Myers, Hadassah

Profile

Current Institution: 

Hadassah Myers is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Multimedia at the University of Johannesburg. Her fields of expertise include Design Thinking, Service Design, Systemic Design, Speculative Design, Digital Health, 4IR, Gamification and Storytelling.

Her current research explores the benefits of combining Human-centred Design, Futures and Systems Thinking, when addressing complex social and environmental problems. She is also interested in the design of 4IR technology-based health interventions using Responsible and Democratic Design principles.

Hadassah Myers

A systemic framing of the challenges faced in design education during the COVID-19 lockdown

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Software, UX & Game Design

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the deep cracks of inequality within the South African educational system (Gustafsson & Deliwe, 2020). The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) has presented a range of new technology applications (Lacy, Long, & Spindler, 2020). These technologies can be leveraged to provide more equal access to the technology needed for remote learning (Du Preez & Sinha, 2020). This paper uses a systemic design approach to reflect on the challenges faced in design education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Student feedback on the online learning experience during the COVID-19 lockdown was reflected on. Observations were organised in themes and then explored using the first step of Namahn and shiftN’s Systemic Design Toolkit (Van Ael & Vandenbroeck, 2016).

A Humanistic Approach to Designing and Assessing Interactive-narrative Based Social Interventions

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Discipline: 

Software, UX & Game Design

Decolonising digital media design education requires an investigation of possible techniques that can be taught to designers as a way of approaching interactive design with an emancipatory agenda. Traditionally, interactive-media studies have been taught from a positivist or psychological stance focusing predominantly on theories of human activity and cognition. In this paper I argue that the humanities offer an additional social and ethnographic lens with which to focus on the socio-historic, political and economic context of interactive media artefacts.

DEFSA conferences

DEFSA promotes relevant research with the focus on design + education through its biennial conferences, to promote professionalism, accountability and ethics in the education of young designers. Our next conference is a hybrid event. See above for details.

Critical skills endorsement

Professional Members in good standing can receive a certificate of membership, but DEFSA cannot provide confirmation or endorsement of skills whatsoever. DEFSA only confirm membership of DEFSA which is a NPO for Design Education in South Africa (https://www.defsa.org.za/imagine).