History
Past Conferences
The beginnings of the Design Research Conference occurred over five years ago with the planning of the 4th annual Chicago Graduate Student Ethnography Conference held in February 2002. This student-run and focused conference was organized by graduate students in sociology at Loyola, The University of Chicago, Northwestern, DePaul, Northern Illinois, Western Michigan, and UIC, as well students from the IIT Institute of Design. Because the conference was hosted by IIT, the designers from ID had a prominent role in its programming and organization. The multi-disciplinary nature of ethnography was stressed, as well as the connection between professional design and user-research methods, much to the chagrin of more traditional sociologists.
Out of a desire to legitimize the use of ethnography by designers and hence expand and enrich the toolkit available, two Institute of Design PhD candidates decided to organize a similar conference based around user-research methods. This conference eventually became the original “about, with & for.” The name originated from the following phrase: “*about* sharing methods, processes and tools *with* professionals from many fields *for* furthering the practice of understanding people.”
The first AWF, held in October of 2002, remains the foundation for today’s Design Research Conference as it stressed the importance of multiple points of view in deepening and extending the methods, processes, and tools all kinds of professionals use to understand users.
Glimpses of past conferences
2006: The design decision-making process
2005: The integration of work and play in society
2004: Involving, engaging, and educating third parties in research and process
2003: The Role of Synthesis
2006 "Decision making through research"
Workshop team discussing
Wendy March (Intel) presenting research as the crowd looks on.
The workshops at AWF 2006 were full of great discussions.
2005 "Work and Play"
Lego "Serious Play" workshop.
Reception at Navy Pier with a cello concert from student Tina Ro.
2004: Involving, engaging, and educating third party stakeholders in design research and process
more photos coming soon
Do you have photos from AWF's past? send them to share drc@id.iit.edu
2003: The Role of Synthesis
more photos coming soon
Do you have photos from AWF's past? send them to share drc@id.iit.edu
Additional Info
Since 2002, students from the Institute of Design have continued to produce a conference every October.
Listen to interviews with some of the speakers from 2006.
For more background see the excellent article in the New Idiom, ID's student newsletter, by Jordan Fischer, one of last year's conference organizers.
