08 September 2011
Cumulus Working Groups Denver, USA – September 2011
Cumulus Working Groups meet again in Denver. Welcome!
Provisionally the following working groups will be meeting during the Cumulus conference in Denver, USA on September 29-October 2, 2011:
Thursday September 29, 2011
9am - 5pm (exact time to be confirmed to each group)
Conference venue Hyatt Regency Hotel
- Digital Culture WG (10am - 4.30pm)
- Leadership and Strategy WG (1-4pm)
- X-files WG (9am - 1pm)
- Interior and Furniture WG (1-4pm)
- Sustainability WG and Global Water WG (9am - 1pm + 1 - 4pm)
- Contemporary Art WG (9am - 4pm)
Available contents BELOW
No pre-registration required. For presentation possibilities, please contact the groups' leaders.
Conference information
Read more about the working groups and their activities
http://www.cumulusassociation.org/academics/working-groups/working-groups
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DIGITAL CULTURE PROGRAMME
Digital Culture in the United State recognizes that we are in the midst of a revolution. At the start of this revolution there was a great deal of hype around media “convergence” — where the web would intersect with traditional broadcast medium and the “new media” would be born. But now it is clear that the future won’t be so easily defined. Instead we see a multitude of different possibilities as designers and developers create new products and services from online “mash-ups” to multi-device cloud computing services, social network based games, and products that connect to everything and get multiple generations involved in advanced technology in new and exciting ways. We recognize and embrace this complexity as it becomes imbedded in endless inherent possibilities. Join our Cumulus Working Group – Digital Culture and engage in discussion and interactions from around the world.
Fred Murell, Chair of Communications Design, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design
Date of the session : September 29th 2011, 10:00 a.m to 4:30 p.m
Provisional program
1st part (10 a.m – 3:30 p.m) : the speakers
10:00 a.m – Complexity and confusion in cyber spaces
Presenter : Rafael Fajardo, Associate Professer at University of Denver, Colorado.
Rafael Fajardo will explore the tensions that exist at the intersection of
design and emerging digital practices and the imlications those tensions have
for learning and teaching contexts.
Rafael Fajardo is a designer, researcher, and educator at the University of
Denver, Colorado. He is the founder of SWEAT, a loose collaborative dedicated to
the creation of socially conscious videogames. He is Co-Principal Investigator
at P4 Games, a project sponsored by the US National Science Foundation to
explore the making of games as a holistic pedagogy in secondary schools. He is
Associate Professor with a dual appointment in Electronic Media Arts Design and
in Digital Media Studies. Fajardo currently sits on the board of advisors of
Games For Change and of the International Digital Media and Arts Association.
11:00 a.m – Tools for Designers: Inventing the Future with Stories
Presenter : Hugh Graham, Director of User Experience, The1stMovement
As our society goes through a period of significant transformation, the role of the designer should and must evolve as well. The increasing overlap between communication, interaction, product, and environmental design demands a shared vocabulary and a coordination of approaches. Increasingly, designers are leading the charge in advocating for integrated, systems-based approaches to support interdisciplinary initiatives.
Storytelling and visual narrative techniques are an essential tool for designers working on complex initiatives. Not only do they help in developing a shared understanding of goals and objectives within members of the team, they also provide a framework for transforming research into ideas, concepts, and prototypes. Stories serve both an interpretative and generative role in inventing the future.
This session will provide some history and background on how stories can be used by designers and other team members to spur creativity and effective communications. Attendees will be encouraged to interact and offer their thoughts on how storytelling and design can help to make complex systems more usable, useful, and desirable.
Bio : As Director of User Experience for The1stMovement, Hugh Graham focuses on connecting clients’ strategic goals with opportunities to engage and interact with their target audiences. He oversees the research used to inform the design process and utilizes stories to create compelling and engaging environments, real and virtual.
As a design strategist and interaction designer, Hugh is an advocate for the use of people-centered research, prototyping, and facilitation to help organizations develop and implement innovative ideas, with a focus on using story-centered approaches to provide interdisciplinary teams with new tools that encourage rapid, iterative design and development.
Prior to joining The1stMovement, Hugh was the Director of User Experience for Sapient Corporation and Director of Content Strategy at iXL. Hugh lives in Denver with Artist/Illustrator Hadley Hooper and Maddie the dog.
