Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty

Assoc. Prof. Sosa-Tzec participates in panel hosted at Google Ventures San Francisco Office.

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

 

Professor Trogu presents paper on Kinematic Modeling of a Flat-foldable Auxetic Metamaterial at the International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots

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.

Prof. Sosa-Tzec publishes sketchnotes exploring the visual essay as an academic object of study

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.

Sketchnote defining the visual essay as an academic product by Omar Sosa-Tzec

Prof. Chu teaches Design at Sichuan University's University Immersion Program

Prof. Hsiao-Yun Chu returned to Sichuan University (SCU) in Chengdu, China to teach a short course on Design and Society to 130 students in a variety of majors as part of SCU's University Immersion Program. "It is a pleasure and an honor to be invited back to this prestigious school," notes Prof. Chu. "Teaching and learning across languages and cultures can provide new opportunities, insights, and understandings, not only for students but also for myself. I would especially like to thank my hosts Prof. Zhao Chengqing and Prof. Lu Miao in the Arts College for their warm welcome, as well as my student assistants Alyssa and Aura who kept everything running smoothly. Chengdu is a wonderful place to visit--for the food, for the pandas, but most of all for the people."

Sichuan University is a highly respected research institution serving almost 50,000 students and is the top-ranked university in Southwestern China, comprising over 30 colleges or schools in a wide variety of disciplines.

Assistant Professors Christensen and Hussaini presented about integrating social justice into visual communication design curriculum at the 2023 AIGA DEC Symposium

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. 

Banner of the AIGA DEC Lens Symposium 2023
Example of slide in the professors' presentation
Another example of slide in the professors' presentation

Assist. Prof. Sosa-Tzec discusses critical approaches to the visual essay in the AIGA DEC Symposium

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. 

Slide listing poetics, semiotics, rhetoric, and aesthetics as critical approaches to the visual essay
Image showing Omar Sosa-Tzec's visual essay and sketchnotes and listing uses for the sketchnote in visual essay creation

Prof. Chu presents at Design History Society Annual Conference, Matosinhos, Portugal

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."

Prof. Chu teaches Design and Society at Sichuan University UIP Summer Program

Prof. Hsiao-Yun Chu has taught a short course on Design and Society as part of Sichuan University's University Immersion Program, which brings together students with faculty from around the world, encouraging global awareness and intercultural communication. "I'm extremely grateful to Sichuan University, to Prof. Dr. Zhao Chengqing for his warm invitation as well as to Dr. Gao Ran and the rest of the faculty for welcoming me," says Prof. Chu. "Although I was invited to teach the students about design, I myself learned so much about the Chinese language and the rich cultural history of Chengdu during my stay." Sichuan University is one of China's most prestigious universities, serving about 50,000 students across many disciplines. Prof. Chu has been teaching at the Arts College of Sichuan University.

Assist. Professor Omar Sosa-Tzec Presenting on Delightful Screen Time Visualizations at NorDes 2023, the 10th Nordic Design Research Society Conference

Assistant Professor Sosa-Tzec will present an exploratory paper on delightful visualizations of screen time for smartphones at the 10th Nordic Design Research Society (Nordes) Conference, which will take place in Norrköping, Sweden. This paper focuses on how to help smartphone users to attain digital wellbeing–that is, a balanced relationship with technology–through unconventional, delightful screen time visualizations. This exploratory work applies Design Delight–Prof. Sosa-Tzec's experiential framework to design for a happy and flourishing life–and sketching to conceptualize such visualizations. Through this paper, Prof. Sosa-Tzec argues that delight (in relation to digital well-being products and experiences) plays an important role in helping people attain digital wellbeing. Moreover, he urges designers to recognize sketching as a valuable activity concerning research through design.

The paper is available in the digital proceedings of the Nordes 2023 conference, published in the Design Research Society Digital Library.  

 

Assistant Professor Christensen presenting on Extending the Visual Storytelling Narrative Arc through Augmented Reality at the Digitally Engaged Learning (DEL) 2023 Conference

Assistant Professor Christensen will be presenting her paper "Extending the Visual Storytelling Narrative Arc through Augmented Reality" at the Digitally Engaged Learning (DEL) 2023 Conference. For over fifteen years, DEL has been a place to share, explore, and evolve our digitally engaged teaching and learning in art and design higher education. The theme of the 2023 conference is "Realities and Futures."

September 21–22, 2023
Online from: University of the Arts London

Image designed by: Yixin Cai