Pamela Napier

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1805/11715

Promoting people-centered design research and community engagement

Professor Pamela Napier’s research focuses on how to enable people to solve challenges facing them in their everyday lives by facilitating cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary communication and collaboration throughout the design process. Founded on the belief that all people have the potential to identify challenges, create innovative solutions, and bring about meaningful change, Napier’s approach is people-centered. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses utilizing a service-learning pedagogy, where students engage people in various communities, organizations, and institutions to help them do those very things. The frameworks and models she developed to practice and teach people-centered design research and facilitation are not only being used in other classes—but by educators in other universities across the country. Organizations and institutions for which she has provided design research, strategy, and facilitation services have implemented new products and services as a result of that work, and have adopted her approach and methods in their own practices. Professor Napier’s work to solve challenges with people and organizations is another example of how IUPUI faculty are TRANSLATING RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Design Facilitation: Training the Designer of Today
    (Cumulus Association, 2015) Napier, Pamela; Wada, Terri
    Due to the inherent complexity of human-centered design—which focuses on diverse stakeholder collaboration and participation within the design process—simply understanding a design process and deploying design research methods is not enough. Rather, the designer of today must now be able to understand the increased value that stakeholders bring to the design process. The designer of today must be able to develop design activities that empower stakeholders to express, make, evaluate and collaborate. And the designer of today must be able to facilitate others, through the design process. These new abilities all point to an emerging design skillset called design facilitation. Embedded within this new skillset is the ability to develop the mindset, skills and characteristics—along with utilizing processes, process tools, methods and planning frameworks—in order to effectively facilitate others through creative, collaborative problem-solving.
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    Designing Design Thinking Curriculum: A framework for shaping a participatory, human-­centered design course
    (Cumulus Association, 2015) Napier, Pamela; Wada, Terri
    Within design education and practice today, new ways are continuously being developed to utilize Design Thinking in response to social, environmental, economic, and cultural factors. In the Visual Communication Design program at Indiana University, Herron School of Art and Design, Design Thinking is an integral component to both curriculum development and course content. In considering the inherent complexity of human-centered design—which focuses on diverse stakeholder collaboration and participation within the design process—simply understanding a design process and methods for collecting data is not enough. Students must go through a process of building a value system for conducting participatory design research. They must also understand the nature of the changing role of designers, from more traditional "making" roles, to design facilitators who must possess a particular mindset, model certain characteristics, employ distinct skill sets and use a specific approach. This presentation and paper will focus on an in-depth case study that describes the authors' methodology for integrating Design Thinking into the course curriculum of an undergraduate senior-level studio course, titled "Design for Innovation: Introduction to Design Methods," where students work in a variety of real contexts with diverse stakeholders throughout the design process.
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    Collaborative Visualization Workshop: Engaging People, Perspectives, and Values
    (Design Research Society, 2009-08-29) Kooi, Lee van der; Napier, Pamela
    During this workshop participants will gain experience through doing collaborative visualization in a team to articulate values and perpectives, and connect facts, thoughts and ideas. They will develop a shared understanding of how their own personal values connect to a design process and the larger social, economic and environmental contexts in which design decisions are made.
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    Designing from the Core: Facilitating Core Thinking for Sustainable Development in Design Education
    (Cumulus Association, 2022-10) Napier, Pamela; Lettis, Gwen; Herron School of Art
    How might graphic designers identify and clarify their personal values and identity so that they might develop a responsibility mindset in their design process? This has been a central question in the research of the authors Napier and Lettis, two design educators who have been collaborating across the world from the United States and Ireland, through Master’s thesis and Ph.D. work, from first-year graphic design students to senior visual communication design students, and from in-person to online teaching. Our research is driven by a deeply vested interest in personal or core values and how they relate to making sustainable or responsible design decisions. We believe that design students must be able to develop a personal awareness of their individual values and goals to not only benefit their design process and practice, but also to benefit sustainable development. “Value thinking” is a central mode of thinking encouraged in education for sustainable development, which “develops and strengthens the capacity of individuals, groups, communities, organizations and countries to make judgments and choices in favor of sustainable development” (UNECE, 2009, p. 15). Within our research, we acknowledge that value thinking also involves thinking of oneself, and the direct correlation between the “personal” and sustainability. We termed this personal value thinking or, as Lettis has termed it since, core thinking. Ann Thorpe (2007), an educator of sustainable design and author of The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability, states: Many of the issues confronting us in the landscape of sustainability are those that feel more personal than professional, for example, your connection to nature, your politics as a citizen, or your willingness to put your personal resources toward ecological sustainability. We have found that in the context of sustainability in graphic design education (GDE) and design education generally, many programs are exclusively available to postgraduate students. Additionally, while some undergraduate education does aim to foster the development of personal values, it is unclear which processes are used to help students clarify and integrate those values into their identity and practice. This paper will describe the processes, methods, and tools that Napier and Lettis have developed to facilitate core thinking for sustainable development in different courses, at varying levels of graphic and visual communication design education. It will discuss the theoretical background of value thinking and include a high-level look at the ongoing efforts of evolving materials aimed at supporting design educators to foster sustainability-minded design students. Additionally, this paper will discuss both students’ and educators’ reflections on this ongoing work. It is the hope of the authors that a more inclusive approach to fostering sustainability-minded students and graduates will impact the role that designers can play as responsible citizens.
