Faculty Research Activity

Helen Armstrong, Professor

• Research
  • Armstrong explores how machine learning might be leveraged through interface design to support decision making, lower barriers to access, and grant agency to users. 
  • Recent collaborations: SAS, Redhat, IBM, Sealed Air, WebAssign, Advance Auto Parts The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences

• Author/Designer
  • Big Data, Big Design: Why Designers Should Care About Artificial Intelligence (Princeton Architectural Press, 2021)
  • Digital Design Theory: Readings from the Field (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016)
  • Participate: Designing with User-Generated Content, with Zvezdana Stojmirovic (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011)
  • Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009)
• Former co-chair of the AIGA Design Educators Community
• Former member of the AIGA National Board of Directors 
• NC State University Faculty Scholar 
• Website: helenarmstrongdesigner.com

Kermit Bailey, Associate Professor

• Research/Practice
  • Graphic design for community engagement and collaborative design processes (e.g. Mapping a Cultural Legacy in South Park East Raleigh knowledge maps)
  • “On Place, a Framework for Multidisciplinary Place-based Narratives,” (Co-investigator)

Dr. Russell Flinchum, Associate Professor

• Research/Scholarship
  • Design history from the Industrial Revolution to present
  • 19th & 20th Century European and American architecture
  • 19th & 20th Century European and American painting and sculpture

• Author
  • Henry Dreyfuss, Industrial Designer: The Man in the Brown Suit (Rizzoli, 1997)
  • American Design (5 Continents/MoMA, 2008)

Jarrett Fuller, Assistant Professor

• Research/Scholarship
  • Director of twenty-six, an independent design and editorial studio
  • Contributing editor at AIGA Eye on Design

• Author/Designer
  • Scratching the Surface, a podcast about design, theory, and creative practice
  • Designer and co-editor of Culture is Not Always Popular: Fifteen Years of Design Observer, published by MIT Press in 2018
  • Edited 1, 10, 100 Years: Form, Typography, and Interaction at Parsons, a forthcoming book on the history of the Parsons School of Design’s Communication Design program.
  • Launched readings.design, a free online library of design texts.
  • His work and writing has been featured in Eye Magazine, Architectural Digest, Curbed, The Architect’s Newspaper, and Design Observer.

Denise Gonzales Crisp, Professor (emeritus)

• Scholarship/Creative Production
  • Typography and typographic tools
  • Improvisational pedagogy
  • Situational curation
  • Ornament in graphic design (DecoRational)
  • Alternative design writing

• Author/Designer
  • Graphic Design in Context: Typography (Thames & Hudson, 2012)

• Co-curator
  • Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern, (CAM Raleigh NC, 2012)
  • DesignInquiry: Futurespective (ICA MECA, Portland ME, 2019)

Dr. Deborah Littlejohn, Associate Professor

• Research
  • Design pedagogy and curriculum, especially within online learning environments
  • Interdisciplinary collaboration
  • Multidimensional (2D, 3D, 4D) interface strategies for visualizing multivariate data, including the visual translation of scientific research for non-specialists
  • Design-based teaching and learning

• Founding Editorial Board Member
  • Dialectic (AIGA)

• Review Editor
  • Communication Design (Taylor & Francis)

David Oh, Assistant Professor

• Research
  • Principal investigator (PI), in collaboration with The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences (LAS), investigating automation in search and content triaging funded by the National Security Agency.
  • Principal investigator (PI), in partnership with TestedHQ, exploring novel UI search components and data management features in a digital application.
  • Reenvision of a mobile onboarding process with a typographical system in collaboration with TestedHQ.
• Author/Designer
  • Design collaboration with the UNC Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology team to conceptualize a data application for The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) grant proposal.
  • Reviewer for Learn X Design 2023 – Futures of Design Education, Design Research Society.

Dr. Matthew Peterson, Associate Professor

• Research
  • Co-Principal Investigator on Virtual Reality to Improve Students’ Understanding of the Extremes of Scale in STEM, funded by the National Science Foundation, with PI Karen Chen and Co-PI Cesar Delgado. This project is developing and testing an educational virtual environment — Scale Worlds — that allows students to grow up to the size of the unobservable universe or shrink down to the Planck length, as they learn about scale and improve their numeracy.
  • Theory development, visual analysis, empirical investigation, and production of complex visual displays for STEM education.
  • Theory development and empirical investigation of visual metaphor in advertising.
  • Classification and evaluation of visual representations in multimedia.

• Author
  • “Design Exploration as a Research Discovery Phase: Integrating the Graduate Design Thesis with Research in the Social Sciences,” published in AIGA’s academic journal Dialectic (2022).
  • “A Taxonomy of Cognitive Image Functions for Science Curriculum Materials: Identifying and Creating ‘Performative’ Visual Displays,” International Journal of Science Education (2021), with co-authors Delgado, Tang, Bordas, and Norville. 
  • “Anticipating Gaze-Based HCI Applications with the Tech Receptivity Interval: Eye Tracking as Input,” Visible Language (2020), with co-authors Tober, Littlejohn, and Hill.
  • “Aspects of Visual Metaphor: An Operational Typology of Visual Rhetoric for Research in Advertising,” International Journal of Advertising (2019).

Scott Townsend, Professor (emeritus)

• Website: http://www.imaginarycountry.org/
• Creative Production
  • Audience interaction and visual storytelling on issues of borders, traditional culture, diaspora, and effects on communities in transition

• Scholarship
  • Participatory design
  • Design and social innovation
  • Public sociology