Title of Presentation: Web 2.0 for Sustainable Design
Title of Conference: Massaging Media 2: Graphic Design Education in the Age of Dynamic Media
Location of Conference: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Date of Conference: April 6-8, 2008
1. Abstract of Presentation (if applicable) (250 words max)
Web 2.0 for Sustainable Design Project explores the responsibilities of a designer. The project aims to bring to the designers awareness of sustainability and to explore a design practice through the use of Web 2.0 in design and civic education.
The below aspects are what this project attempts to achieve:
Pedagogy: To exemplify the core concept with storytelling while integrating technology into design education.
Practice: To enhance the current methodology of design education in its conventional settings such as classroom base teaching, internship, etc.
Theory: To expose students to intricacy of the functioning of communities and their interrelationships, expanding the designer’s social role.
Future History: To redefine the social roles and responsibilities of designers
Making It Work: The presentation will include 2 case studies of this project’s successful implementation. This project has been implemented with Internship course at Zayed University and Workshop series in Seoul, Korea.
2. Describe the relationship between this conference and the curricular goals of Colloquy on Integrated Learning and/or one of the CAS Majors. (250 words max)
Massaging Media 2 is an international design education conference sponsored by AIGA (http://www.massagingmedia.org/), aims to discuss on how graphic design education is being affected by dynamic media. Media is so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. McLuhan’s prophetic words from 1967 concisely describe the state of graphic design education in the age of dynamic media. No aspect of our field – pedagogical, theoretical, technical, or social – is unaffected by dynamic media. This conference will provide an opportunity to build a design education network in curriculum development as pursuing awareness and solutions in sustainable design for designers. Consequently I intent to redefine our curriculum development by the future state of design education through my project.
Web 2.0 for Sustainable Design Project will also help strengthen the GD curriculum by training students with storytelling practice through technology. This prototype will also provide a model, which demonstrates how web 2.0 technologies can be used in a class. SMS and MMS will simplify a process of uploading file via mobile. Sharing ideas, experience, or resources will improve the quality of communication and enhance the constructive feedbacks. Art 357 Web Design, 397 Interactive Design, and 499 capstone course management can be easily adopted and improved in terms of client-based project management, powerful storytelling based conceptualization, and imaginative technology enhancement, which will embrace the industry standard expectations for students’ capacities and to enhance the program boundaries exploring diverse medium. Currently Art 375, Art 490, and 497 are using public access blogs, which improved course communications between students, instructor, and design and non-design communities.
3. Articulate a strategy for disseminating the knowledge you gain from this conference among the faculty and students. (250 words max)
After this presentation, I will refine this project for use as a foundation course for designers at ZU University. Further collaborative web course development with CTL is planned as well. As a curriculum committee member, this conference will assist me to systematically develop dynamic design courses linked with industry and technology, which have yet not implemented in our curriculum. I aim to find a solution to modify the current graphic design courses to embrace the web technology components, so that the senior students can prepare their portfolios in print and digital media meeting the industry standard. This training will also provide a chance to network with media design experts in Dubai to exchange expertise and attract resources to the classroom learning including client-based projects and guest workshops. This will also help the coordination of student and faculty workshops for learning technology and collaboration with other departments.
