AIGA Design Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

This clip is a preview of our upcoming AIGA Design Podcast with Robert Brunner, Chief Designer at Beats by Dre and Founder and ⁠Partner at Ammunition⁠. With over 40 years of experience, Brunner began his career at Apple when the company did not yet have a design team. He later became a partner at Pentagram before founding his own design studio.

The full episode with Robert Brunner, which also happens to be our season finale, comes out on September 17, 2024.

In this episode of the AIGA Design Podcast, host Lee-Sean Huang interviews Jenn Stucker, Associate Professor and Chair of Graphic Design at Bowling Green State University. They discuss the importance of community engagement in design, the expanding definition of design as a profession, the role of design communities like AIGA in career development and standard setting, and more.

Key Topics and Themes:

• Community Engagement in Design: Stucker shares her experiences incorporating community engagement into her design practice, including co-founding the AIGA Toledo chapter and leading community-based projects like “You Are Here” and “Sit & Tell.”
• Expanding Definition of Design: The conversation explores how design is more than just creating visually appealing products. It’s about improving everyday lives through experiences and behaviors.
• Design Education: Stucker discusses her approach to teaching design, emphasizing the importance of developing mindful individuals who can engage with the social, cultural, and technological world.
• Design Leadership: As one of the first designers to complete the AIGA Professional Design Certification Program, Stucker shares insights on design leadership and the value of professional development.
• The Value of Design Communities: The episode highlights the importance of design communities like AIGA in fostering collaboration, providing resources, and advocating for the value of design.
• Design and Cultural Change: Stucker emphasizes the role of design in creating cultural shifts and making a positive impact on society, even through incremental changes.
• Design and Higher Education: The discussion touches on the lack of high-level administrators with design backgrounds in higher education and the potential for designers to contribute to solving challenges in this sector.
• Ethics in Design: The episode briefly addresses the ethical considerations in design, particularly in the context of emerging technologies like AI.
• Learning and Growth: Stucker shares her ongoing learning journey through her Ph.D. studies and her participation in the AIGA Professional Design Certification Program.

Additional Notes:

• Reflecting her family's cultural heritage, Stucker named her design practice Sisu Design, a Finnish word meaning “guts,” “tenacity,” or “resilience.”
• The episode references the “In the Round” speaker series at Bowling Green State University, which focuses on Native American and Indigenous speakers across various creative disciplines.
• Stucker shares a quote from Gloria Steinem, “Power can be taken but not given. It is the process of taking that’s empowerment in itself.”
• The episode concludes with Stucker reflecting on her advice to designers: “Start small but think big.”

On the next episode of the AIGA Design Podcast, guest Sarah Doody discusses applying product design principles to your career, crafting a career roadmap, and more. Full episode release: March 18, 2024.

🤝 Sarah Doody is the founder of Career Strategy Lab, a program that helps UX and product professionals at all career stages navigate their job search and articulate their skills and experience through individualized and group coaching. She is also the host of the Career Strategy Lab podcast.

Topics include:

1️⃣ Crafting a career roadmap: Discover the value of setting short and long-term goals to guide your professional journey.

2️⃣ Building your compass statement: Learn how to articulate your vision and filter opportunities that align with your career aspirations.

3️⃣ The power of anti-networking: Explore strategies for building meaningful relationships and standing out in a crowded job market.

Community centered design strategist Sloan Leo chats with Lee-Sean Huang about community building as design practice and the intersections of social innovation and justice. Sloan is director of social innovation at The Vaid Group, designer in residence at MFA Design for Social Innovation at the School of Visual Arts, and a board member of AIGA New York. 

https://sloanleo.com/

Paul Pangaro, Professor of Practice at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute talks with Lee-Sean Huang of AIGA about design for conversation and design as conversation. How might designing better conversations lead to richer, more ethical interactions between humans and artificial intelligence? 

https://hcii.cmu.edu/people/paul-pangaro

https://www.pangaro.com/

Episode transcript: https://www.aiga.org/aiga/content/inspiration/design-future-now/episode-6/

Join us for the 20th AIGA Design Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 30 to April 1, 2020.  For more information and to register for the conference, visit https://designconference.aiga.org/

AIGA, the professional association for design, advances design as a professional craft, strategic advantage, and vital cultural force. As the largest and most influential community of design advocates, AIGA brings together practitioners, enthusiasts, and patrons to amplify the voice of design and creates the vision for a collective future. AIGA defines global standards and ethical practices, guides design education, inspires designers and the public, enhances professional development, and makes powerful tools and resources accessible to all. 

