Conference Presentations, Workshops, Panels and Posters

Making the virtual tangible: Using visual thinking to enhance online transnational learning

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly, and Denielle Emans. “Making the virtual tangible: Using visual thinking to enhance online transnational learning.” Paper to be presented at IVEC 2020: International Virtual Exchange Conference: Towards Digital Equity in Internationalisation Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK, September 2020.

IVEC is the International Virtual Exchange Conference that draws a global audience of educators interested in furthering the practice of virtual exchange in higher education classrooms as well as collaborative online intercultural learning (COIL). The visual thinking activities in this presentation offer ways for learners to understand and appreciate their collaborative partnerships beyond the screen and beyond pixels. In observations and qualitative self-assessments of the 230 participants, moreover, many mention that the visual thinking activities had a positive effect on their participation and engagement in the learning environment. In particular, because many of these activities are done by hand using physical materials such as paper, markers, string, or glue, they help learners appreciate the tangible reality of the collaboration. In other words, working with tangible materials in physical space helps otherwise virtual relationships feel less abstract. This presentation discusses the ways in which tangible visual thinking activities can enrich long-distance intercultural learning experiences by improving realism, respect, and equity.

Designing Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork: A next-gen challenge in co-creation processes

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly, and Denielle Emans. “Designing Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork: A next-gen challenge in co-creation processes.” Paper to be presented at Synergy, The Design Research Society 2020 International Conference, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, August 2020.

DRS is a biennial conference and one of the major forums to discuss and present cutting-edge design research. DRS2020 invites high-quality research papers, together with conversation and workshop proposals. Abstract: The design discipline is moving increasingly toward addressing intractable systemic challenges, or wicked problems. Because such complex problems are best tackled by diverse teams—with constituents from various disciplinary and cultural backgrounds working synergistically together—it is essential to confront the process and system of collaboration and co-creation as a complex design problem in and of itself. The intricacies of collaboration intensify when teams are diverse in terms of mindsets, cultural backgrounds, disciplines, and approaches to problems and projects. This research examines how to address the complex topic of diverse collaboration from a design perspective, looking at the design and implementation of visual thinking activities to positively intervene in and improve the way diverse teams work together. Since the study began in 2012, the activities have been developed using a grounded theory analysis of observational and survey data gathered from 230 participants in long-distance intercultural collaborations between North America and the Gulf Arab region. The result of this analysis is a new framework, the Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork, which categorizes and presents an organizing structure for these visual methods. Ultimately, the Six Dimensions and their corresponding visual thinking activities help teammates understand their differences in working styles, unpack stereotypes and biases, learn to trust each other, explore topics of mutual interest together, and work more productively on design challenges together.

Visual Thinking Activities to Support Intercultural Learning and Collaboration

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly, and Denielle Emans. “Visual Thinking Activities to Support Intercultural Learning and Collaboration.” Paper presented at NAFSA eConnections 2020 Annual Conference and Expo 2020, Online, May 2020.

NAFSA is the Association of International Educators (formerly stood for National Association of Foreign Student Affairs). The annual conference draws about 9,000 attendees. Their philosophy is that “international education is the cornerstone for building a more understanding and peaceful world.” Abstract: We have developed, tested, and refined 30+ visual thinking activities to enhance remote intercultural learning and collaboration, or to prepare students for study abroad experiences. One of our findings is that these multisensory approaches make online interactions feel less abstract, therefore increasing participants’ motivation and investment in remote international learning and teamwork. Appropriate for many collaboration contexts and disciplines, these activities do not require art or design expertise. Following this session, attendees will be able to 1. lead students in methods for boosting critical thinking and stimulating deeper intercultural learning; 2. list ways visual thinking supports remote or in-person exchange and teamwork; and 3. describe how these activities initiate and sustain productive work across disciplinary and social barriers, enabling international student teams to discuss pressing global issues. [NB: While the in-person NAFSA Annual Conference was canceled, our paper was among a small selection chosen for a special online edition of the conference.]