12:00 a.m – Sketching and Low Fidelity Prototyping for Digital Experience Design
Presenter: Michael Arnold Mages, Digital Design, College of Arts & Media, University of Colorado, Denver
In the commercial world, working quickly and cheaply is a necessity. In the US, where design education is first considered a pathway to professional practice, the least expensive and quickest prototyping tool, the sketch, is frequently underemphasized in favor of more seductive, more replete digital prototyping tools. In a culture where students often feel pressured to fill portfolios with “camera ready” versions of websites, mobile applications, and information visualizations, the sketch is viewed as lacking value in the design process. In some cases, students become so immersed in the software development process, that they lose sight of the value and the role of design in development. The instinct of the student is to do minimal pencil-and-paper sketching and move to digital prototyping tools as quickly as possible.
While this might be desirable in a commercial culture where final deliverables need be produced rapidly and with as little expense as possible, it is not the only workflow used in professional practice, and perhaps not an ideal workflow for education. Drawing from commercial software development methodologies like Agile, and RAD, we propose to refocus interactive coursework upon iterative sketching and low-fidelity prototyping, centered on principles of radical simplicity, and creating functional processes to support human goals.
By shifting emphasis from the final deliverable to the process itself, it is hoped that students will be able to focus more clearly upon the central domain of designing software experiences: the human, business and process problems themselves, rather than the spurious focus on production of seductive “skins” for minimally functional software. The primary goal of this focus on process being: the intended user experience maps as closely as possible to the perceived user experience. This presentation will show examples and a case study of interactive design courses centered around sketching and low-fidelity prototyping.
Bio: An interaction designer and educator, Michael has lectured widely, and has served on the jury for the Association of Internet Researchers conference series since its inception. Bridging the gaps between theoretical, creative, and business practice, Michael has taught Interaction Design approaches to design, computer science, business, and art students at the University of Denver, Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, and the University of Colorado-Boulder. Currently Michael brings his approach to human-centered interaction and experience design to The University of Colorado-Denver. His clients have included Oracle, StorageTek, Seagate, and NIIT in Bangalore.
2:30 p.m – Conversations, Connections, and Change
Presenter: Joy Sykes – EffectiveUI
The surprising role designers play in connecting businesses with their customers and why this new dialogue is critical for responsible change. Joy takes you through the process of how she manages and directs her team through presenting and implementing complex projects at EffectiveUI by allowing the audience to experience first hand how the process of conversations, connections and change takes place in the world of business.
Bio : Joy Sykes is Director of Customer Insight & Research at EffectiveUI, a user experience design agency located in Denver, CO. Joy, and her team, work to integrate the voice of the customer into the design and development of digital products and services. Clients include B2B and B2C fortune 500 companies across industries such as financial services, energy, aviation, and home fashion/style. She has also work with various US governmental agencies. Joy holds a Master’s degree and Doctoral degree in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.
2nd part (3:30 p.m – 4:30 pm) : the doers
Digital Culture Open Session
3:30 p.m : Visualizing the students’ study projects (context digital culture)
Presenter : Ms Pipsa Asiala – Producer/ Tutor/ Teacher – Aalto University/ School of Art And Design/ Department of Media/ Media Lab
4:00 p.m : Introduction of the Communications Design department at RMCAD – David Bieloh and Fred Murrell
Just send us an email to register for a 20 minutes presentation at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . No frills no chills.
You need to register for the Cumulus Denver conference in order to participate to the working group session. The Cumulus conference is organised by the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design.
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LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY PROGRAMME
Time: Thursday Sept 29, 2011
1-4pm
Leadership and Strategy Group
This working group was previously called the Leader’s Forum as it grew out of a request for a continuing discussion that touched on the primary day to day working concerns of people involved in management and leadership in our faculties and schools. Policy, planning, resources and financial management, government and stakeholder relations etc. were considered to be among the key issues of interest for this group.
At the March 2011 Cumulus Board meeting, the Board decided to recommend that the group be renamed to make it issues, rather than status/position based so that attendees could self-select whether they were interested in leadership and strategy which manifests in many ways and may be pertinent to many people in any organization.
Denver RMCAD 2011 Leadership and Strategy Forum
Design and Management 2
Stage two of the leadership and strategy in design and management discussion will be held in Denver. In Paris this year the presenters were Christian Guellerin (requiring no further introduction) and Christophe Chaptal de Chanteloup, designer and author of Design: Strategic and Operational Management.
The redefinition of the nature of design in contemporary education and practice mores is well understood in many parts of the world. In those countries, design and management are comfortable bedfellows and few design education programs don’t include aspects of management and many design/business/management combined or double degrees exist. The designer in the field is increasingly clear about design as facilitation - whether corporate management is as clear about the promise of design within its corporate goals is another matter.