Follow @AIGAdesign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

We hear from an educator and a student who are researching, teaching, and practicing design in an age of data and disruption. Professor Deb Littlejohn demystifies the buzzword "Big Data" and explains why she has her students tell lies with data. MFA student, Randa Hadi opens up about her hopes and fears for the design profession and how she's facing the future head on.

Deborah Littlejohn is a design researcher and educator, developing coursework in graphic design history, design research methods, and graduate studios. By examining the tools and technologies through which people experience design, Dr. Littlejohn’s work is guided by questions addressing the relationship between visual communications, new information environments, data literacy, and the ability of people understand, learn, and take action. https://design.ncsu.edu/staff/deborah-littlejohn/

Randa Hadi is a designer, researcher, and architect by training. She is a visual thinker with an interest in bridging the gap between architecture and graphic design by creating spatial experiences in both the physical and digital world. https://randahadi.com/

Are you a designer curious about working in healthcare? Or you already work in healthcare and are curious about the value of design to improve patient and provider experiences? Kim Erwin shares her wisdom and insights about the role of design and designers in the healthcare multi-system.  

Transcript: https://www.aiga.org/aiga/content/inspiration/design-future-now/episode-4/

Kim Erwin, MDes, is Associate Director of the Program for Healthcare Delivery Design at the University of Illinois Chicago, and research professor at the UIC School of Design. As Associate Director, Kim works with the UI Health System, other research-oriented health systems, and design strategists to apply design methods to healthcare delivery. Together, they work to align evidence-based interventions with human behavior in order to accelerate adoption by patients and clinical staff. Kim's work leverages systems planning, human-centered research, broad stakeholder engagement and immersive communication to engage organizations in achievable next steps. Prior to joining UIC, Kim was an Associate Professor at IIT’s Institute of Design and Director of its Center for Collaborative Healthcare Design.

Kim's focus on merging the design and health sciences builds on 20 years of professional expertise in contextual field research methods, qualitative analytics, communication design to make complex information easier to understand and use. Kim has also been an educator for over ten years, focused on the formalization of communication methods to build, engage and lead teams through discovery processes. Today she teaches design methods to healthcare professionals through executive education, helping them apply design methods to delivery and quality challenges, such as patient discharge effectiveness and provider-to-provider communication to improve care transitions.

AIGA, the professional association for design, advances design as a professional craft, strategic advantage, and vital cultural force. As the largest and most influential community of design advocates, AIGA brings together practitioners, enthusiasts, and patrons to amplify the voice of design and creates the vision for a collective future. AIGA defines global standards and ethical practices, guides design education, inspires designers and the public, enhances professional development, and makes powerful tools and resources accessible to all. Learn more at aiga.org/about.

Join us for the 20th AIGA Design Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 30 to April 1, 2020. For more information and registration, visit designconference.aiga.org.

Follow @AIGAdesign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

"So, how is that design?!" Miya Osaki and Tina Park, founders of Diagram Design, educators at the School of Visual Arts, and podcasters at Yah No Podcast talk with Lee-Sean Huang about the urgent need for design in healthcare and their unconventional paths to getting to where they are now. 

Transcript: https://www.aiga.org/aiga/content/inspiration/design-future-now/episode-3/

Miya brings her skills in interaction design, human-centered research, storytelling, and behavior design to create experiences that improve outcomes and empower patients. Prior to founding Diagram, Miya served as Director of Experience Design at Johnson & Johnson's Global Strategic Design Office where she created innovative solutions for patients managing chronic conditions. She has received patients and awards for device designs and interfaces for people living with diabetes. She is the pioneer recipient of a Design Matters Fellowship with the UNICEF Innovation team. Miya was recently appointed as Chair to MFA Design for Social Innovation at the School of Visual Arts.

Miya earned an MFA from Art Center College of Design, Media Design Program and a BA in Printmaking and Art History, UC Santa Cruz. She has received 2 patents and awards for her blood glucose meter UI designs.

