Hello,

I also would like to thank the organizers and sponsors of this conference 
for providing a wonderful opportunity to discuss not only the form and 
substance of this new design school, but also the form and substance of our 
broad field. Like so many others, I think that the discussion has been 
fascinating.

Let me introduce myself by saying I am a Ph.D. candidate from Carnegie 
Mellon, who focuses my study on one small part of this broad field. I am 
set to defend a framework that concerns the study and making of 
visual/verbal meaning collaboration. That collaboration implies that both 
visual and verbal concepts must be in play on the page or the work will 
lose shared and stable meaning. I was a practicing designer and 
illustrator. Now I am an academic with a keen interest in reflective 
practice as a method for discovering design principles that help us to 
understand not only how, in my case, to compose visual/verbal 
collaboration, but more importantly, why different levels of collaboration 
can be useful in solving difficult rhetorical problems.

I have been following the thread that moves between the problem of being 
taken seriously by the larger professional and academic communities and 
what I am interpreting as a concern that an academic paradigm does not help 
to clarify or justify design concerns. Keith Russel (On-line conference: 
Session II: Keith Russell Response to Lorraine Justice Date: 11/21/03), 
David Sless (Re: On-line conference: Session II: Keith Russell Response to 
Lorraine Justice, 11/21/03 ), and Lorraine Justice (Design Accomplishments 
11/21/03) are only a few of the people who have written compelling 
statements concerning aspects of this double bind.

In her opening statement, Lorraine said:

>Although great progress has been made in the United States to lure product 
>manufacturers to the benefits of design, it is still a draining experience 
>to continually justify the need. This is repeated in academia
>also...justifying the worth of the design disciplines when the older,
>stronger disciplines continue to look the other way.

I am only looking at one small branch of design, communication design, but 
in that branch I have recently found, that for me, one stronger discipline, 
cognitive psychology, has been of tremendous help in justifying one issue 
related to principles of design practice.

I have long believed in the study of best practice examples. I've felt that 
best compositional practice offers "something" that descriptive practice 
examples cannot deliver. But the study of descriptive practice, in other 
words, any example available that fits the basic criteria, seems to be 
standard practice in empirical studies in cognitive psychology (Levin, 
1987, Mayer, 2002, Plass, et al., 1998).

Cognitive psychologists studying one level of visual/verbal collaboration, 
which I guess would be best referred to as text enhancement, do not seem to 
care about design or what it has to offer. For a long time, my decision to 
concentrate on best practice had no real justification aside from my gut 
belief in its value.

Then I looked again at a study by Plass et al. showing that the combination 
of visual and verbal information aids learning when both are actively 
selected (1998). Not all participants did actively select both visual and 
verbal elements. They were not prompted to do so by any compositional 
device. The example after all, was a "descriptive example." But those 
participants who did actively select both visual and verbal concepts had 
better outcomes. This finding echoes Levin (1987) and Mayer (2002). Plass 
et al. also found it does not matter what modality preference you may have. 
If you like words, your learning will improve with visual information and 
visa versa.

The key term for me was active selection. In terms of improving learning or 
persuasion in communication and information design situations, I think the 
idea of enhancing active selection brings credibility to this one area of 
design. I think that the work of information designers and communication 
designers is fundamentally tied to issues that include inviting "active 
selection" of both visual and verbal concepts through useful compositional 
invention.

The idea of active selection to improve learning also means that 
compositional interests are not just nice -- they are fundamental. Those 
cognitive psychologists weren't interested in best practice, but the work 
of cognitive psychologists justifies our faith in best practice and makes 
that faith understandable to a larger audience.

We designers are not just making an aesthetically pleasing artifact. In the 
visual/verbal realm, the one I focus on, we are responsible for inviting 
the active selection of both visual and verbal concepts through 
compositional choices. Exploring the ways we make those choices is an area 
that both professionals and academics can help discover -- ways that I 
believe go beyond our present practices and expand our usefulness as 
designers.

And so I am curious, within our discussion concerning this new school of 
design, how it has been envisioned, and how it can be made stronger, what 
other outside sources have people found, and how do we effectively discover 
more that can really help us build a discipline that works for us both 
within our ranks as well as outside our own community.

Thanks again.

Susan

Levin, Joel R., Gary J. Anglin, and Russell N. Carney. “On Empirically 
Validating the Function of Pictures in Prose.” In The Psychology of 
Illustration, edited by Dale M. Willows, 51-85. New York: Springer-Verlag, 
1987.

Mayer, Richard E. “Using Illustrations to Promote Constructivist Learning 
from Science Text.” In The Psychology of Science Text Comprehension, edited 
by Jose Otero, Jose A.  Leon and Arthur C. Graesser, 333-55. Mahwah, New 
Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.

Plass, Jan L., et al. “Supporting Visual and Verbal Learning Preferences in 
a Second-Language Multimedia Learning Environment.” Journal of Educational 
Psychology 90, no. 1 (1998): 25-36.