Big Concepts

Anything that’s designed is used to complete an activity. A coffee maker is used to make coffee. A poster about the…

People use designed outcomes. Although these people interact with design more than they just consume or observe it, “audience” is still…

Human beings are susceptible to bias. Brains process a ton of information and in order to manage the load, they take…

Eating kale increases calf muscles by 300%! Babies born on the 10th of the month solve puzzles 50% faster than those…

Communicating comes so naturally as humans that it’s easy to forget that communication is comprised of many parts. A quick definition of…

What makes different coffee shop experiences unique? Perhaps one coffee shop uses in-store signage that’s hand-written and serves drinks in mismatched…

Designers work with knowledge in different ways as we create, evaluate, and discover opportunities for new products, services, and systems. For…

Research relies on reasoning. During the research process, we use methods to produce data. But data just sits there. It doesn’t…

Okay, okay… I know what you’re thinking. Rhetoric in design? Rhetoric is what politicians do. There’s no place for rhetoric in…

Designers cannot ignore how meaning is created when people use the products, services, and systems they produce. When people interact with…

Stuff is connected, y’know. Your phone is connected to towers and other phones in a cellular network. That phone also needs…