United through design: Intercultural teams converge to tackle global challenges

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly, and Denielle Emans. “United through design: Intercultural teams converge to tackle global challenges.” Panel presentation at 108th CAA Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, February 2020. In the session “Connecting Global Issues in the Classroom,” co-chaired by Natacha Poggio and Emily Keown.

The College Arts Association (CAA) annual conference shares and promotes creative work and research in the largest North American gathering of educators in visual art and design disciplines.  As part of a session on Connecting Global Issues in the Classroom, we will share some of our research in intercultural design collaboration, specifically in encouraging culturally and cognitively diverse teammates to unite through projects in areas such as food scarcity, cultural preservation, water sustainability, discrimination, social justice, and other public interest issues. Even when teammates feel equally passionate about a global issue, they might approach the problem in different ways, considering very different types of solutions or approaches to the issue at hand. These differences in ideas, opinions, working styles, and even perception of the problem itself can lead to challenging communications and struggles. But in order for this struggle of contrasting ideas to be successful, however, teammates must foster cultural awareness, communication and collaboration skills.

Visualizing Cultural Values & Biases

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly, and Denielle Emans. “Visualizing Cultural Values & Biases.” Panel presentation at 108th CAA Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, February 2020. In the session “Diversifying Diversity: Addressing Marginalized Global Communities through Design,” co-chaired by Audrey Bennett, Yelena McLane, & Neeta Verma.

The College Arts Association (CAA) annual conference shares and promotes creative work and research in the largest North American gathering of educators in visual art and design disciplines.  As part of a session on Diversifying Diversity, we will share methods for understanding and coming to terms with values and biases in order to encourage diverse team members to grow as individuals and as collaborators. Studies demonstrate that diverse teams work more effectively and creatively together than homogeneous ones. Thus, innovation depends upon addressing these potential stumbling blocks. Our research indicates that visual thinking activities improve intercultural learning because they engage diverse teams in open and productive conversations around challenging topics. We will share methods to encourage intercultural teammates to establish team equity and disrupt feelings of cultural hegemony. Both are essential to diversifying design. 

Future in motion: An intercultural collaboration to create interactive, playful, and inclusive social spaces

Emans, Denielle and Kelly Murdoch-Kitt. “Future in motion: An intercultural collaboration to create interactive, playful, and inclusive social spaces.” Video presentation at the Experiential Design Conference, Tallahassee, FL, January 2020.

The Experiential Design conference is produced by Architecture_Media_Politics_Society (AMPS), an international non-profit research society dedicated to promoting dialogues around the social and environmental role of architecture and media. We presented a case study of intercultural design teams who responded to a provocation to develop concepts for interactive, playful, and inclusive social spaces. In order to articulate their concepts to a wider audience, teammates used design-based methods to prepare for the collaboration and build trust. Ultimately, the intercultural teams collaboratively designed and produced video sketches to bring their imagined environments to life.

Three Designers, Two Continents, One Cause

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly, Basma W. Hamdy and Denielle Emans. “Three Designers, Two Continents, One Cause.” Research presentation at TypeCon Design Education Conference, Minneapolis, MN, August 2019.

TypeCon was started in 1998 as an annual conference by the international Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA). It focuses on the promotion, study, and support of typography and related practice across multiple media. The Design Education Forum is a full day of programming that is part of the conference in which international faculty share projects and ideas related to type design and education. Our presentation focused on the Design Across Divides typographic banner design project between students in the USA and Qatar. The resulting banners explore student teams’ self-selected topics which include issues of discrimination along lines of gender, religion, race, language, and ability, among others.

Cultural Interplay: Creating Interactive Experiences Through Collaborative Video

Emans, Denielle and Kelly Murdoch-Kitt.“Cultural Interplay: Creating Interactive Experiences Through Collaborative Video.” Paper presented at MODE Motion Design Education Summit, Wellington, New Zealand, June 2019.

