.

Information Visualization for Humanities Scholars Project

September 9, 2013

2004—2013

Information visualization for humanities scholars needs to accommodate a mix of evidence and argumentation. The humanities approach consists not of converging toward a single interpretation that cannot be challenged but rather of examining the objects of study from as many reasonable and original perspectives as possible to develop convincing interpretations (for a fuller argumentation of this approach in a digital context, see Drucker). In this sense, we can evaluate a visualization system by determining how well it supports this interpretive activity: a visualization that produces a single output for a given body of material is of limited usefulness; a visualization that provides many ways to interact with the data, viewed from different perspectives, is better; a visualization that contributes to new and emergent ways of understanding the material is best.

Figure 1. The Many Eyes Wordle shows word frequency by word size. This version shows the text of a draft of this article, with function words omitted.

Read the full paper here: Sinclair, S., Ruecker, S. and M. Radzikowska. “Information Visualization for Humanities Scholars.” In Literary Studies in the Digital Age: An Evolving Anthology. MLA Commons, 2013.

Dr. Milena Radzikowska

Copyright © 2021 Milena Radzikowska

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