Visual strategies for co-design with a community partner

Authors

  • Aaron Fry Parsons School of Design, The New School
  • Carol Overby Parsons School of Design, The New School
  • Jennifer Wilson Eugene Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, The New School

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.1727

Keywords:

co-design, narrative visualization, generative design, community partner, visual communication

Abstract

Deficient financial literacy is an important international problem, and research suggests the potential effectiveness of narrative visualizations. This paper presents a case study: a collaboration between a class of design students and a community-based financial-counseling organization to develop financial-literacy comic strips for use with the organization’s low-income clients. We describe and examine the communication challenges between a community partner and an academic institution, detailing the several communication modes employed.  These modes include questionnaire and surveys of the counsellors; emails directly between students and counsellors; and most successfully, a hands-on visualization workshop with counsellors. The visualizations engaged counsellors with generated (based) design practices, which resulted in superior communication with design students.  Lessons from this experience may be broadly useful for any collaborative efforts among academic institutions, design students and community partners. 

Author Biographies

Aaron Fry, Parsons School of Design, The New School

The Visualizing Finance Lab (VFL) explores the ways in which complex financial situations and dynamics can be explained through visual, metaphorical and narrative representations. The lab’s initial goal is to develop a vocabulary for describing illustrations and other visualizations of the recent financial crisis, and creating a searchable online database. These tools will assist designers and creative professionals to contribute more confidently to the discourses of business and economics, and establish a common language for artists, editors, and educators in building financial literacy and understanding.


Aaron Fry , Associate Professor, School of Design Strategies, Parsons School of Design

 

Carol Overby, Parsons School of Design, The New School

The Visualizing Finance Lab (VFL) explores the ways in which complex financial situations and dynamics can be explained through visual, metaphorical and narrative representations. The lab’s initial goal is to develop a vocabulary for describing illustrations and other visualizations of the recent financial crisis, and creating a searchable online database. These tools will assist designers and creative professionals to contribute more confidently to the discourses of business and economics, and establish a common language for artists, editors, and educators in building financial literacy and understanding.


Carol Overby, Assistant Professor of Design and Management, Parsons School of Design

 


Jennifer Wilson, Eugene Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, The New School

The Visualizing Finance Lab (VFL) explores the ways in which complex financial situations and dynamics can be explained through visual, metaphorical and narrative representations. The lab’s initial goal is to develop a vocabulary for describing illustrations and other visualizations of the recent financial crisis, and creating a searchable online database. These tools will assist designers and creative professionals to contribute more confidently to the discourses of business and economics, and establish a common language for artists, editors, and educators in building financial literacy and understanding.

Jennifer Wilson, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Eugene Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts

Downloads

Published

2017-09-13

How to Cite

Fry, A., Overby, C., & Wilson, J. (2017). Visual strategies for co-design with a community partner. FormAkademisk, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.1727

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2017): Design Learning for Tomorrow. Special Issue

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
  4. The author(s) must manage their economic reproduction rights to any third party.
  5. The journal makes no financial or other compensation for submissions, unless a separate agreement regarding this matter has been made with the author(s).
  6. The journal is obliged to archive the manuscript (including metadata) in its originally published digital form for at least a suitable amount of time in which the manuscript can be accessed via a long-term archive for digital material, such as in the Norwegian universities’ institutional archives within the framework of the NORA partnership.

Readers of the journal can print out the published manuscripts under the same conditions as apply to the reproduction of physical copies.

Cited by

Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC