So it's timely that the Campus Center Galleries at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco hosted two very different shows recently, both of which required one to think about and be present.

Trailblazing cognitive scientist and usability engineer Don Norman, author of The Design of Everyday Things (Basic Books 1988), a book that introduced the idea of “user-centered design” to budding designers worldwide, delivered the keynote address at the sold-out Interaction Design Education Summit, hosted by CCA Sunday, February 8.

(The summit was part of the larger Interaction 15 conference held in various locations in San Francisco Februrary 9-11.)

The book has since become required reading for students and teachers alike everywhere.

“He put ‘design’ as a verb on the map,” said Interaction Design chair Kristian Simsarian, in his introduction of the notoriously stern and witty author.

Not one to mince words, Norman immediately took the opportunity to critique today’s design education system.

“Design must grow up. We need a wider variety of designers,” said Norman, who proposed more teamwork between disciplines and a focus on approach, rather than end solutions.

“Wicked problems require broad education, not just craft.”

The Center for Art & Public Life (The Center) and the MBA in Design Strategy program, both at California College of the Arts, last month co-organized TechRaking 7, an annual hackathon series put on by The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), which focused on the intersection of journalism and design.

TechRaking 7, the first within the series to work exclusively with college students (and CCA as its official partner), had CIR CEO Joaquín Alvarado reaching out to CCA to pose the question: How can we rethink human interaction around the news within our communities?

CIR enlisted colleagues from two of its local media partners -- Bruce Koon of KQED and Martin Reynolds of the Bay Area News Group (BANG) -- to challenge CCA students with some of their toughest community-engagement issues. For example, how might:

CIR create new ways for people to communicate about the role of guns in their neighborhoods?
BANG offer a more participatory model that empowers residents to share overlooked topics?
KQED develop cross-regional tools to communicate better the personal effects of the growing technology industry?

Far be it for anyone at CCA to turn away a challenge, thought leaders at The Center decided to enlist the help of CCA students -- working in small teams representing a wide range of disciplines -- to collectively come up with innovative solutions that could encourage greater public participation in today's changing news gathering and distribution policies and procedures.

In short, TechRaking 7 challenged students to give the concept of the traditional newsstand a much-needed facelift.

In June CCA students from across multiple disciplines participated in CCA+AIR (Audi Innovation Research) Fellowship: Beyond Mobility, an intensive two-week design challenge that brought the Audi Group's leading designers -- and a host of other local designers -- to campus to hear students present about the next phase of creating luxury automobiles.

Architecture faculty members and Future Cities Lab partners Nataly Gattegno and Jason Kelly Johnson and Markus Auerbach from Audi AG’s AIR team spearheaded the event, which called for an interdisciplinary cross-section of program chairs to nominate students, who would then apply for the fellowship.

Auerbach emphasized daily a basic principle to which all Audi designers rely: “Humans have basic needs and rich desires.”

Students worked in teams and were instructed to keep the fundamental design consideration in mind as they envisioned the design of future automobiles for Audi AG, one of the "German Big 3" luxury automakers (along with BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which are the three best-selling luxury automakers in the world).