Tina has had significant experience in leading innovative research within healthcare organizations. At Johnson & Johnson's Global Strategic Design Office she pioneered a design research team implementing innovative research methods that uncover the voice of the patient. She has also held research posts at Stanford University Hospital working on Project HealthDesign – a grant funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation on Diabetes management. She has served as an adjunct instructor in The School of Visual Arts’ master’s program, Design for Social Innovation.

Tina holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Art Center College of Design. Her work has been published in several textbooks and international journals.

AIGA, the professional association for design, advances design as a professional craft, strategic advantage, and vital cultural force. As the largest and most influential community of design advocates, AIGA brings together practitioners, enthusiasts, and patrons to amplify the voice of design and creates the vision for a collective future. AIGA defines global standards and ethical practices, guides design education, inspires designers and the public, enhances professional development, and makes powerful tools and resources accessible to all. Learn more at aiga.org/about.

Join us for the 20th AIGA Design Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 30 to April 1, 2020. For more information and registration, visit designconference.aiga.org.

Follow @AIGAdesign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Jack Roberts talks to AIGA's Lee-Sean Huang about design, storytelling, leadership, and more. 

Episode transcript: https://www.aiga.org/aiga/content/inspiration/design-future-now/episode-2/

Jack Roberts is the founder and chief executive of storylab® the global narrativedesign® firm dedicated to transforming the human story. Through storylab® Jack consults Global Top 100s and Fortune 50 companies on narrative design®, storytelling, data synthesis, innovation, change design, communication design, media design, strategic design, business design, creative leadership and leading creatives. He is the inventor of the narrativedesign® framework which is a unique blend of design thinking and storytelling. storylab® uses the framework to transform cultures and build innovative stories in every sector. Additionally, they are using it in the development of original content in global markets from the upcoming traditional TV series, Dadless, to a slate of feature films, as well as new forms of narrative altogether.  

As a storyteller, Jack is the bestselling author of more than 20 books, including Echo Designs Her Way Out of a Paper Bag: How to Change Anything Using Design Thinking (+ Storytelling!). He is a published poet, and the award-winning author of more than 10 screenplays. He is also an award-winning actor, producer, and production designer in feature film and television with 23 international awards to date. As a designer, Jack creates and facilitates experiencs, education, media, product development, brand identity, narratives, scenario work and change for global firms, national restaurants, entrepreneurs, subject matter experts, and educational institutions.  

Jack is a first-gen graduate, a tribal citizen of the Cherokee Nation, a member of SAG/AFTRA/WGA/PGA/DGA, sits on two non-profit boards, and holds a Global Executive Masters in Strategic Design and Management from Parsons School of Design in Paris. He teaches design, management, and storytelling during the summer at the Parsons School of Design in New York.

AIGA, the professional association for design, advances design as a professional craft, strategic advantage, and vital cultural force. As the largest and most influential community of design advocates, AIGA brings together practitioners, enthusiasts, and patrons to amplify the voice of design and creates the vision for a collective future. AIGA defines global standards and ethical practices, guides design education, inspires designers and the public, enhances professional development, and makes powerful tools and resources accessible to all. 

Join us for the 20th AIGA Design Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 30 to April 1, 2020. For more information and registration, visit designconference.aiga.org.

Follow @AIGAdesign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Sarah Gibbons, Chief Designer, Nielsen Norman Group, and Jodi Forlizzi, Professor and Geschke Director, HCII, Carnegie Mellon University, talk to Lee-Sean Huang about their work and how they have applied and expanded their expertise in communication design to the wider context of services and systems. 

Both Sarah and Jodi are scheduled to speak at the 20th AIGA Design Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 30 to April 1, 2020.  For more information and to register for the conference, visit designconference.aiga.org.

Transcript: www.aiga.org/aiga/content/inspiration/design-future-now/episode-1/

About AIGA
AIGA, the professional association for design, advances design as a professional craft, strategic advantage, and vital cultural force. As the largest and most influential community of design advocates, AIGA brings together practitioners, enthusiasts, and patrons to amplify the voice of design and creates the vision for a collective future. AIGA defines global standards and ethical practices, guides design education, inspires designers and the public, enhances professional development, and makes powerful tools and resources accessible to all. Learn more at aiga.org/about. 

Follow @AIGAdesign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.