2006 | ESTIMATING A DINOSAUR’S APPEARANCE BASED ON ONE BONE, ACCORDING TO A PALEONTOLOGIST’S PROCESS OF MAPPING BIOMECHANICAL PRINCIPLES ACROSS SPECIES

Serving as adjunct professor at North Carolina State University College of Design, where she received her MFA, Amber How­ard creates courses that “explore methods for design research that relate to human-centered and systems-oriented issues. I’m con­cerned with preparing students for a future within the design discipline, which includes learning how to learn and adapt with limited anxiety and fear.” Her design work includes collaborations with a variety of cultural museums and children’s play spaces in association with RipBang Architects, including The Ray Charles Museum, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Phoenix Suns Gorilla House and PBS Kids Play Space.

Howard is focused on where design is going and where it can take us. Not one to shy away from theoretical abstraction, she describes her research as consisting of “prototypes and scenarios that contextualize anticipatory design within emergent systems. The studies highlight transferable design qualities that foreground memory structures—prediction, expectation and anticipation—for the design process so that interactive systems enhance rather than de-skill our ability to understand and manage complexity.”

In a world where the rules are always shifting, Howard exam­ines design’s role in our ability to respond to accelerated change. “Our means to extend beyond ourselves is proliferating at an expo­nential rate,” she explains. “Motivated by curiosity, we have tools to access the rich interconnections among that which we can and cannot directly experience. Technological inventions have enhanced our ability to do things and therefore conceive of more things to do.”

“Amber has always focused on the intersection of sensation, language and curiosity,” offers Barbara Maloutas, associate chair, Communication Arts Department at Otis College of Art and Design (where Howard did her BFA), “not worrying about potential outcomes and actually enjoying the unexpected interaction with her body of work that to this day appears to be within the same exciting beam of energy. I find her pedagogy intelligent and sensi­tive, and look forward to seeing her work with young designers.”

In the future, Howard says she hopes to collaborate with neu­roscientists and with biological, mechanical and computational researchers who are “interested in prototyping and producing anticipatory systems. I want to invent interactions that use the entire body as a learning system and give individuals agency to cre­ate and learn spontaneously within multiple interconnected systems.” As a design researcher, Howard hopes to contribute to the design knowledge base through the frameworks she is developing. “By playing an active role in design pedagogy, I hope to nurture students’ curiosity and inventiveness while evolving a forward-thinking curriculum.”

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