This paper presents the results of a curricular approach that provides graphic design students with an opportunity to engage in extensive observational and participatory research to better understand user experience in interactive museum exhibits. Conducting research in museums can circumvent many of the difficulties associated with user studies in a classroom setting.

This paper outlines an historical-theoretical framework, an approach for teaching beginning students “just enough” of these sophisticated processes to make meaningful smart objects, suggests a set of tools and resources to facilitate that approach, and highlights some of the obvious and less-than-obvious pitfalls encountered so far at the conclusion of the second iteration of the class.

EGD is a valuable tool for beginning graphic design students to gain awareness of the direct relationship between design and place/community. Two of our lower level seminars, Art of Walking and Text in the Landscape, aim to achieve this.

Resource Garden is an educational project designed to re-evaluate and transform the search-experience of academic/scholarly resources within post-secondary libraries. It allows students to explore their research topic across a variety of disciplines to gain a greater breadth of background knowledge and a critical perspective.

This paper outlines a pedagogy for introducing students to the design process specifically in the area of Social Design. In a fast paced world where the established paradigm of defining a designers’ role is evolving rapidly, this paper elucidates the need for and presents a theoretical framework for a pedagogy that has been developed to help emerging designers understand the role they play in design practice today. The extended idea of design education is meant to shape the mindset of young designers as they prepare for the professional world outside.