Chair, Prof. Helmut Lueckenhausen, Pro Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive, Swinburne University of Technology.
Presentation 1 - Beyond No: Making expertise visible
Combining rubrics and cognitive science designers helps governments make better decisions when investing in business ventures such as Clean Energy companies, while also coaching losing companies where they need help. New initiatives are also creating new ways to revolutionize how design educators evaluate portfolios in real-time. Valid Evaluation, a new company in Denver, Colorado, combines rubrics and cognitive science to help decision-makers and managers assess complex performances by providing organizations with strategic formative and summative data.
Speaker: Todd Reimer
Todd has worked as an instructional designer, teacher educator, and educational researcher. Todd earned his doctorate in the Learning Sciences from Northwestern University. Valid Evaluation draws on his experiences designing evaluations and assessing performance.
Presentation 2 - Designing and Managing the Institutional Brand
A growing number of institutions throughout the world are realizing that an inside-out management approach that engages all stakeholder groups, especially faculties, creates greater sustainability for the long-term future of their programs and employees. This academic enterprise approach, based on mission, core values and culture, allows institutions & individuals to find common ground, establish a universal language and share common outcomes. A strategy that has design, as an integral player, on the management team allows this approach to provide the requisite guidance for designing and managing an institution’s brand for global recognition.
Speaker: Rex Whisman – CEO & Founder BrandEd Consultants Group
Rex is founder and chief strategist for the United States-based BrandED Consultants Group. BrandED leads the design and management of sustainable brand strategies based on mission, core values and stakeholder engagement. As the former Assistant Vice Chancellor for communications and marketing at the University of Denver, Rex led a groundbreaking approach to higher education branding. He brings an international perspective to higher education brand development, having presented at gatherings in Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States. He holds a Masters of Science in communications management and has published numerous articles on higher education branding.
Christian Guellerin has written: in many instances “creative designers”, ‘artist-designers’… hav(ing) developed on the fringes of all academic institutions and/or prestigious schools incapable of working together during the rise of major university economic and/or technological research projects…” have not completed their evolution into the modern paradigm of the designer practitioner, and many challenges remain. From his perspective, the challenge remains only partially met in France even though he believes that French designers have enviable brand recognition worldwide.
In Denver, we hope to extend this discussion with the addition of a northern American perspective.
Participation by workshop attendees is encouraged
The workshop will also be an opportunity for attendees to give their points of view and add their particular socio-cultural perspectives.
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X-FILES PROGRAMME
9am - 1pm
Chair :Marie Ogée and Lynn Lindegren (to be confirmed)
- Introduction Names and School - a few words - tour of the table
- American education and accreditation system for design schools
- International students services: how can we learn from what you do?
- Exchange practices between USA/ rest of the World
- conversion problems, tuition fees, ATLANTIS programs
It would be nice to hear from the partners who have done some oversee Double or Joint degree in design or art.
Contact Marie Ogee This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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1- 4pm
We are looking forward to seeing you in Denver for further discussions within the Interior and furniture working group.
Last time we had a presentation by Veronika Kotradyova from Faculty of Architecture STU in Bratislava, Slovakia.
It would be very interesting if any of you would like to do a short presentation with examples on results of students projects, for example from workshops or projects with the industry.
It could be 10-15 minutes per presentation and then questions and discussions afterwards.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us soon.
Sincerely yours
Anders Brix, professor, architect maa & Nicolai de Gier, associate professor, architect maa
The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Denmark
E This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
SUSTAINABILITY The preliminary program is as follows:
9 to 9:45 am
Design for Sustainability: past present and future Welcome and introduction by Ursula Tischner, Savannah College of Art and Design, Program Coordinator Design for Sustainability
9:45 to 10:00 am
Introduction of all participants
10:00 to 12:00 am
Presentations of Design for Sustainability programs and activities around the world Other members of the group will present their programs and their approaches.
12:00 to 12:30 pm
Brainstorming on future developments and how we can support each other.
Prof. Ursula Tischner
Prof. and Program Coordinator Design for Sustainability Savannah College of Art and Design This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
1 – 4 pm WATER Group
Global Water Working Group. What has been done until now, what is on our schedule. Curricular topics. Welcome by Peter Stebbing ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Introduction of all participants
Presentations of Design and Water programs and activities around the world.
Brainstorming on future developments and preparation for the Helsinki conference
Prof. Georg-Christof Bertsch
Hochschule fuer Gestaltung Offenbach, Academy of Art, Design and Media Offenbach
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