This case study of student teams, co-located in the Middle East and North America, draws from a constructive-developmental paradigm to examine the challenges and benefits of creating collaborative video sketches as part of motion design pedagogy. We introduce this method for co-production with the dual purposes of teaching students how to use motion design as a UX tool and facilitating their development of intercultural competencies. Organized into cross-cultural teams, students worked together to produce an interactive concept for spatial, social, playful, and cultural engagement using video sketches. Student feedback and project outcomes make a case for the dynamic interplay between intercultural engagement and collaborative video as a method to enhance how design students value diversity, understand themselves and others, and deal constructively with conflict.

Participatory Data Visualizations Support Intercultural Collaboration

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly and Denielle Emans.“Participatory Data Visualizations Support Intercultural Collaboration.” Paper presented at Infomation+, Potsdam, Germany, October 2018.

This biennial conference emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of information design by bringing together practitioners, researchers, and educators in information design, data science, and visualization to discuss these ever-evolving disciplines. Our presentation identified the need for culturally attuned methods to bring design teams together across geographic and social borders, pointing specifically to our method of participatory information visualizations to contribute to a team’s shared sense of community. We walk through the example of the High-Low Context Matrix. Created in real time through a combination of physical and digital tools, this matrix shows how each participant maps along the cultural continuum developed by anthropologist Edward T. Hall, and helps participants envision each other as a collaborative community. The information visualization results in energized discussion among cross-cultural teammates—they begin to investigate culturally determined attitudes and linguistic patterns that shape communication, personality dynamics, and educational goals.

Let’s Play Together: Creating Games to Diversify Design Research Teams

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly and Denielle Emans.“Let’s Play Together: Creating Games to Diversify Design Research Teams.” Paper presented at Decipher 2018: Design Educators Research Conference, Ann Arbor, MI, September 2018.

This activity group, selected for inclusion in the Decipher 2018 conference, which brought together the AIGA Design Educators Community and the Design As Research in the Americas (DARIA) network, was an active, hands-on session to engage participants in our preliminary research on how play theory might help improve cognitive flexibility for members of diverse collaborative teams. We engaged a small but varied group of educators, practitioners, and students in creating their own games as a productive tool for building, understanding, and troubleshooting collaboration. The process of creating the games—and the resulting games themselves—became tools for the participants to use in their own classrooms, workplaces, or research groups, expanding the generated ideas to make design teams more productive and inclusive.

Developing Students’ Instrumental Judgment Capacity for Design Research Methods

Gray, Colin, Paul Parsons, Austin Toombs, Marti Louw, Elona Van Gent, and Kelly Murdoch-Kitt. “Developing Students’ Instrumental Judgment Capacity for Design Research Methods.” Paper presented at Decipher 2018: Design Educators Research Conference, Ann Arbor, MI, September 2018.

This workshop was part of Decipher 2018: Design Educators Research Conference, which was a dual effort of the AIGA Design Educators Community, DARIA: Design As Research in the Americas network, and the Stamps School of Art and Design. The goal of this session is to generate discussion, explore examples, discover new resources, and ultimately create a usable cache of tools and references for those teaching (and learning) design research at various levels within and outside of academia. Owning a design methods book does not teach students at any level to cultivate judgment. Inculcating students’ “instrumental judgment” (Nelson and Stolterman, 2012) is one of the duties that design educators must take seriously as we collectively prepare students to move to the next level of their life and work. Those who have attempted to integrate design research into their courses understand that the task is not as simple as selecting the appropriate book of methods and asking students to select and apply them. Students require substantial space for experimentation and failure so that they can learn when something is not working or when a different approach would serve them better.

Privilege, Power and Community Design

Egenhoefer, Rachel Beth, Kelly Murdoch-Kitt, Denielle Emans, and Mindy Magyar. “Privilege, Power and Community Design.” Panel discussion presented at MAKE: 2018 AIGA Design Educators Conference, Indianapolis, IN, June 2018.

