Syllabus

Course Description

Power is one of the most pervasive yet difficult-to-define forces that shape our world. It operates at personal, collective, institutional, material, and metaphorical levels. This course will investigate power through a designerly lens, using creative methods to identify, analyze, and reimagine its presence in our lives, design practice, and broader socio-political structures.

We will explore power’s political, material, technological, and metaphorical manifestations through readings, discussions, visual research, and hands-on exercises and engage in creative interventions to articulate and reshape power dynamics. By the end of the course, you will have produced a body of work reflecting critical engagement with power in both conceptual and applied forms.

Course Specifics

This course is structured as a seven-session engagement, where students will investigate different expressions of power through four thematic modules. Each section will meet in person on either Monday (A4) or Wednesday (B4), unless otherwise noted by the instructional team. To ensure meaningful participation, each class session requires mandatory pre-work, which must be completed and submitted to engage in the in-person activities fully.

Process Medium

An essential aspect of design is the documentation of your process and ideas. Throughout this course, you will maintain a Medium blog to record your reflections, visual experiments, and conceptual explorations. This will serve as an evolving repository of your insights and creative processes.

Each week, you will post a Medium entry in response to the in-class activities and readings. See Weekly Agendas for further specifics.
Each week, you will link your Medium posts to a shared Google Sheet to ensure visibility for peer and instructor feedback.
Process documentation will be a key factor in evaluating your performance on course activities and final projects.

This is a living journal that should reflect your evolving understanding of power, making connections between class discussions and your personal design practice.

Ethos & Expectations

This course is built on curiosity, experimentation, and critical engagement. Power is a complex topic, and we approach it with nuance, openness, and care. Expectations for the class include:

Engaged Participation: Show up prepared, having engaged with readings and materials.
Critical Inquiry: Challenge assumptions and consider alternative perspectives.
Respect & Accountability: Foster a supportive space for discussion and collaboration.
Design as Inquiry: Use making to think, question, and propose.
Process-Oriented Learning: Your engagement with the process matters as much as outcomes.

Learning Goals

By the end of this course, you will:

Develop a nuanced understanding of power, both theoretically and through personal reflection.
Recognize and critically analyze power dynamics in design, social systems, and media.
Apply diverse methods—historical analysis, visual research, metaphorical exploration, and intervention design—to explore power.
Develop creative designed artifacts that respond to or challenge power structures.
Collaborate effectively with peers and provide constructive feedback in review settings.

Communication

This course will not use Canvas. Instead, we will rely on a class website, Google Drive, and email as our primary communication tools—similar to a professional design studio. The class website serves as the central hub for the course. Bookmark it! The site’s Calendar provides an overview of the mini and will be updated before each class with a detailed session plan and notes on upcoming work. Google Drive houses key class materials, including references, readings, slides, etc...

Get in the habit of referencing these tools regularly, and aim to check your email daily for important updates.

Office Hours

We care about your well-being and am committed to supporting your growth. Please reach out to us if you have any concerns, questions, or problems related to the class. We offer office hours for support. To schedule a time, please send us an email and propose a few times you could meet. In your message please include a short note about our meeting. If we are meeting to troubleshoot a technical issue, please send us the appropriate information and/or files as soon as possible so we have time to familiarize myself and better help during our conversation. All emails should be responded to within 48 hours.

Attendance & Participation

This course consists of only seven sessions, each building on the previous one. Given the interactive nature of our meetings, consistent attendance is essential. Absences will impact both your learning and your final grade.

To ensure full participation:

Arrive on time. If you are more than five minutes late or leave early, you will be marked as absent.
Absences will affect your grade. One unexcused absence may result in a full letter grade reduction. Two unexcused absences may result in failing the course.
Late work will receive point deductions. Assignment deadlines are listed on the Calendar and in the Weekly Briefs. Unless otherwise specified, all work is due by Friday 11:59 PM EST for A4 and Sunday 11:59PM EST for B4 on the designated due date and must be submitted via the appropriate platform.

If you anticipate health or personal challenges that may impact your attendance, please notify the teaching team and Jamie Kosnosky as soon as possible. In cases where extended time away is needed, we will work with you and university resources to figure out the best course of action. Keep in mind, you are responsible for information you miss through absences or lateness. Life is messy. Communication is key!

Syllabus Supplement

Please review the rest of the SOD Syllabus Supplement for details regarding course requirements, attendance, expectations, inclusion and accessibility, and other important School policies.

A Note On AI

AI is a powerful tool that can aid in searching, refining, and expanding ideas, but it should never be the primary author of your work. The material, social, and environmental implications of its use are significant. While AI can generate content quickly, it is fundamentally biased and limited to what already exists—it cannot “imagine” beyond the known.

In this course, we are open to you using AI critically and transparently. You may use it as a research assistant, a brainstorming aid, or a refinement tool, but you must be the primary author of your work. If you choose to incorporate AI-generated content in any form (e.g. text, imagery), or in your process (e.g. research, synthesis), you must explicitly cite its use in your submission. Failure to disclose this will be considered falsifying work.

Always be intentional about when and why you use AI. Thoughtfully craft and limit prompts. Ensure that you are incorperating it in your process in ways that support—rather than replace—your creative and critical thinking.

Evaluation & Grading

This course prioritizes process, engagement, and critical reflection. Opportunities for feedback and revision will be available in class and through Office Hours.

Your grade is based on the following criteria:

Grading Breakdown

Participation & Engagement (10%)
- Contributions to discussions
- Preparedness (having engaged with assigned materials)
- Thoughtful engagement with peers
Medium Posts (30%)

Clear and reflective writing
Strong visual documentation
Meaningful connections to themes and activities

In-Class Activities (30%)

Active participation (speaking, listening)
Critical engagement with concepts
Contribution to discussion and collaborative work

Final Design Week Submission (30%)
- Design Intervention Card
- Effective synthesis of course learnings into a compelling intervention

Final Submission
& Design Week

For the final submission, you will synthesize your learning into a public-facing design intervention showcased during Design Week. Accompanying this, you will curate a Medium blog compilation, highlighting key insights, process documentation, and reflections from throughout the course. In the final class session, you will present your intervention, receive peer feedback, and discuss its potential impact. Your submission should demonstrate critical engagement, a clear design perspective, and thoughtful process documentation.

Backup Policy

Maintaining a reliable backup and archiving strategy is essential for both your time at CMU and your future design practice. Operate under the assumption that technical failures can happen anytime, often when least expected. Loss of work due to preventable data loss will not be an acceptable excuse for missed deadlines.

To protect your files, consider a three-tier backup strategy:

On-site backup: A portable external hard drive for frequent, local backups.
Off-site backup: A cloud-based service (e.g., Dropbox, Google Drive) to ensure continuous access to your files.
Bootable clone: A separate external hard drive that mirrors your system, allowing you to restore your work if needed quickly.

A simple habit is to update working folders to an external drive each night, use cloud storage for real-time syncing, and schedule a weekly full-system backup. Taking proactive steps to safeguard your work will help prevent unnecessary disruptions to your learning and creative process.