Dr. Stan Ruecker and I have created a series of free video lectures that cover key topics in our design classes (at Mount Royal University and University of Illinois). We have more than 50 videos so far on introductory and…
Information Graphics in the Pandemic: Are We Getting a Clear Picture? Webinar, April 14th, 12pm EST
The Design Industry Advisory Committee (DIAC) is collaborating with the Registered Graphic Designers of Canada (RGD) to present a panel of experts who will discuss the design of information graphics during the COVID19 pandemic. Since the pandemic began, we have…
We Are All Works in Progress S2:5 of Working Mom Wellness
This month, I had the great privilege of being interviewed by Lisa Bush—the creator of the Working Mom Wellness Community and host of the Working Mom Wellness Podcast. In the episode: We Are All Works in Progress, we spoke about:…
TAPoR
TAPoR was originally created to be a directory only of tools used for text analysis, but it has evolved to its current iteration where it includes a far greater range of tools including code snippets that can do the work…
Statement on Racism, Oppression, and Racialized Violence
I stand with my students and colleagues in support of the Black Lives Matter movement—at MRU and in communities across Canada and the US—knowing that the fight for BIMPOC rights and lives has been ongoing for centuries, with far yet…
Mental Health During COVID19 Mini-Project
“We are living in a pandemic” is meant to reduce the stigma associated with mental health, putting it in the context of our common experience of dealing with COVID19. There are two versions of the poster. One version includes a…
Meeting Notes Template
For all those online meetings in our near future. I’m particularly looking forward to using the emotional state indicator. Available in iPad and Print versions. Enjoy!
Capta by Juxtaposition: a Rich-Prospect Approach to the Visualization of Interpretation Project
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,…
Design Journals
Visible Language publishes manuscripts from communication design, neuroscience, cognition, perception, psychology, education, communication, informatics, computer science, library science, linguistics. International Journal of Design (since 2016 requires a $1000 publication fee). not ranked Scopus CoDesign Design and Culture International Journal of…
qLab Colouring Feminist Activists Mini-Project
2019— The qCollaborative is pleased to present our inaugural Colouring Feminist Activists, the first in a series of books designed by the lab to celebrate and contemplate the vital work done by leading feminist activists of the past and present.…
Kid Stuck at Home Mini-Project
For those looking at some unplanned trapped at home with kids time, I just finished making an activity booklet for mine and added a few pages of activities for “when you’re stuck at home”. Some of the other activities can…
Design for Peace & Reconciliation Project
2019— Colombia, a country on the North-Western corner of South America, has been facing certain critical challenges—after a 50-year civil war, many Colombians are left suffering the effects of living in a post-conflict zone and the consequences of the displacement…
Materializing the Collection DH@Guelph 2020—postponed
with Dr. Shana MacDonald, Assistant Professor, Communication Arts, University of Waterloo. Description: This course builds on the organizer’s growing interest in co-creating new forms of interface that leverage physicality and kinesthetic intelligence. Through the process of making, thinking, and remaking,…
CFP Design in Complexity
When the majority of designers teach or use design process models, they tend to emphasize the fact that the models are iterative, and that it will be natural to expect to go through the cycle more than once. It is…
Arts & Humanities Education Mini-Project
Do you ever wonder why certain governments tend to seek the defunding of Arts and Humanities programs? Building on The Humanities Matter! poster created by the University College London (UCL) Centre for Digital Humanities and 4Humanities, we created a new…
Academic Freedom vs Freedom of Expression
Freedom of expression and academic freedom are vital in a democratic society. But Alberta and Ontario governments seem intent on undermining those freedoms by distorting their meaning. To help add clarity to the debates, we’ve created a poster guide, free…
A Speculative Feminist Approach to Project Management Project
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…
Depression is Not a Personal Failure Mini-Project
The ugly version of this poster was shared over 8k times. So, I created this one for slightly more aesthetic joy. Spread the message: depression is one of the consequences of living in toxic social, cultural, and political systems.
CFP Digital Feminist Activisms
Editors Dr. Shana MacDonald (University of Waterloo)Dr. Milena Radzikowska (Mount Royal University)Dr. Michelle MacArthur (University of Windsor)Brianna I. Wiens (York University) With the rise of what Jessalyn Keller and Maureen Ryan have called “emergent feminism,” we are witnessing a moment…
RA Position: Design for Peace Project
About the Role Colombia, a country on the North-Western corner of South America, has been facing certain critical reconciliation challenges while negotiating understanding and truth-seeking between left and right-winged armed forces, paramilitary and guerrilla groups, and the local and national…
qConvenor, Also Canada’s Design Educator of the Year
CALGARY, AB – A national association representing Canada’s graphic designers has given Mount Royal University information design professor and one of our qConvenors, Milena Radzikowska, its inaugural teaching award. Radzikowska, a founding member of the university’s information design program, is…
Material Data Provocations Project
2018— Materialization (or to materialize) is defined as “to invest or become invested with a physical shape or form”. Materialization is a process of transmutation: more alchemy than construction, with the results uncertain and in flux. I draw my inspiration…
Lunchalytics Calgary: Data Visualization Panel with Radzikowska
Wednesday, May 9, 201811:45 AM 1:00 PMGlobal Business Centre120 8 Avenue SoutheastCalgary, AB, T2G 5P6Canada (map) Joey CherdarchukData Visualization, Darkhorse Analytics Milena Radzikowska, MDes, PhDAssociate Professor, Information Design, School of Communication Studies, Mount Royal University Jeff LaFrenzPresident, VizworX Inc.Visual Analytics for 3D…
Women Who Design: Frank Conversation on Our Industry & Gender
International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month are a visible opportunity to celebrate the impact that women make in every discipline of design. It is also a time to acknowledge and challenge the disparity between the genders when it comes to…
Occupation Stress Injury Mini-Project
ID’s Associate Professors Dr. Milena Radzikowska and Dr. D. Scharie Tavcer from the Criminal Justice Degree Program collaborated on a project to synthesize and translate information on occupational stress injury. Senior ID students, Madison Snell and Maria El-Lahib, attended the…
7 pieces of advice to my grad students
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…
+5 for a useless critique
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…
stretch quests: searching for discomfort, as design practice
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…
happy students, reading on lawns
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…
questioning design: a strategy for the 21c
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…
but first, what is design?
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…
Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE)
2009—2016 The international INKE Research Project consisted of 35 researchers across 20 institutions and 21 partner agencies, with work involving some 19 postdoctoral research fellows and 53 graduate research assistants over the life of the project. Directed by Ray Siemens…
Design for Manufacturing Decision Support
2009—2015 What should 21st century interfaces used in oil production look like? When plant managers use software to make decisions, what factors should they consider? Should we design interfaces that include the quantitative and the qualitative experiences of the decision-makers? Considering…
Information Visualization for Humanities Scholars Project
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…