I had the pleasure of attending
the Driving
Innovation through Design workshop on April 15th and 16th in
Evanston. The workshop was the last in a series of workshops
sponsored by the National Science Foundation to explore the
increasing role of design in business, arts, journalism, and
engineering education.
A unique
aspect of the workshop was the mix of disciplinary and occupational
backgrounds the participants came from, including academic
researchers and administrators, practicing artists and engineers,
investors, and journalists, to name a few. Perhaps to facilitate
discussion across these different backgrounds, the workshop
included a session where we broke into small groups of six or seven
people. During the breakout session, we were asked to develop a
short presentation that presented a central aspect of design or
design education. After exploring many ideas, we converged on the
idea of “visual literacy” as a central aspect of
design. That is, the ability to
visualize concepts is
necessary to bridge the gap between quantitative understanding and
verbal communication.
A sketch demonstrating how visual literacy is a central aspect of design education.
As a shameless plug, I should also mention that the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University used a site that we developed at Datascope Analytics to illustrate to the conference members how the design community is organized at Northwestern. The map of connectivity can be seen here.