Projects – Page 2 – The JxD Project

Developing the process via workshop

November 23, 2017 / Pete Worthy

The JxD process is almost completed and will be available on this site very soon along with some additional resources. Representing the process and all of it’s ‘layers’ (we think that’s a good way to describe this) has been challenging. This final representation has been the result of a few steps, perhaps the most important being a design workshop around the JxD process. We originally designed a framework – a structure for thinking about Journalism Design, but as a result of the workshop, we realised we needed a process instead. Here’s a quick summary of how that workshop ran and what it produced.

Research for design

September 27, 2017 / Skye

Data from student projects, reflective essays and interviews in 2016.

The contextual phase of our research aimed to understand how the 2016 cohort of Journalism Design students imagined the future of journalism. We were interested in how they used design methods and how and when they considered journalistic values. To do this, we studied the design projects and reflective essays created by students as part of course assessment and we interviewed some about their experience. A few themes emerged from the data: that journalistic values played an important role in the design process; that journalism needed to focus more strongly on audiences and users; and that new ideas would come from thinking big.

Prototyping the process

September 20, 2017 / Skye

So far we have created two versions of the Journalism Design process. The first was developed at the end of 2016 based on data gathered from students. We presented this concept to a design workshop in early 2017 and redesigned the concept based on insights from participants.

The project methodology

May 15, 2017 / Skye

We’re using a design approach to develop the JxD process. Like most design research, the methodology involves phases of contextual research, designing, evaluating, implementation and redesign. It is a practice-led approach to research, which uses design techniques as tools for investigation.

Tools to teach JxD

April 28, 2017 / Skye

The Journalism Design project aims to develop tools to teaching design methods to journalism students in a way that equips them for future careers. Clearly, journalism is at a point of radical change and to remain viable it needs to create new news formats and experiences that are not bound by traditional newsroom practices. This means that journalism education needs strategies to teach students how to come up with novel and creative ways to use technology.

Journalism Design at UQ

January 18, 2017 / Skye

The Journalism Design course evolved from the Journalism + Interaction Design (J+IxD) course ran at the University of Queensland between 2013 and 2015.

That course was a collaboration between the School of Communication and Arts (formerly Journalism and Communication) and the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering. The course teamed final-year journalism students with final-year interaction design students with the aim of developing journalistic tech. During the 13-week course students researched, designed and prototyped a solution to a journalistic issue.