About the assignment

Areas of emphasis: social design, design research, participatory design, exhibit design

Summary: “Asian Pacific American” is a broad term that minimizes the numerous diverse groups collected under this one designation. Although the title can create a sense of community and bring populations together, it does not capture the population’s heterogeneous demographics. In addition, as with other cultural identities, the population’s members are often regarded in cliché stereotypes. Design students were assigned to address the Asian Pacific American (APA) disaggregation issue though an appropriate design response.
The students conducted primary and secondary research to inform their project. They also met with APA members to inform their research and to shape the design response. Together they created “InDEFYnable: Stand Together, Struggle Together,” an event to promote APA students’ coexisting cultural and individual identities. It took place in April 2014, which is APA Heritage Month, and the project’s identity was used for other APA Heritage Month events. The project is a featured case study in Developing Citizen Designers, edited by Elizabeth Resnick.

Timing in program: First semester, senior year

Audience: Campus students, faculty and staff

Project partners: Jude Paul Dizon, coordinator for Asian Pacific American Student Involvement & Advocacy office of the Multicultural Involvement and Cultural Advocacy unit, and student members of Asian Pacific American cultural groups at UMD.

Timeline: 12 weeks

Learning objectives:
– To understand and articulate the value of social design
– To gain cross-cultural competencies though design research and making

Learning outcomes:
– To conduct, comprehend, organize, and apply design research to address a social issue
– To learn to problem-solve when the problem and/or the “design solution” are not explicitly defined
– To create a design response to address the needs of stakeholders

InDEFYnable: Stand Together, Struggle Together event was created by the 2014 UMD Design cohort in collaboration with Asian Pacific American (APA) student group members and campus leaders. The primary element was a 6-foot by 4-foot rotating pillar featuring the images of 6 UMD APA students. The pillar symbolized the ways the students are collectively part of the APA identity but also distinct from it as well.

The event included posters featuring information about the APA students on the pillar as well as research results.

Students could get a free t-shirt for Tweeting images of themselves with the pillar.

Other event activities included filling out coaster that described the author’s salient identity aspects and responding.

More about the project is in the following videos, created by design students John Lee, Katherine Pepe and Annie Snedegar.