Beyond Buzzwords: Acting on our Values in Design Education

Peer reviewed workshop. Co-authors: Marty Maxwell-Lane, Alison Place, and Rebecca Tegtmeyer.

Surface—the Design Education Symposium of the AIGA National Design Conference (Seattle, WA; Sep 2022)

SUMMARY

As educators and administrators attempt to quickly respond to shifting student and faculty needs, many have developed student-centered, values-based approaches to teaching. Despite varying levels of planning, expertise, and resources, educators are expected to rapidly evolve their teaching to respond to continually changing circumstances and address issues that have gone previously overlooked.

Critiquing the Design Critique: examining traditional assessment methods & shifting to new ways of co-sharing feedback

Peer reviewed conversation. Co-authors: Piper Schuerman, Bree MCMahon, Dajana Nedic, and Alexandria Canchola.

Published in Book of Proceedings (Conversations)

Design Research Society (DRS) Biennial Conference (Bilbao, Spain; June 2022)

SUMMARY

By critiquing critiques and including students in the inquiry process, we “shift away from the traditional convention where they are subjects” (Thompson, 2020), empowering them to become active participants in their own learning experience. Through this, we aim to facilitate a horizontal space of criticality with session participants focusing on the development and application of new formative and summative assessment methods based on unique experiences in the classroom.

Redesigning Comfort: the Positive Role of Vulnerability During a Crisis

Peer-reviewed presentation.

UCDA Design Education Summit (May 2021)

SUMMARY

Here, I share teaching-related reflections, anecdotes, and lessons learned from embracing vulnerability and openness in the context of the Covid 19 Pandemic in 2020, as I reevaluated what it means to adapt, the role of (self)compassion, and how to regain comfort in design teaching, research, and practice. Visual micro-essays illustrate my presentation, providing a picture of my context.

Visual Exploration of Identity as a Critical Tool in Design Pedagogy and Practice

Peer-reviewed presentation and visual essay. Published in Book of Proceedings (p.118)

Dismantling/Reassembling—PIVOT Conference (OCAD U, Apr 2021)

ABSTRACT

In this contribution, I refer to how the unearthing and visualization of unique knowledges inform critical perspectives of design thinking and making. By facilitating design methodologies that are curious and inclusive of the multiplicity of existing cosmovisions, we help students to learn about and embrace pluriversal and collaborative concepts of design, giving them tools to formulate appropriate reactions to exclusionary, oppressive, marginalizing, and disrespectful design.

Latinx Cultural Agency and Design Education

Article co-authored with Jessica Arana, edited by Hugh Weber 🕊️. Published on October 2020.

DESIGN OBSERVER

SUMMARY

We urge design educators to adopt a different approach to design instruction —one that challenges traditional design canons, histories, and perspectives, capturing the realities of students from a variety of cultural landscapes. By actively integrating students’ social identities, approaches like visual storytelling can become powerful steps toward the creation of new visual languages and systems that reflect diverse identities with accuracy and sensitivity. The transformative self-writing practice of Chicana/Latina feminist testimonio by Gloria Anzaldúa, Aurora Levins Morales, or Norma E. Cantú are examples of reflective narrative and expression that could inform visualstorytelling and that tie directly to cultural identity, making learning more accessible.

Hacia una Identidad Horizontal de la Educación del Diseño

Peer-reviewed presentation, co-authored with Cristina Acevedo (AWE México). Published in Actas de Diseño, issue 33 (2020)

Contact me for text in English.

XI Congreso Latinoamericano de Enseñanza del Diseño (Universidad de Palermo, Argentina; July 2020)

RESUMEN

Nuestra ponencia está basada en una perspectiva del diseño para el emprendimiento que reta modelos tradicionales Eurocéntricos y Occidentales (a los que llamamos los cánones de diseño tradicional) y que son inherentemente excluyentes de las voces, cultura y visión de países enteros en desarrollo, colonias, poblaciones indígenas, mujeres u otros grupos marginados. Estos cánones tradicionales perpetúan una visión y definición “global” del diseño que no le da lugar a los conocimientos locales o las voces e identidades “en los bordes”.

Towards a decentered design education: DRS 2018 conversations on decolonial design

Refereed article in international design journal.

Iterations: the Design Research & Practice Review, Issue 8 (2020)

ABSTRACT

As social design and design for development continue to gain relevance within design education and practice, the consideration and conscious integration of context-based methods that focus on locality and culture are critical in order to guarantee respectful and caring design outcomes. In the last decade, University of Florida colleagues María Rogal, Raúl Sánchez and I have developed social design research in Latin America that keeps leading us to the revision and reconsideration of such issues. They not only pertain to design, but to language and rhetoric, corresponding directly with world views and local practices of populations from the borders and “peripheral spaces” (Medina, 2017), who have been invisible from traditional and Eurocentric/Westernised design theory and learning.

The Horizontality of Knowledge: Steps Towards a Decolonial Design Education

Peer-reviewed presentation. Published in CAA 2020 Book of Abstracts.

College Art Association — CAA Annual Conference (Chicago, IL; Feb 2020)

SUMMARY

As the interest on the colonial heritage of design and the search for equitable, diverse, and decolonial design practices and history continue to expand from the rhetorical realm to our classrooms, the author aims to provide leads to urgent questions, such as, how can design educators responsibly approach decoloniality in studio settings that are historically inspired by the exact models we try to challenge? Or, how do we change students traditional design imaginaries and instil a new sense of social and cultural design responsibility?

Preparing students for designing with culturally-aware, decolonialist mindsets

Peer-reviewed conversation and paper. Co-authored with Jessica Meharry. Published in Book of Abstracts.

AIGA Design Education Symposium National Conference (Pasadena, CA; April 2019)

SUMMARY

This collaborative presentation discusses how culturally-aware and diverse design pedagogy intersects with client-based practicum experiences which are implemented widely in graphic design curricula in order to help model the real-world practices of collaboration, client service, and design methodology. Many of these practicum experiences seek to do “design for good” by working with non-profit organizations, entrepreneurs, and social initiatives in their local communities and beyond.

Decipher—the AIGA Design Educators Research Conference (Ann Arbor, MI; Sep 2018)

EXCERPT

Like many academics in the design field, we—Dori Griffin and Gaby Hernández, co-chairs of the session Teaching Designers to Write—face challenges in our scholarly writing praxis. Our own experiences as writers who address design issues and as studio-based teachers of design-related writing skills led us to propose this session collaboratively. In designing the session, we responded both to our own individual situations and to years of informal encounters with fellow design faculty in similar positions. How might we help students develop the fundamental writing skills needed for success in their chosen profession? What deficits in our own educational experiences have become evident as we build opportunities for our students to acquire design-specific writing skills? How might we utilize these realizations both to craft better learning experiences for our students and to articulate needed support systems and relevant tools for design faculty? Our post-conference report seeks to document the conversations among participants and the themes which emerged during the session.