Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

There is programming capacity, and then there are the ways people actually process information. As anyone still convalescing from a software update might tell you, these are not necessarily the same things. We sat down with Heather Corcoran to discuss the emerging field of “interaction design,” which emphasizes the importance of the user experience.

Incoming medical students took part last week in the Washington University Medical Plunge, or WUMP, a weeklong crash course in public health, diversity and health-care disparities. Pictured are students Ally Schelble (left) and Harleen Grewal helping prepare teaching materials for the upcoming school year at Epworth Children & Family Services. WUMP introduces students to myriad opportunities to volunteer.

Through a special partnership between the city of St. Louis and Washington University, four winning demonstration projects are testing innovative, sustainable solutions — including sunflower plantings, a compact restaurant, a chess park and a modern agricultural model — to solve the problem of vacant land in the city. Click to watch a video of the Sunflower+ Project, led by Don Koster, senior lecturer in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will institute new public hours beginning Aug. 21, 2013.

As co-founder of the UNICEF Innovation Unit, Erica Kochi — one of Time magazine’s 100 “World’s Most Influential People” — leverages design and technology to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems. On Thursday, Aug. 29, Kochi will launch the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts fall Public Lecture Series with a free talk in Steinberg Hall.

Bee populations are declining worldwide. But recently, students in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts worked with PAUSE, a multinational group of scientists, gardeners and beekeepers, to design pollinator-friendly sculpture in St. Louis’ Florissant Community Garden.

The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University invite the St. Louis public to meet three finalists in PXSTL — a collaborative design-build competition that will transform a vacant lot in the heart of Grand Center — on Tuesday, July 30. Shown is “Lighthearted,” an installation by Freecell Architecture, one of the finalists.

A young man in suit and tie gazes warily at the camera, taking its measure, betraying nothing, sly wit reserved for the title. In Self Portrait with My Hair Parted Like Frederick Douglass (2003), Rashid Johnson pays homage to the renowned 19th-century abolitionist while also crafting for his own myth of artistic self-creation. This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks, the first major solo museum exhibition to survey the career of this Chicago-born, New York-based artist.

Pagedale, Mo, is a small community but emblematic of the challenges facing many inner-ring suburbs. Yet in recent years, city officials and local nonprofits have sparked waves of improvements as well as new development. Last month, the city installed a monumental welcome sign conceived and designed by architecture students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

The International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES) has announced the award winners for its 2013 Call for Proposals. This year, special emphasis was placed on projects related to climate change.