Research

Prof. Hsiao-Yun Chu has signed a book contract with MIT press for a manuscript on early woman industrial designers in the United States, mostly focusing on the eastern seaboard, from about 1850-1914. "Women designers have been around since the start of this profession, but their contributions have been obscured by decades of history that favor white, male protagonists," says Chu. "My research illustrates how women were active in design education and design practice decades earlier than has been previously recognized. This is critical in better understanding and representing the history of design in America." Chu acknowledges generous funding from the New York Public Library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and San Francisco State in pursuing this research.

Prof. Hsiao-Yun Chu has received an Affordable Instructional Materials Award to enhance her teaching of DES 356, The History of Design and Technology. "The AIM Award will allow me to create a hands-on library of artifacts from the past, representing different eras and movements that we cover," says Prof. Chu.  "History can often seem abstract; sharing tangible examples engages kinesthetic learning and brings history to life. This strategy incorporates Universal Design for Learning and other pedagogical best practices to make learning more accessible and engaging, without burdening students financially. I am so grateful to AIM for this opportunity." 
 

Students of the Design Strategy MBA of the California College of the Arts invited Associate Professor Omar Sosa-Tzec as a guest speaker, who shared his investigation on delightful customer experiences and delightful design. Sosa-Tzec introduced Design Delight, his conceptual framework that comprises qualities found in delightful user experiences and connects the notion of delight (in design) with living a happy and flourishing life. 

Prof. Hsiao-Yun Chu has completed a short term research fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia, America's oldest cultural institution. Her research focuses on women designers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "The Library Company's collections for early American history are without par," notes Dr. Chu. "The primary resources preserved here, both printed and visual materials, have been essential to my work. The staff members have been extremely helpful in making my visits pleasant and productive." Dr. Chu further notes Philadelphia's wealth of cultural institutions including museums and libraries which she has also benefited from. 
 

The Library Company was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731 as a subscription-based lending library. It continues to operate as a research and cultural institution, with exhibitions, public events and lectures, and a reading room for researchers. For more information, see https://librarycompany.org/

Alumni from Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering and Media School gathered on the evening of September 10, 2024, to discuss the intersection of media and technology at the GV (Google Ventures) Office in San Francisco. Associate Professor Omar Sosa-Tzec was invited to elaborate on the intersection of AI and design. Dr. Sosa-Tzec, whose research and scholarships centers on delightful design and experiences, acknowledge that AI is useful to design for delight. He emphasized the role of AI as another tool in design—never a substitution of the practice—and the importance of (college) education to develop a level of professional maturity that helps practitioners utilize AI critically and responsibly. 

Participating as panelists as well were Biz Carson, reporter at Bloomberg New, and Kristi Oloffson, Manager of Customer Marketing at Sigma Computing. The panel was moderated by Joanna Millunchick, Dean of the Luddy School, and David Tolchinsky, Dean of the Media School. The host was David Krane, CEO and manager at Google Ventures. 

Prof. Pino Trogu presented the paper "Kinematic Modeling of a Flat-foldable Auxetic Metamaterial" at the 6th IEEE/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR Chicago, June 23–26, 2024). The paper introduces a novel, transformable, flat-foldable shape designed in 1996 by the Italian topology researcher Giorgio Scarpa, who was also Trogu's high school teacher and mentor. Trogu and his co-authors Feng, Shi, and Dai expanded on the original shape to create a rigidly flat-foldable "auxetic metamaterial".

Metamaterials are advanced materials with unusual properties derived from their geometry rather than chemistry. Auxetics materials have the property of becoming thicker when stretched. Rigid foldability is the ability of a structure to fold about crease lines without twisting or stretching component panels. The authors noted in the paper's conclusion that "The basic unit model can be tessellated to form large-scale metamaterials with high load-bearing capacity and ease of storage and transportation, which has great potential applications in lightweight shelters, sustainable furniture and building substrates."

In AY 2024–2025, Prof. Trogu will continue collaborating with his co-authors: Prof. Huijuan Feng, graduate students Wujie Shi, and Prof. Jian S. Dai, thanks to a sabbatical during which he will be visiting scholar at the Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics and Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, China. Founded in 2010, SUSTech ranked among the Top Ten universities in mainland China in the Times Higher Education 2022 survey.

Associate Professor Omar Sosa-Tzec, along with other design faculty in the United States, participated in the first AIGA Design Educators Community (DEC) Design and Writing Fellowship in 2022. The AIGA DEC published a book comprising the visual essays developed by these scholars during this fellowship, all available at https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14495980.

Prof. Sosa-Tzec's essay (starting on page 249 in the book) comprises sketchnotes where he explores the idea of a visual essay and humanistic approaches to develop and peer-review it. Below is one of Prof. Sosa-Tzec's sketchnotes (page 253), where he explores and defines the visual essay as a multimodal argument and research-through-design outcome.

Assistant Professors Christensen and Hussaini presented together at the AIGA DEC Lens 2023 Symposium in New York City, as part of the AIGA National Design Conference. The AIGA DEC hosted Lens as a one-day symposium featuring peer-reviewed papers, panels, posters, and other work from educators, graduate students, and industry professionals that address ideas and topics connected to the theme LENS. Christensen and Hussaini introduced their work integrating a social justice lens into curricular development for visual communication design courses, specifically in relation to multimodal storytelling for two courses: the experimental Visual Storytelling elective class Christensen has introduced, and Research and Writing in Design, the core major requirement course Hussaini has re-envisioned. The presentation shared best practices formulated from these two case studies for pedagogical approaches to create politically engaged, community-focused classroom learning communities. 

The AIGA DEC Symposium Lens 2023 took place this October 12 in New York City, within the AIGA National Conference. Assistant Professor Omar Sosa-Tzec participated in the panel "Making Space for Graphic Designers as Visual Essayists." In this panel, Dr. Sosa-Tzec discussed the notion of the visual essay as a multimodal argument and outcome of research-through-design and the application of poetics, semiotics, rhetoric, and aesthetics as critical approaches to peer-review the visual essay in graphic design academia. Sosa-Tzec also discussed sketchnoting as a form of pre-writing and content for visual essays. Accompanying Dr. Sosa-Tzec were Patricia Childers (CUNY/CityTech/Pratt), Heather Corcoran (Washington University in St. Louis), and Joshua Unikel (University of Houston). All the professors were AIGA DEC Design + Writing Fellowship members in 2022. This panel and their work from the fellowship seek to legitimize the visual essay as a research product in graphic design academia and pluralize and diversify its voices. 

Prof. Hsiao-Yun Chu presented her current research entitled "Women's Work: Design on Display at the Centennial Fair" at the 2023 Design History Society Annual Conference in Matosinhos, Portugal. Her work illuminates the contributions of women designers and organizers to the 1876 Centennial Fair in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania--the first world's fair in which women's work was shown in its own pavilion. 

Prof. Chu comments, "Design history is a small and rather unique field as distinct from art history or the history of science and technology in general. It's a rare treat to experience the current research of others in this field who are expanding the scope and methods of this discipline in real time."