In Conversation with Isabel Bo-Linn

Design Educator Profiles
We are excited to share profile conversations highlighting members of the DEC Community, focusing on featuring the many roles we hold as educators in various institutional settings and job titles. In this month’s edition, we spotlight design educator Omar Sosa-Tzec.

What is your favorite course to teach and why?

That is a tough choice. At the moment, I would say that I have two favorite courses to teach: DES 200 Visual Design Literacy and DES 677 Delightful Design. Both courses serve the two majors in our school—Visual Communication Design and Industrial Design. What I enjoy most about DES 200 is discussing the principles of visual design with my students. I am always excited by the process of analyzing and articulating what makes a design effective. DES 677, on the other hand, connects directly to my scholarship and research. This course allows me to create a space to analyze, discuss, and reflect on the relationship between delightful design and living a good life. It is especially rewarding to see students create designs that aim to captivate and surprise users while also supporting their happiness and well-being.

What have you read recently that really resonated with you?

Although I have not read it recently, an idea that often comes back to me is Pretense Design, from the book of the same title by Per Mollerup. My perspective on delightful design is shaped in part by scholarship on visual rhetoric, argumentation, and multimodality. I often reflect on the connection between designs that one might regard as delightful and Mollerup’s argument that certain designs “bend” or “conceal” the truth by communicating qualities that are, in fact, pretense—for example, making a plastic table appear as if it were made of marble. By examining this connection, we can begin to see how, in many designs, unexpectedness—an essential ingredient of delight—emerges from pretense.

What is something you teach now that you weren’t taught yourself? How does this add value to your teaching or practice?

Learning about semiotics and rhetoric has greatly impacted my thinking and practice. With multimodality also added to my theoretical framework and analytical lens, the concepts from these disciplines help me better understand the value of design and how it operates in particular contexts of use. This is an idea I try to convey to my students when I teach concepts from these fields or discuss the significance of humanistic training as part of a design education.

How do you find balance in your research, practice, and non-academic life?

I do not have the answer, and I do not think I ever will. However, as I get older, it becomes clearer to me how important it is to prioritize and protect time and energy for what truly matters in one’s life, whether work-related or not. Someone told me last year, “Do things that fill you with energy”—a very eudaimonic thought, quite different from “do things that make you happy.” Putting this idea into practice, however, is not as simple as it sounds. There is a great deal of noise: the fear of not being or doing enough, and of not living life to the fullest. Saying no helps, but it is difficult—both practically and emotionally—to let go of some things in order to prioritize and protect others. Routine and old habits can easily pull one back, making it hard to see through the noise. Yet, when I manage to see clearly, even for a moment, I realize that despite not having an answer, the only thing I can do is try—to seek out and commit to what truly matters in the end.

If money, time, and resources were a non-issue, what is your dream course (or workshop) to teach and why?

It would be a year-long version of my Delightful Design course—on steroids. Having access to the necessary facilities, equipment, materials, teaching assistants, and technical support would allow my students to go wild and develop whimsical, surprising, and sensorially rich designs. I am always energized by seeing and experiencing art and commercial work whose qualities demand sensory engagement and embrace novelty, and I want my students to have the conditions and opportunity to create such work. It would be exciting to see them move beyond what they typically encounter on their screens or can produce with the equipment currently available in our school. I deeply recognize the hard work of my students; however, I believe that knowing the sky is the limit would further promote their curiosity and imagination. Thinking big would no longer be an issue!

What is something you’ve recently learned? This can be a skill or knowledge, academic or non-academic.

Sharing a good meal with your partner, friends, or family is one of those actions that can give you energy. One never knows how many more times this will be possible.

Where can we usually find you in your off-time?

Home

Do you have any advice for other educators?

Be a good colleague and help develop a supportive work environment.

Omar Sosa-Tzec is an Associate Professor of Visual Communication Design in San Francisco State University’s School of Design. As a design scholar, Prof. Sosa-Tzec studies the qualities of delightful design and user experiences, drawing on humanities-based theories including semiotics, rhetoric, and aesthetics. His design practice focuses on visual identity, type design, interface design, and graphic communication. He holds a PhD in Human–Computer Interaction, as well as graduate degrees in Information Design and Computer Science.

This conversation was led by AIGA DEC Steering Committee member Isabel Bo-Linn, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Portland State University.