2025: Visual Methodologies in Design Research: Potentials and Pitfalls

Photo credit: Matt Ramey

Friday, August 15, 9:00 AM to 1:30 PM

The primary goal of this symposium is to explore the value of visual research methods in design fields, addressing both methods and data analysis, as well as the more philosophical questions surrounding the importance of visual data and its positioning in the broader research realm.

Agenda

9:00 am – 9:15 am: Welcome and Opening Remarks
Newton D’souza, Director of Doctoral Programs, NC State College of Design

9:15 am – 10:20 am: Panel 1: Visual Data Collection Methods 

Moderator: Victoria Gallagher, Distinguished University Professor of Communication, NC State College of Humanities and Social Sciences

10:20 am – 10:35 am: Q&A

Break (15 minutes)

10:50 am – 11:55 am: Panel 2: Visual Mapping and Data Analysis 

Moderator: Todd Berreth, Assistant Professor of Media Arts, Design, and Technology, NC State College of Design 

11:55 am – 12:10 pm: Q&A

Break (15 minutes)

12:25 pm – 1:15 pm: Keynote Address and Q&A

Dr. Molly Briggs, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design & Design for Responsible Innovation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

1:15 pm – 1:30 pm: Closing Remarks
Dr. Elen Deming, Graduate Programs Coordinator for the Doctor of Design program, NC State College of Design

Panel 1: Visual Data Collection Methods

Panelists

Tony Liao

Associate Professor of Digital Media
University of Houston
[Augmented Reality]

Bio

Anjali Joseph

Professor of Architecture
Clemson University
[Physical / Digital Prototyping for Evidence-based Design]

Bio

Nilda Cosco and Robin Moore

Natural Learning Initiative
NC State University College of Design
[Behavior mapping]

Bio

Panel 2: Visual Mapping and Data Analysis

Panelists

Bo Zhang

Associate Professor of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture Oklahoma State University
[Visual Data mining]

Bio

Sara Queen

Associate Professor of Architecture NC State University College of Design
[Visual Mapping]

Bio

Lucas Noldus

Noldus Information Technology [Technologies for behavior Tracking and multimodal analysis]

Bio

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Molly Briggs, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design & Design for Responsible Innovation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Molly Briggs is a landscape and media historian, design theorist, visual artist, and trained printmaker who studies interactive and immersive rhetorics in printed matter in order to discern the mediated shape of built and social space. She combines traditional and makerly research methods to elucidate the workings and agency of landscape-focused representational documents. Her dissertation, The Panoramic Mode: Immersive Media and the Large Parks Movement (2018), contextualizes the commission, design, and reception of large urban park landscapes in nineteenth-century Europe and the United States amid a broader mediated culture of immersive spectacle. She is currently writing a cultural history of immersive graphic overviews in chorographic mapping and articles on the role of makerly methods in place-based material culture research.