REU Site: Design Tech - Sparking Research in Interactive Visual Design

该站点由国防部与NSF REU项目合作支持。数字技术已经从机房走向桌面，现在正完全融入我们的日常生活，成为一种设计的人工制品。今天的大学生热爱设计技术，并且有理由：纯技术工作的外包越来越普遍，而创造性的技术设计工作仍然是真正增值和安全的。然而奇怪的是，为这种环境培养未来专业人才的教育和研究项目却很少。为期三个夏天的设计技术课程将开始解决这一问题，邀请计算机科学和设计专业的优秀本科生到交互式视觉设计温室学习。该计划围绕设计和技术的几个共同原则组织：庆祝创造力，激发激发成功设计师和研究人员的火花；接受批评，鼓励大胆思考和原创作品，减少批评的威胁性；专注于产品，通过将其置于应用环境中来增加设计和技术理论的可理解性；社会创造力强调成功创造力的群体对话，以提高团队合作和多样性；跨学科团队合作，利用跨学科团队提高研究和设计质量；团队多样性：通过更广泛的种族和文化参与，更好地设计技术。设计技术学院的学生将从当地女子学院和历史悠久的黑人学院招募，通过培训，组成以项目为中心的团队，并在半周的会议上与调查人员合作。由设计教学法启发的较少频繁的批评会议将鼓励独立和批判性思维。项目将在最后阶段向公众展示。研究主题将强调交互视觉设计，并从四位研究者的现有研究议程中提取，他们是图形，可视化，人工智能和设计方面的专家。通过在研究和教育环境中汇集设计和交互式计算社区，设计技术将产生强大的智力涟漪。显然，本科生成功完成的研究将具有价值，他们对研究和设计的学习也将具有价值。当研究人员和设计师在这些研究问题上共同努力时，他们将找到新的解决方案，也许更重要的是，产生新的问题。同样，随着他们在教学上的合作，他们将综合新的技术，使研究人员成为更好的设计师，也使设计师成为更好的研究人员。更广泛的影响由于强调多样性，Design Tech将对女性和少数民族的技术教育产生广泛的影响。研究人员将在网上和印刷品上公布他们教学的成功和失败，传播他们的实验结果。PI Watson已经组织了一个新的SIGGRAPH图形和设计课程，以及ACM交互式视觉设计篝火；他在Design Tech的经历将塑造他在这些活动中带来的思想和传播的内容。

The site is supported by the Department of Defense in partnership with the NSF REU Program.Digital technology has already moved from the machine room to the desktop, and is now embeddingitself fully in our daily lives, becoming a designed artifact. Todays undergraduates love designedtechnology, and with justification: the outsourcing of purely technical work is more common every day,while creative technical design work remains truly value-added and secure. Yet oddly, there are feweducational and research programs that train future professionals for this environment.The three-summer Design Tech program will begin to address this lack, inviting exceptionalundergraduate students in computer science and design to an interactive visual design hothouse. Theprogram is organized around several principles common to design and technology: celebrating creativityfeeding the spark that motivates successful designers and researchers; embracing critique encouraging bold thinking and original work by making critique less threatening; focus on product increasing the understandability of design and technical theory by placing it in an applied context; socialcreativity emphasizing the group dialog of successful creativity to improve teamwork and diversity;interdisciplinary teamwork using cross-disciplinary teams to improve research and design quality; teamdiversity bettering designed technology with broader ethnic and cultural participation.Design Tech students will be recruited from local womens and historically black colleges, passthrough an orientation, be formed into project-centered teams, and work with investigators in semi-weeklymeetings. Less frequent critique sessions inspired by design pedagogy will encourage independent andcritical thought. Projects will target delivery at a final session Showcase open to the public. Researchtopics will emphasize interactive visual design, and be drawn from the existing research agendas of thefour investigators, who are experts in graphics, visualization, artificial intelligence and design.Intellectual MeritBy bringing together the design and interactive computing communities in aresearch and educational environment, Design Tech will generate powerful intellectual ripples. Obviously,the research successfully performed by the undergraduates will have value, as will their learning aboutresearch and design. As researchers and designers work together on these research problems, they willfind new solutions and perhaps more important, generate new problems. Similarly, as they cooperate onpedagogy, they will synthesize new techniques for making better designers out of researchers, and betterresearchers out of designers.Broader ImpactsWith its emphasis on diversity, Design Tech will have a broad impact on thetechnical education of women and minorities. The investigators will publish their pedagogical successesand failures on the web and in print, disseminating the results of their experiment. PI Watson is alreadyorganizing a new SIGGRAPH course on graphics and design as well as an ACM campfire on interactivevisual design; his experiences in Design Tech will shape the thoughts he brings to and the contentdisseminates at those events.