HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN AND ENGAGED MEDIA

WF 12:25-2:20 • Prof. Jon McKenzie • jvm62@cornell.edu • Office: W 2:40-4:00
MANN 160 and ZOOM
CLASS GOOGLE FOLDER
CLASS PROJECT SITE: TBA

This StudioLab course connects critical design teams with researchers, activists, and community stakeholders. Practicing methods of transmedia knowledge, design thinking, and strategic storytelling, students collaborate on projects through the Cornell’s Law School, Small Farms Program, and Department of Natural Resources, including:

• Black Farmer Fund: To reconceive wealth beyond financial and intellectual capital to include social capital and ancestral wisdom, can black farmers build wider community?

• Her Whole Truth: Survivors of violence are especially vulnerable to being punished with “a living death sentence”: can sensitive, holistic storytelling help commute their sentences?

• Health Access Connect: A small successful non-profit, HAC has for years used “boda-boda” or motorcycle taxis to help Ugandans access low-cost healthcare: how to share their experience as the staff helps scale up their work across Africa? 

• Black Belt Citizens Fight for Health and Justice: The “Black Belt” region across Alabama and other states has suffered social, economic, and environmental injustices that has affected the lives of generations: can their stories help bring justice?  

• DEMO: Design & Engaged Media Organization: A start-up student organization seeks members to form an Engineering Project Team focused on helping communities use strategic storytelling and critical design thinking.

Transmedia knowledge includes essays, PechaKucha, info comics, videos, and museum exhibitions. Critical design teams will help researchers and community organizations develop their projects using critical design thinking and strategic storytelling to share their knowledge and resources with multiple stakeholders. 

Consulting on partners’ ongoing projects, teams study and practice processes from IDEO’s Design Thinking  and Stanford’s Design for Extreme Affordability, as well as tactical media and organizational developed by ACT-UP, Black Lives Matter, Guerrilla Girls, and contemporary, multi-platform campaigns, presenting and sharing their collaborations via project site and other platforms.

Design thinking, transmedia knowledge, and artist activism overlap and all focus on engaging multiple stakeholders. Our partners’ interests include issues of local and international land rights, rights of the incarcerated and dispossessed, economic development for minorities in New York State, and social justice. 

This course serves Cornell’s long-standing mission of public engagement, as embodied in Cornell Cooperative Extension, Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, Engaged Cornell, and the Mellon Rural Humanities Initiative. 

Course Process and Projects

Over the semester, Cornell students develop design, media, and community engagement skills through seminar, lab, studio, and field activities: conceptualizing projects, learning technical skills, creating media, and consulting with school students and educators. 

Critical design teams will work with their partners, using design thinking to share their knowledge of transmedia forms, to learn from them about project-based learning, and to reflect together to generate insights and recommendations regarding the viability and scaleability of civic storytelling. 

Teams will complete three iterative projects, focusing on the theory and practice of design thinking, transmedia knowledge, and strategic storytelling while reporting on their work with partners. Over the semester, students will prototype and reflect on their design work through reports, information comics, PechaKuchas, and a portfolio website. 

Traditional and emerging scholarly media genres often seek to inform, enlighten, convince, persuade, and sometimes entertain and move readers. We will learn critical and creative skills for sharing research, consulting on community projects, and creating impact with different audiences, including specialists, community members, and the general public.

In reading for projects, students will write conceptual thumbnails of texts summarizing main arguments, defining critical concepts, and posing critical questions. 

Evaluation

The first two projects are worth 20% of the class grade, the third project 40%; participation (including attendance, discussion, and exercises) is worth 20%. Two absences may result in final grade reduction; three in failure. 

Learning outcomes

Conceptual analysis and synthesis Argumentation and narrative Individual and collaborative problem-solving Divergent and convergent thinking

Hands-on knowledge of transmedia genres Hands-on knowledge of DT, UX, and CAT frames Hands-on experience working with community Portfolio of engaged media and design

Academic Integrity: Each student in this course is expected to abide by the Cornell University Code of Academic Integrity. Any work submitted by a student in this course for academic credit will be the student’s own work. 

Inclusivity: The English department is committed to providing an atmosphere for learning that respects diversity. While working together to build this community we ask all members to:

Share their unique experiences, values and beliefs Be open to the views of others Honor the uniqueness of their colleagues

Appreciate the opportunity to learn from each other Keep confidential discussions of a personal (or professional) nature Discuss ways we can create an inclusive environment

Accommodations for students with disabilities: In compliance with the Cornell University policy and equal access laws, I am available to discuss appropriate academic accommodations that may be required for student with disabilities. Requests for academic accommodations are to be made during the first three weeks of the semester, except for unusual circumstances, so arrangements can be made. Students are encouraged to register with Student Disability Services to verify their eligibility for appropriate accommodations. 

