Stories

Assistant Professor of Design Jiwon Park has been awarded a Red Dot Award: Communication Design in the Brand Design category for her project, “SAIB,” which created a brand concept, logo, visual system and application for the intimate cosmetic brand SAIB & Co.

Associate Dean for the School of Design and Creative Technologies Doreen Lorenzo introduces the 2018 issue of the Journal of Design and Creative Technologies.

As the human-centered design approach to solving problems in the professional world grows, so does the teaching of this approach in higher education. However, there isn’t a comprehensive guide for teaching human-centered design that is peer-curated, dynamic and adaptable within higher education. To meet this need, a group of educators propose a peer-powered research repository that shares case studies and best practices for teaching design thinking. 

South Korea is a patriarchal, sexually conservative society where the subject of sex has traditionally been taboo. Korean women have long felt uncomfortable purchasing or openly carrying condoms, which are designed and packaged with a masculine message and arousing imagery. Being excluded from the branding and marketing of condoms has left Korean women more vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy and STDs, until now. A progressive South Korean cosmetics brand is working to tackle this problem by creating products that are designed by and for women. 

Within, Above and Beyond is the recent interactive multimedia piece by multimedia artist Yulia Lanina. In the piece, Lanina interacts with projected animations of her paintings in a narrative that chronicles Lanina’s journey to find clarity amid the noise of disconcerting news, images and social media.

After a survey at Tulane University revealed startling sexual assault statistics, the senior administration hired design consultants to lead a student-centered qualitative research and design project to address campus-wide concerns. The Project IX team proposed a student-driven design thinking collaboration to address tough issues around sexual assault on campus with the goal of bringing the community together to positively change Tulane’s culture.

Looking through the lens of American psychologist Sandra Bem’s definition of androgyny, human-centered design asks participants to take an androgynous approach and to adopt the best of both masculine and feminine traits to improve problem-solving outcomes.

Two graphic designers turned software designers worked together for years at Etsy, where they helped build and scale the online marketplace that connects millions of buyers and sellers from nearly every country in the world today. In this dialogue, these two designers discuss their own career journeys and what they’ve learned about creating compelling shopping experiences online.

Design thinking has spread to many disciplines, businesses and cultures; however, the way design thinking is executed requires change. The “fail fast” mentality can sometimes cause more harm than good, but merging design thinking with principles from the scientific method may offer a more successful way forward.

Teaching design thinking for social innovation requires both the students and the teachers to step outside their comfort zones and outside of traditional teaching frameworks. While teaching a class as part of Southern Methodist University’s Design and Innovation Studio, Kate Canales and Gray Garmon share some of their strategies for navigating the fog of ambiguity.