Good Designers Do "X" | The Collection and Teaching Activities

Introduction

How it was collected

Contributors

As of Summer 2024, the statements from the Good Designers do “X” collection are sourced from the following 35 individuals. The institution listed reflects where they were at the time of their response:

• Robin Adams, Purdue University
• Cindy Atman, University of Washington
• Reid Bailey, University of Virginia
  
• Adam Carberry, Arizona State University
  
• Nigel Cross, Emeritus, The Open University UK
• Dharma Dailey, University of Washington
• Shanna Daly, University of Michigan
• Andy Dong, Oregon State University
• Liz Gerber, Northwestern University
• John Gero, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• Gabi Goldschmidt, Emerita, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
• Colin M. Gray, Indiana University Bloomington
• Mark Guzdial, University of Michigan
• David Hendry, University of Washington
• Susannah Howe, Smith College
• Daria Kotys-Schwartz, University of Colorado Boulder
• Gordon Krauss, Harvey Mudd College
• Micah Lande, South Dakota School of Mines & Technology
• Peter Lloyd, T U Delft
• Ade Mabogunje, Stanford University
• Janet McDonnell, Emerita, Central Saint Martins
• Laura Murphy, University of Michigan
• Harold Nelson, Advanced Design Institute
• Eli Patten, University of Washington
• Şenay Purzer, Purdue University
• Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland
• Sheri Sheppard, Stanford University
• Kathleen Sienko, University of Michigan
• David Socha, University of Washington
• Erik Stolterman Bergqvist, Indiana University
• Vanessa Svihla, University of New Mexico
• Lauren Thomas Quigley, IBM Research
• Jennifer Turns, University of Washington
• Barbara Tversky, Emerita, Stanford University
• Linda Vanasupa, Olin College of Engineering, Emeritus, California Polytechnic University
• Micki Chi, Arizona State University
• Alan Schoenfeld, University of California, Berkeley

Note: We also included responses from a physics education researcher (Michelene Chi, Arizona State University) and a mathematics education researcher (Alan Schoenfeld, University of California, Berkeley)  

A technical report describing the collection

Published on July 8th, 2025, "Good Designers do 'X': Embracing the breadth of design practices" provides several ways to understand the collection as a whole, a brief outline of three classroom activities that used the collection, and an example of a longer engagement where students drew inspiration from the collection to create postcard visualizations.

Atman, C. J., Zhang, E., Barar, S., Flores, Y., & Turns, J. (2025). Good Designers do “X”: Embracing the breadth of design practices (Publication No. HCDETRS_2025_01). UW Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. https://hdl.handle.net/1773/53109

View the collection

Because we see these statements as the intellectual property of the people who authored them, if you use this resource, we ask that you keep the author name with each statement so that the work is attributed to the appropriate person.

The collection comes in five formats: a database for the statements (a Google Sheet), a technical report describing the collection, printable versions of the statements (a playing card deck and a "business card" deck), and lastly a virtual version via Miro.

Using the collection in activities

In your classroom and collaborative spaces, the Good Designers do “X” collection can be a tool for opening up conversations around design goals and personal design aspirations. Each of the three activities here work as standalone activities. We also encourage you to adapt any of these to fit your needs or even create new ways of using the collection.

For each activity, the setup time for the physical version is longer than that of the virtual version because the physical version requires that you print and cut out physical cards. The benefit is that once you set up the physical version once, you can use it again for all other activities.