Stories

How should educators teach game design principles? The short answer is to teach the principles of play—specifically, play as a mechanism for exploring interactive systems and a means for designing game levels. 

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. 

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

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.

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.

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. 

Today, entrepreneurship is about more than launching a new company. It’s a way of thinking and acting that can change your world and the world of others.

Welcome to the first edition of the Design Reader, presented by the School of Design and Creative Technologies at The University of Texas at Austin.

The tools of design thinking are intellectual and conceptual, and while design thinking toolkits can be incredibly useful, they don’t guarantee “mastery” of design or design thinking. It’s a nuanced process that takes time and instruction to build design cognition, a sharp eye, and skilled hands.

Sensely’s app uses an avatar-based nurse to have a daily check-in “conversation” with patients to help them manage their health as they deal with chronic congestive heart failure. Human-centered design is key to building a smart artificial intelligence platform that improves health outcomes for patients on a daily basis.