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Research

Cindy Atman


Spring 2026

Dear Design: Translating Design Signatures for a broader audience

Instructors: Cindy Atman (HCDE Professor), Rene Capella (HCDE Ph.D. student)

This DRG is centered on the concept of design signatures — traces of design processes that can be captured, visualized, and used as a basis for reflection and growth. The goal of engaging with design signatures is for a designer to become aware of their own design process, to be able to make informed choices about their design activities, and to become a more confident, reflective designer with genuine agency over how they work.

Over the past several years, Atman and colleagues have developed two courses built around this concept — Dear Design: Creating Your Aspirational Design Signature and Design Process Resilience — as well as an app that designers can use to track and externally represent their own design process. That body of work is now ready to reach a wider audience, and this DRG is the first step toward a book that will bring the design signatures concept to general readers: designers, educators, students, and people who have never thought of themselves as designers at all. Being part of that translation process is the intellectual core of what this seminar offers.

In the first part of the quarter, participants will engage directly with the material — working through activities from the Dear Design and Design Process Resilience courses, grounding themselves in the design signatures concept, and reflecting on their own design processes through several different lenses. In the second part, we will work together to explore how to communicate these ideas to a broader audience, drawing on theoretical lenses such as cognitive framing and social constructivism to develop potential framings for the book. Students' ideas and contributions will contribute to a technical report that will be published in the HCDE Technical Report series at the end of the quarter and will directly shape how this book project moves forward.

Participants will be expected to:

  • Attend a 2-hour in-person session on Wednesday afternoons (within a 1:00–5:00 window, scheduled to fit participants' availability)
  • Create representations and written descriptions that will be included in a technical report published through HCDE at the end of the quarter

Some more details:

  • 2 credits
  • We are seeking four to five students total
  • Preference will be given to the first set of participants who are genuinely interested in this project, represent a diversity of voices and approaches to design, and are able to meet in person for two hours on Wednesday afternoon.

Applications to this DRG are now closed.

Questions? Please reach out to Cindy Atman at atman@uw.edu

Dr. Atman's Research Group archive