Teaching Design in the Age of Platforms
A Framework for Platform Education 2020
Situateing a platform education within and beyond communication design to help develop understandings of the mechanisms of platforms, values influenced by platformization, and design implications.
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Li, Xinyi. “Teaching Design in the Age of Platforms: A Framework for Platform Education.” Paper presented at Cumulus Conference Design Culture(s), Sapienza University, Rome, June 9–11, 2021
Post-Radical Pedagogy
2020–

Post-Radical Pedagogy was convened as a space to explore, antagonize, challenge, and interrogate institutional values and legacies. “Post” prompts a reflection on what happened, where we are because of, or in spite of an inherited (institutional) pedagogical situation that limits radical potentials, and where we go from here. “Post” is implicitly an acknowledgment of struggle in search of language for articulating what a radical pedagogy in design might entail, where its boundaries are, and where it stakes a position in relation to the many limiting forms of institutional inertia.
︎︎︎Website
Co-PI with Nida Abdullah and Chris Lee, 2020–
Funded by the Strategic Initiative Grant, Provost’s Office and the Strategic Plan Oversight Committee, Pratt Institute, 2020–2021
Tactic as Art
Everyday Digital Resistance and Covid-19 in China 2021



This project uses cases from the early days of the pandemic to frame the concept of everyday digital resistance, unpacking the factors that contributed to its domination. While capitalism prioritizes digital platforms’ marketing values, online platforms are also venues for activism across borders. Everyday digital resistance is characterized as tactics of micro-interventions integrated into life, standing opposite from radical confrontations on the continuum of activism. Often spontaneous and unorganized, the actions collectively create impact and the potential to undermine power, while individuals can remain relatively disguised and unnoticed, which is especially valuable for actors in high-risk contexts.
Li, Xinyi. “Framing Everyday Digital Resistance” Message Journal: Covid-19 Special Edition, edited by Colm, Dunne, Åse Huus, Dóra Ísleifsdóttir, Lynda Cooper, Mark James, Peter Jones, and Victoria Squire (2021). University of Plymouth Press, https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/18929, February 2022.
Li, Xinyi. “Tactic as art: everyday digital resistance and COVID-19 in China.” in Jilly Traganou (Chair), Panel “Affective and Generative Dimensions in Covid 19 Activism.” presented at the College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, Online, February 10–13, 2021.
Li, Xinyi. “Framing Everyday Digital Resistance” Message Journal: Covid-19 Special Edition, edited by Colm, