That’s a wrap for the 2025 UCDA Design Education Summit… until next year!

Graphical user interface design education must empathize with marginalized audiences as digital interaction grows to ensure inclusive user experiences. User-centric approaches dominate contemporary design practice and education but often lack inclusivity for diverse user needs. Therefore, this study explored interdisciplinary studio projects involving 32 students to create narrative-driven interfaces from various persona information to address the importance of inclusivity and accessibility challenges in a higher education environment.

This presentation will describe the development and execution of this experimental solution to the problem of advertising, accepting, and billing design services in design education. It details the pricing and service structure, contractual obligation, and operating costs while examining what was effective and discusses the remaining challenges.

This presentation will describe the development and execution of this experimental solution to the problem of advertising, accepting, and billing design services in design education. It details the pricing and service structure, contractual obligation, and operating costs while examining what was effective and discusses the remaining challenges.

Snack break in the Rowe Lobby!

Navigating academia as early-career faculty often feels like “making it up” as you go. Creative research does not always fit within the framework of traditional academic structures, which makes navigating the tenure and promotion process challenging. This panel explores how faculty can sustain supportive research spaces outside their institutional walls.

This workshop challenges visual-centric design by exploring tactile processes. Designers will work in groups with random materials and design prompts to foster empathy and creativity, developing inclusive solutions that engage the full spectrum of human sensory experiences while expanding conventional design strategies.

This workshop will give participants an opportunity to explore the benefits of mindfulness by being led through a series of guided drawing exercises designed to promote being present and intentional when solving problems, immersing themselves without the pressure of perfection, and cultivate a more thoughtful, purposeful, and reflective practice.

When designers approach work with a mindful attitude, they can engage with their materials, tools, and ideas, fostering deeper connections with their concepts and outcomes. In our teaching practice, we embrace purposeful play as a means of unlearning and creating without succumbing to the demands for rational explanations while discovering.

This presentation shows a framework for integrating AI tools in design education, focusing on critical thinking and ethical use. Rather than banning AI, the approach teaches students to understand and work with it mindfully. Students maintained essential human design skills while gaining confidence with AI as a complementary tool.

This presentation proposes a mindfulness-based feminist framework that integrates leadership, pedagogy, and workplace sustainability. Through mindful design, we can prototype corporate systems prioritizing security over fear, unlocking creativity, innovation, and meaningful collaboration. Mindfulness, as a feminist leadership approach, redefines success—not through competition, but through care, inclusion, and collective well-being.

Presentation and discussion on UCDA's initiative aimed to support faculty in their professional development involving Rank, Tenure, and Promotion, including providing thought leadership, resources, networking, and community.

More than just a tool, AI is shaping the future of design, this shift underscores the urgent need for innovation in traditional design education. This presentation explores AI’s role in visual storytelling through a course designed to help students integrate AI while preserving artistic integrity. Developed in 2024, the course positions AI as a collaborator, emphasizing both technical skills and critical thinking.

Cyclical course planning enhances iterative learning in design studios more effectively than linear scaffolding. This paper examines case studies illustrating how a reflective, intentional, and adaptive pedagogical approach reinforces course objectives through repeated exposure, synthesis, and reflection, fostering deeper cognitive engagement beyond traditional scaffolding and design thinking frameworks.

A student-centered visual arts conference can foster inclusion and growth by bringing students together with professionals in an interdisciplinary space. It can also amplify creative dialogue and encourage collaboration through thoughtful curation, diverse voices, and interactive programming, ensuring mindful engagement, connection, curiosity, and innovation.

This presentation will introduce my ongoing practice to discover the vibrant graphic design history of Southside Chicago; and how this informs my teaching pedagogy, leading to curriculum that models observation and exploration, teaching students to become mindful designers, using skills in visual communication to understand, contribute, and create community.

Tejas, a variable typeface designed in 2024, emerges from this intersection, born during a 120-hour virtual diploma in type production. It is a typographic exploration of place, identity, and memory, rooted in the Llano Estacado region of the American Southwest.

This presentation explores how design educators can integrate AI without diminishing creativity. Emphasizing mindfulness, structured ideation, and critical evaluation, the session offers strategies to ensure AI enhances rather than automates creative problem-solving, preparing students for an evolving industry while preserving originality and intent.

This study proposes a project-centered teaching management approach using Figma to replace traditional LMS in studio-based design courses. It emphasizes real-time collaboration, in-document feedback and grading, and progress tracking, eliminating weekly submissions. This method is being tested in two UI/UX design studios during spring 2025, enhancing interactive and iterative learning experiences.

This study proposes a project-centered teaching management approach using Figma to replace traditional LMS in studio-based design courses. It emphasizes real-time collaboration, in-document feedback and grading, and progress tracking, eliminating weekly submissions. This method is being tested in two UI/UX design studios during spring 2025, enhancing interactive and iterative learning experiences.

This presentation explores a mindful approach to teaching graphic design history by shifting from rigid canons to a thematic, story-driven model. Through reflection, inclusivity, and experiential learning, students connect personally with history, fostering engagement, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of design’s past, present, and future.

This session explores the integration of generative AI in a brand development course, where students tested its creative potential and limitations. Through AI-driven brainstorming, problem-solving, and image generation, they uncovered new possibilities while also identifying biases and constraints, fostering a more critical understanding of AI’s role in design.

Many design students struggle to embrace non-conventional approaches, fearing failure, inefficiency, or a lack of practical application. This presentation explores both systematic and non-traditional methodologies meant to empower students to take creative risks while maintaining a logical approach to their process. By supporting risk-taking in a controlled environment, educators can help students develop more original, mindful, and compelling design outcomes.

This presentation outlines mindful workshops introducing AI to graphic design students, encouraging curiosity, reflection, and ethical awareness. Students explored AI as a supportive tool in branding projects, fostering experimentation and critical thinking. The goal is to develop adaptable, intentional, and empathetic designers prepared for evolving digital landscapes.

Opening Remarks for Tuesday

Join us in the Rowe Lobby for a continental breakfast and chat with other attendees about the sessions of the day.