By Becky Yust, head

Computers certainly have reshaped the landscape for teaching, research, and applying what we learn to the real world, from the way designers conceptualize rooms to how they create clothes or communicate visually. Despite these massive changes since the dawn of the digital age, one thing has remained constant: the need for people with creative minds and critical thinking skills, who can generate ideas and bring them to life.

For the five disciplines in the Department of Design, Housing, and Apparel--graphic design, clothing design, retail merchandising, interior design, and housing studies--computers definitely have made some aspects of our work easier and more efficient. The interior designer who is working on schemes for a space can try out different approaches more quickly by using computer programs. Someone studying apparel sizing can use computer technology to more rapidly and effectively gather data on human shapes in our Human Dimensioning Lab.

Computers also offer new opportunities for data analysis and research presentations. Take a project initiated by Associate Professor Jeff Crump in housing studies. In an analysis of subprime lending patterns, he mapped the spatial distribution of subprime loans and then overlaid foreclosure information using the layering capabilities of a Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This research illustrated the prevalence of foreclosures in communities of color in a highly visual format, research that would have been much more arduous and slow without technology. Sauman Chu, an associate professor in graphic design, is investigating individuals' attention to design and navigation elements of news stories on the Web by using eye-tracking technology. Her results will provide guidelines for Web site designers to determine which news story features best engage, inform, and involve their intended users.

In the field of retail merchandising, what used to be a painstaking process of gathering sales and market data by hand to make future projections about trends, now can happen more quickly with database programs. These software tools help students think on a macro level and easily show them the impact of buyers' decisions when extrapolated to millions of dollars of merchandise.

While computers have dramatically changed the way we teach many of our courses, some things have stayed the same. In graphic design, which has been broadly altered by the digital world, students still learn drawing fundamentals by hand and mix acrylic paint to study the properties and apply the theories of color perception. These students, who have used computers from a very young age, enjoy the tactile nature of manual design processes. To them the computer is just one additional medium for imparting a message or illustrating an idea.

Overall, technology has made the biggest impact in design, housing, and apparel by giving students and professors a faster way to accumulate information and put ideas on paper. Technology is a tool--and a very handy one--for engaging in the creative process, fleshing out ideas, teaching, and conducting and communicating research. But we still need the people behind the computers to think creatively, to understand and interpret the needs of individuals, to identify the problems, and to critique their own work and the work of others. The end result is knowledge that seeks to improve the human experience.