Schedule

 

		8/27  Introduction Design Challenge: DT(TK->YPP) Meet partners Watch before class: Brown, “Designers—Think Big!”
Week 1	9/1 Meet partners Which Design Thinking? We move between theory and practice, while also transmediating between them. Begin by learning the 5-phases and 3-layer models of the d.school’s DT process. Then reframe DT in terms of Critical Design Thinking, Pluriversal Design, and Decolonizing Design. Read IDEO, Process Guide IDEO, Human Centered Design (Hear, Create, Deliver) Loewe, “Towards a Critical Design Thinking” Noel, “Envisioning a Pluriversal Design Education” Tunstall, “Decolonizing Design Innovation”	9/3 DT exercise  Empathy and Gift-giving In addition to readings, this d.school design exercise hones interview and listening skills that teams will use in the first phase of the course.  Read Brown, Change by Design, 1-62 IDEO, Human Centered Design, Intro p 4-13 Hear p 21-68 IDEO, Process Guide: focus on empathize and define Download Gift-giving exercise sheet
Week 2	9/8 Meet partners Teams should prepare for initial fieldwork by researching partner’s own sites/social media, relevant outside perspectives, and most importantly, previous StudioLab work with them. BFF, HAC, HWT: see S21 Project SiteF20 Project Site BBC: see Storylines Design Document DEMO: see DEMO site Assign Project 1	9/10  Transmedia Knowledge and Strategic Storytelling  To integrate TK into your partner’s project, teams must gain conceptual and practical skills for creating transmedia knowledge. We are translating research into practice, in the tradition of Urie Bronfenbrenner. Study these materials to get a sense of the “why,” “what,” and “how” of transmedia knowledge and strategic storytelling via sparklines.  Read McKenzie, Transmedia Knowledge, Ch 2 Becoming Maker View Wagstaff, The {Silence} Project: Some Adventures in Remediation, graphic essay, video essay Tsoa, “Crippled Confrontations,” Pecha Kucha DTMC Make Media!, various resources Partner-related Media
Week 3	9/15 Meet partners Prep by continuing research into DT, TK, and YPP via partner-provided materials, research into their media ecology, best practices, relevant models, and past StudioLab work with them. Her Whole Truth F20 Presentation Health Access Connect team S21 Presentation Black Farmer Fund team S21 Presentation	9/17 Shared Media for Thinking the Unthinkable Outline and develop your draft report and presentation using past reports as models: for now, prioritize CONCEPTUAL more than AESTHETIC and TECHNICAL. Study Edelman and Victor for insights into how different media (and media combinations) enable different types of thinking. Try to work these and the WhyWhatHow sparkline into your Proj 1 deliverables. S21 Project Site F20 Project Site Read Edelman, et al. “Hidden in Plain Sight: Affordances of Shared Models in Team Based Design” Watch Victor, “Media for Thinking the Unthinkable” (6 min clip) Optional:  Victor, “Media for Thinking the Unthinkable” (full 40 min)
Week 4	9/22  Draft due Meet partners	9/24  Project 1 due
Week 5	9/29 From Hear to Create We begin Project 2, the Create phase, by using Project 1 to re/define the design challenge, ideate possibilities, and prototype across media. Download Comic Life and supporting materials for in-class demo. Teams will then meet with partners.   Assign Project 2 Lab Comic Life download WhyWhatHow Sparkline Make a Comic Guide	10/1 Building UX across Platforms Making transmedia means building collaborative platforms for shared experiences. These sociotechnical platforms include our class, our partner’s infrastructure, and potentially those of stakeholders. Read IDEO, Human Centered Design, Create 81-111 IDEO, Process Guide: focus on empathize and define McKenzie: Transmedia Knowledge, Ch 3: Becoming Builder Islind, et al “Socio-Technical Interplay in a Two-Sided Market: The Case of Learning Platforms” Optional Island, et al, “Co-designing a digital platform with boundary objects: bringing together heterogeneous users in healthcare”
Week 6	10/6  Meet partners Dialogue and storyboard Sample storyboard 1 Sample storyboard 2	10/8 UX workshop Wurman, Information Architects 15-19  Bradford, Information Architects 62-74 Appelbaum, Information Architects 150-161 Tufte, Envisioning Information (selection) McCandeless, The Visual Miscellaneum (selection)  W. E. B. Du Bois’ Hand-Drawn Infographics of African-American Life (1900)
Week 7	10/13 NO CLASSES	10/15 Workshop Read McKenzie, “Towards a Sociopoetics” 121-138
Week 8	10/20 Meet partners	10/22 Lab: WordPress and Firma Draft report, comics due
Week 9	10/27 Presentation/Feedback Meet partners	10/29 Critical Design Panel  This roundtable features activist designers Renata Marques Leitao, Wes Taylor, and Frederick van Amstel, who will discuss their work and their respective involvement in the emerging networks Pluriversal Design, Design Justice Network, and Design & Opressão.
Week 10	11/3 Meet partners Assign Project 3 DEMO consults	11/5 Workshop Read IDEO, Human Centered Design, Deliver 113-151 IDEO, Process Guide: focus on prototype and test McKenzie, Transmedia Knowledge, Ch 4 Becoming Cosmographer Project sites S20      F20      S21
Week 11	11/10 Meet partners	11/12 Workshop
Week 12	11/17 Meet partners	11/19 Workshop Al-Marsad Golan presentation Black Farmer Fund presentation Health Access Connect presentation Survived & Punished presentation
Week 13	11/24 THANKSGIVING	11/27 THANKSGIVING
Week 14	12/1 Wrap up and evaluations	12/3 Presentation/Deliverables Due
Finals Week	Sun 12/10 Final sites due