This panel discussion, delivered at an AIGA Design Educators Community conference, addressed how to “make curriculum” in order to “make community.” These national conferences draw an audience of primarily visual communication design educators and graduate students. Panelists initiated an interactive dialogue with the audience about how they work with design students to unpack privilege and power, examine personal and community values, and design systems for engagement and empowerment. The panel shared cases representing a variety of approaches to broaching challenging topics with students and communities, participating in collaborative design with marginalized groups, and exploring systemic power structures. Panelists use innovative learning spaces and integrate self-awareness and critical making into the curriculum in a variety of ways, including global cross-cultural collaborations; mindfulness practices; human-centered design approaches with community partners; leveraging notions of “rights and responsibilities;” co-creating community narratives; and more. 

EUREKA! Connecting Campus to Community through Creative Collaborations

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly and Lorrie Frear. “EUREKA! Connecting Campus to Community through Creative Collaborations.” Paper and workshop presented at Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (A2RU) National Conference: Arts in the Public Sphere: Civility, Advocacy & Engagement, Boston, MA, November 2017.

The Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru) holds an annual conference to advance a comprehensive range of research, curricula, programs, and creative practice that integrates creative knowledge. The 2017 theme, Arts in the Public Sphere: Civility, Advocacy, and Engagement, encouraged discussion and engagement surrounding creative place-making. After delivering a presentation on the history, execution, and outcomes of EUREKA!, a community engagement design charrette Prof. Lorrie Frear and I started at Rochester Institute of Technology, we worked with the other presenters in our session (Allegra Williams, MIT; Lori Lobenstein, Design Studio for Social Intervention; Maggie Coblentz, Rhode Island School of Design; Wendy Hsu LA Department of Cultural Affairs) to lead a dynamic, hands-on workshop with our audience in which they imagined new ways to engage and collaborate respectfully within their own communities. 

Design Pangea

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly and Denielle Emans. “Design Pangea.” Paper presented at AIGA National Conference, Minneapolis, MN, October 2017.

AIGA, the professional association for design in the United States, hosts its annual national design conference as a means of connecting the design community through rich conversation, inspiration, networking and education. We were invited to present as one of five PechaKucha speakers from more than 95 submissions related to the theme of “The Designer of 2025.” This fast-paced presentation paints a picture of the intercultural competencies future designers must possess while also encouraging audience participation with provocative questions about their own beliefs, practices and biases.

Engaging videography sparks effective learning: a comparative study

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly and Sumita Mishra. “Engaging videography sparks effective learning: a comparative study.” Paper presented at MODE Motion Design Education Summit, Columbus, OH, June 2017.

MODE is the Motion Design Education Summit, held every other year at host institutions worldwide. The conference convenes educators who utilize motion design in their teaching and project outcomes in a variety of ways. This presentation of a comparative video study discusses whether the design of a video used for educational purposes can positively impact students’ learning. The creation of the new video was part of a larger project; the initial project involved the development of an undergraduate course module in Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP). This course module was embedded in undergraduate courses in technical and non-technical disciplines. The instructional module begins with a video overview, which is often students’ first exposure to the topic of CIP.

Connective Methodologies: Visual Communication and Sustainability in Higher Education

Murdoch-Kitt, Kelly and Denielle Emans. “Connective Methodologies: Visual Communication and Sustainability in Higher Education.” Paper presented at the Sustainability and Social Science Research Symposium, Ann Arbor, MI, May 2017.

The Sustainability and Social Science Research Symposium brought together researchers from a number of disciplines whose work intersects with both sustainability topics as well as social science research methods. In this presentation, we discuss how designers of visual communication use social sciences to evaluate human needs and behaviors with the goals of communicating, educating, and improving quality of life. Some designers, particularly in User Experience and Human Factors, may even describe their practice as a social science. When designers meet sustainability challenges, they apply unique critical thinking and particular problem-solving skills in an effort to approach the issue in productive, effective and delightful ways. Therefore, design educators are beginning to embrace the idea of introducing and addressing sustainability challenges in the collegiate classroom. This presentation discusses the significance of cross-cultural design and user-centered methods for the development of sustainability projects in the undergraduate design classroom. Two design educators, teaching in the Middle East and United States, hypothesized that introducing sustainability challenges to design students in the context of an intercultural design collaboration would lead to deeper understanding and more in-depth and sophisticated outcomes than if the students pursued sustainability topics on their own, within their “home” classrooms.