Sometimes when science gets a little stuck, art can come to the rescue.
It’s true of the 91探花’s , which gives free guidance to faculty, students and staff on the more artistic aspects of presenting research or reports 鈥� figures, diagrams, posters and the like.
The 91探花Design Help Desk was created by , a professor of visual communication design in the 91探花, together with , a professor of electrical and computer engineering who is now with the University of California, Santa Cruz. Its ongoing support comes from the School or Art’s .
Designers 鈥� in this case 91探花design students 鈥� helping science-types seemed a good idea , but now a new paper demonstrates its common-sense effectiveness: “” was published May 1 in the journal Plos One.
Cheng and Rolandi are co-authors of the small study, along with 91探花College of Education graduate and 91探花design alumni and . Many other talents went into the work, Cheng noted, including illustrator and 91探花design alumna and former faculty member , now at Northeastern University. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
The paper stems from the experiences of 12 91探花graduate students in science or engineering who participated in half-hour one-on-one sessions with design students at the help desk. The interactions were captured by video and annotated with a program called “Monologger” created by Hirsch and Cook to enable moment-to-moment analysis of the interactions. The resulting films also were reviewed closely by a four-member working group of individuals trained in interaction analysis techniques.
The researchers write that close study shows that the pairings and guidance “consistently produced a momentary disequilibrium in the scientist’s thought process,” but that the feeling led in time to one of “agency 鈥� and conceptual change in the scientist’s understanding of visual design.”
The participants were also sent a post-session satisfaction survey with questions about their user experience, to which eight replied. When asked if the Design Help Desk had been helpful, or if the consultant had been well-informed, the eight responding chose either the “agree” or “strongly agree option.” One of the eight selected a neutral response when asked if the consultant had “established a rapport” with them.
One participant summed up her experience saying: 鈥淚 really liked how the consultant first tried to understand our project and then gave us helpful advice on how to organize the layout of the poster.鈥� Another called the Help Desk advice “straightforward, to the point, and very helpful.”
The researchers write: “Visual design, learning sciences, and nanotechnology may be strange bedfellows; yet, as this paper highlights, peer interaction between a designer and a scientist is an effective method for helping scientists acquire visual design skills.”
The graphics that were the subject of Design Help Desk assistance were made better by the guidance, the researchers write. “Six demonstrated clear improvements to the visual design 鈥� for example, simplification of overly complex illustrations, or reorganization into simpler compositions is typical of this kind of transformation.” The students ended up publishing the improved designs in posters, a public presentation and an academic paper.
Cheng added: “Essentially, this study shows that unique collaborations between designers and scientists at the Design Help Desk did indeed lead to learning and acquisition of design skills.”
The success of these Design Help Desk encounters, they write, “supports the notion that an interaction between STEM and the arts promotes not only better science, but indeed, better learning.”
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For more information, contact Cheng at 206-310-5339 or kcheng@uw.edu.
- NSF award number 1008568