 HCDEM, Fall, 2022 |
 DTEM, Fall, 2021 |
 DTMC, Spring 2021 |
 DTEM, Fall 2020 |
DESIGN THINKING, MEDIA & COMMUNITY
SPRING 2023 • ENGL 3741/INFO 4940/6940/COML 4281
Wed & Fri RCK 102 12:25 – 2:20 and ZOOM for Partner Meetings
Prof. Jon McKenzie • jvm62@cornell.edu • Office: W 2:40-4:00
ZOOM LINK ZOOM VIDEOS GOOGLE FOLDER PROJECT SITE LINK
This StudioLab course connects critical design teams with researchers, activists, and community stakeholders. Practicing methods of research translation, design thinking, and participatory action research, students collaborate on projects through Cornell Cooperative Extension and community organizations in the US and Africa:
• Digital Equity+Excellence: Across the country, COVID has exposed the lack of access and equity to basic digital services: can a youth media campaign help democratize data and cyberinfrastructure in schools and communities and connect to wider social issues?
• Health Access Connect: A small successful non-profit in Uganda, HAC has for years worked with remote Ugandans to access low-cost government healthcare services: how to share their knowledge and experience as the staff scales up their work across Africa?
• 4H Media Clubs: Like many places in the US, Suffolk County on Long Island has faced disruptions in youth programs due to COVID: can civic storytelling and media clubs help youth connect in rural, suburban, and urban communities?
• Ithaca Sheepskin: There is more to small businesses than finances: there is craft and aesthetics and good cheer: can a small handcraft shop with great design and spirit help stitch together the patchwork of Ithaca, its schools, and the wider community?
• Marian St. Laurent Re:design: Re/designing experiences offers lessons for career design, brand design, and designing worlds: what lessons and tools might a creative director and innovation mavin develop for co-creators across many fields?
Consulting on partners’ ongoing projects, teams study and practice critical design drawing 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. Teams present and share their collaborations via project site and other platforms.
Part of a multi-year Civic Storytelling project to translate StudioLab into practices, policies, and infrastructures of different disciplines and institutions in order help democratize digitality, the class and workshops are supported by the Society for the Humanities’ Mellon Rural Humanities Initiative, Einhorn Center, and a Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, with support from the Department of English and the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.
Design thinking, transmedia knowledge, and artist activism overlap and all focus on engaging multiple stakeholders. Our partners’ interests include issues of social justice, rights of the incarcerated and dispossessed, economic development, and public health and well-being.
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. In particular, it seeks to translate research found in Transmedia Knowledge for Liberal Arts and Community Engagement: A StudioLab Manifesto (Palgrave, 2019).
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 complete three 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 create reports, info comics, Pecha Kuchas, and a portfolio project site.
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.
Evaluation
Each of the three projects is worth 20% of the class grade; participation (including attendance, discussion, and exercises) is also worth 40%. Two absences may result in final grade reduction; three in failure.
Learning outcomes
Conceptual analysis and synthesis
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Hands-on knowledge of transmedia genres
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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:
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Share their unique experiences, values and beliefs
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Appreciate the opportunity to learn from each other
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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
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1/25 IntroductionWe start with the Design Challenge: DT(TK->YPP), and then introduce ourselves and together begin exploring our partners and their projects.
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1/27DT exercise
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Week 1 |
2/1 Co-design with partnersMcKenzie: Transmedia Knowledge,
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2/3 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
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Week 2 |
2/8 MLS consultTeams should prepare for initial fieldwork by researching partner’s own sites/social media, relevant outside perspectives, and most importantly, previous StudioLab work with them.Prof. St. Laurent will work with teams to integrate her design frames into Project 1 work.Cultural research and strategy guide
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2/10 Transmedia Knowledge and Strategic Storytelling
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Week 3 |
2/15 Co-design with partnersDraft duePrep 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.
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2/17 Project 1 dueShared Media for Thinking the UnthinkableOutline 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
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Week 4 |
2/22 MLS consultFrom Hear to Create
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2/24 Platform- and channel-switchingMaking transmedia means building collaborative platforms for shared experiences. These sociotechnical platforms include our class, our partner’s infrastructure, and potentially those of stakeholders. Can we help partner align players to key platforms and media forms and learn to switch between them to storytell?Watch and explore:Island, et al, “Co-designing a digital platform with boundary objects: bringing together heterogeneous users in healthcare”Tyler and Cohen, “Spaces that Matter: Gender Performativity and Organizational Space“Dey and Steyaert, “The Politics of Narrating Social Entrepreneurship” |
Week 5 |
3/1 Co-design with partnersWe begin Project 2, the Create phase, by using Project 1 to re/define the design challenge, ideate possibilities, and prototype across media. Teams will meet with partners to ensure alignment of design challenge and scope of deliverables. |
3/3 Scenarios and journey mapsTranslate design challenge into WhyWhatHow sparklines of partner. Pluralize sparklines for different stakeholder experiences of/with partner and their media.For 3-4 key stakeholders, Design UX (xD, iA, iD) of calls to adventure and action attuned to TK forms and platforms. Scenarios, journey maps, and mood boards prototype xD, iA, and iD.WhyWhatHow quests of strategic stories channel pathos/logos/ethos of transmedia knowledge and images/words/actions of media cascades, while pluriversal choreographies and satisficial rituals (eg, performance assessments) transform thought-action figures across three ecologies of self, society, and world.Wurman, Information Architects 15-19
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Week 6
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3/8 MLS consultWork to connect your team’s platform to Cornell’s research, teaching, and service missions by exploring connections between personal, Cornell, and partner cosmograms. Note recurrent tensions between family/school&career and history/pop culture. Overlay cosmograms on MSL frames: tactical/branding and strategic/innovation, etc. Create SparkCats to guide world-sharing: categories (what is) and stretch categories (tutor texts for what could be) |
3/10 Field tripsTeams circle back to HEAR mode by visiting Newfield School, Ithaca Commons, and relevant campus sites to IDEATE design challenge using different senses and perspectives.
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Week 7 |
3/15 Co-design with partnersWe are prototyping partner interactions within their world, creating possible scenarios and journey maps for transformative encounters as we learn the UX frame and become builders. Dominant narratives, counter-narratives, and little narratives each entail different UX designs: different experience designs, information architectures, and information designs, different worlds, platforms, and skins. These readings explore performance and thought-action figures across the three ecologies of self, society, and world.
Neff, Theatrical Agencies
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3/17 Workshop – Info designTufte, Envisioning Information (selection)
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Week 8 |
3/22 MLS consultIntegrating research and design theory into practice and innovation is an important part of critical design thinking and research. We host Prof. Mardelle Shepley of Cornell’ Dept of Human Centered Design to discuss her research.
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3/24 Lab: WordPress and FirmaDraft report, scenarios, maps due |
Week 9 |
3/29 Co-design with partners |
3/31 Proj 2 Presentation/Report dueAssign Project 3 |
Week 10
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4/5 SPRING BREAK |
4/7 SPRING BREAK |
Week 11 |
4/12 WorkshopReadIDEO, Human Centered Design, Deliver 113-151
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4/13 Workshop |
Week 12 |
4/19 Co-design with partners |
4/21 WorkshopAl-Marsad Golan presentation
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Week 13 |
4/26 |
4/28 |
Week 14 |
5/3 Co-presentation |
5/5 Wrap up and evaluations |
Finals Week |
5/17 Final sites and deliverables due |
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