For design educators and scholars, the potential to traverse cross-/multi-/inter-/trans- disciplinary lines is boundless, and opportunities for these convergences have perhaps never been so prevalent. Of particular relevance to design is digital scholarship, which has been defined as “the use of digital evidence and method, digital authoring, digital publishing, digital curation and preservation, and digital use and reuse of scholarship” (Rumsey, 2011). Each of these activities involves design to some degree. Further, many of the concerns of the field of design are interdisciplinary, and converge with those in the humanities and STEM fields, in theory and practice. All three fields are engaged with critical forms of making to facilitate understanding, explore emerging technologies, and communicate information visually. While all of this bodes well for designers and design educators, we still face challenges regarding how to form, structure and maintain collaborations.
AIGA Design Educators Conference
AIGA Converge: Disciplinarities and Digital Scholarship
June 1 – 3, 2017
School of Cinematic Arts (SCA)
University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Proposal Deadline: January 15, 2017
Converge: Disciplinarities and Digital Scholarship encourages design educators, design researchers, and designers to take advantage of opportunities in digital scholarship, learn how to collaborate on interdisciplinary projects, and find new intersections within their existing research trajectories. This will help us to work together to redefine what it means to be a designer and a design researcher today.
We seek a variety of proposals related to the intersection of design and digital scholarship —
How can design converge with digital scholarship in more than a superficial way? How might aspects of digital scholarship impact design research? What are the key questions at the intersection of design and the humanities?
Other possible topics:
- the role of design in generating new knowledge
- design and new forms of scholarly communication
- speculative design and humanistic inquiry
- designing tools for thinking
- case studies of successful (or unsuccessful!) collaborations
- design and visualization
- the intersection of critical making and design
Find full information on proposal variations and deadlines here.