Author: sheilapontis
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Transforming Research into Action with Visualizations Workshop!
Next month, I will be facilitating a workshop on the intersection of field research and information design at the forthcoming Design Educators Research Conference (Decipher) conference organised by AIGA Design Educators Community and the new DARIA Network (Design as Research in the Americas). This will be a hands-on design research conference including activity groups, workshops and conversations.…
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Reflections on applying information design to the writing process
Each person experiences writing is a different way: while for some people writing comes naturally and words flow one after the others for others writing can take more time and be a harder journey. But, in general, when it is part of an extensive project, like a book or thesis, the writing process can be…
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Everything info designers need to know about field research, but never ask!
Since I started my journey as a design researcher, I realized that there was a big gap in the literature about using research–particularly qualitative research (i.e. not marketing research!)–in design practice, and even more in the field of information design. Simultaneously, as an information designer, I have always wanted to make research methods and my…
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Understanding the hidden logic
What is the story told by the above objects? What do these objects have in common? At a glance these objects look like just a bunch of office supplies with not apparent connection or story to be told. However, after closer inspection supported by sketching and rough visualisations, you could start identifying some interesting connections…
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Becoming a Designer takes work
Teaching design in non-design universities and schools is certainly a very different experience from teaching in design education. For the last six years, in addition to my design courses, I have been teaching design thinking to non-designers. All this time something has been making noise in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t articulate…
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Will Burtin: neglected giant of information design
I learned about Will Burtin’s work through R. Roger Remington and Fripp’s book a few years ago, but it was love at first sight. The combination of Burtin’s thinking process, ingenuity and direct relevance to what today we referred to as information design was astounding. Furthermore, there is a strong parallelism between the type of challenges…
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The Value of the Design Profession
In the last five years, design thinking has gained huge popularity. Different versions of the process are being taught in non-design schools and universities, and increasingly many companies and organisations encourage employees to gain familiarity with it. More recently, initiatives to bring design thinking into high school education have emerged, at least in the US.…
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The Power of Solid Conceptual Design
Once again, I challenged my information design students with the task of improving this garbage and recycling schedule: Working in pairs, students had around an hour to work on this challenge, but couldn’t use colour or digital tools. They followed these steps: Understand content: This was the first time students saw the schedule, so they…
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User Studies Matter!
Skype. To me, this has been one of the most helpful tools ever created. It has allowed me to connect with friends and family (and clients, and students, and others) who aren’t in the same location as I am. Since early days, I have used it, first, to communicate between Skype user to Skype user.…
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The fear of giving feedback
As I approach the end of the semester and an intense year of teaching, I like to reflect on the highlights and learnings from each course. Interestingly, this year I noticed a common phenomenon across most of the courses I taught: students’ reluctancy to give (meaningful, constructive and critical) feedback or share what they really…
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Thinking Creatively with UN Leaders
This month Innovations for Successful Societies (ISS) research programme worked together with the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) to organise a 3-day leadership workshop for 16 senior United Nations staff focused on developing more innovative ways to help achieve the sustainable development goals. As part of this event, I co-facilitated the sessions about creativity…
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Is simple the new complex?
The way people communicate and process information has changed. These changes are most notably in younger generations, daily interactions (digital or face-to-face) and various ways of expressing ideas (e.g. articles, social media). Recently, I have started to see a connection between these phenomena and our receptiveness to deal with problems; even when these could be…
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