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    Growing NearWest: An Urban Community Gardens Pilot Project
    (2015-05-30) Napier, Pamela
    This is the story of the collaboration between Junior and Senior Visual Communication Design students, representatives from IUPUI’s Office of Neighborhood Partnerships and residents from four Near Westside neighborhoods in Indianapolis to develop, design and facilitate the creation of The Growing NearWest Urban Community Gardens Pilot Project: four distinct urban gardens in each of the four neighborhoods, creating a unique opportunity to foster community engagement, capitalize on existing assets, and build community capacity to address food access issues. The Near Westside needed help in envisioning, planning, designing and building these gardens, as well as the creation of a solid foundation to ensure their continued success. Within the senior-level "Designing People-centered Services" course at Herron School of Art and Design, IUPUI, the students conducted people-centered, participatory design research that included methods ranging from standard web and print-based exploration, to ethnographic research methods such as conducting contextual observation and interviews within the communities, and designing and facilitating engagements with community members using generative tools. This research informed the planning processes, design and development of the gardens. This experience through applied service-learning gave the students the opportunity to transform the way the neighborhood residents viewed engagement, working together, and even issues around food access. The process and methodology enabled citizens to actively participate in the planning and creation of something that would positively impact their way of life. This experience also gave the instructor an opportunity to facilitate the collaboration between diverse stakeholders in both higher education and local communities.
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    A People-Centered Approach to Improving Interprofessional Communication in Health Care
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2016-04-08) Wada, Terri; Napier, Pamela; Crain, J. Brian; LaMothe, Julie; Hendricks, Sue; Stull, Kellie; Sweeney, Jennifer; Syed-Adeel, Zaidi
    As part of the objectives stated under the Interprofessional Collaborative Practices (IPCP) Model funded through a grant with the Health Resources and Services Administration and Indiana University School of Nursing, it was necessary to better understand the challenges around interprofessional communication across a hospital unit. To carry out this objective, research consultants from Collabo Creative, a design research company, partnered with the Renal Metabolic (B5C5) unit at IU Health Methodist. The main purpose for connecting design researchers with B5C5 was to assist the unit in utilizing a people-centered design approach in order to: 1) understand the current context of interprofessional collaboration and communication, 2) frame pertinent communication design challenges; and 3) develop solutions to improve interprofessional collaboration and communication across the B5C5 unit. Resulting from the 8-month research engagement, Collabo Creative and B5C5 identified four core challenges to interprofessional communication that appear to be relevant to other hospital units in addition to B5C5. These challenges include: 1) patient handoff of information; 2) doctor and patient two-way communication; 3) employee tensions as a result of PCA training; and 4) night-shift inclusion in plan of care. This poster will describe the people-centered design approach and methods that were used to engage B5C5, along with key findings and newly developed interprofessional communication tools resulting from the research project.
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    Design for Social Change: A Pedagogical Approach to Prepare Students for Human-centered Design Practice
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2015-04-17) Napier, Pamela
    The discipline of design is changing. Today more than ever, there is a growing need for designers to utilize their skills, methods and processes to address complex social challenges. In order to be prepared for this evolving landscape, designers of today must value and carry out a human-centered approach—putting the needs and concerns of people first—and shape design activities that enable and empower people to express, make, evaluate and collaborate in order to creatively solve problems and develop meaningful solutions. Today, design students are being required to expand their skill sets to include design facilitation, and a deep understanding of practicing human-centered, participatory design. Due to this shift in mindset and approach for social innovation, the design education community must be continuously seeking ways to teach these emerging skill sets and provide learning experiences that prepare students to be successful in today’s professional design context. With this focus, research was conducted to shape a process and approach for allowing students to work in real contexts with real people, and build new skills for designing for social change. This poster will describe a pedagogical approach that utilizes a human-centered process to help students select, develop and deploy participatory design methods in order to identify and frame social challenges. In addition, this approach teaches students to collaborate with stakeholders while generating, prototyping and evaluating solutions to those challenges. For this research, visual communication design students engaged in this process for a social design project in their senior-level studio course, VC5: Design Methods for Innovation. The pedagogical approach, process, project outline, student outcomes, and challenges/implications for future research will be highlighted.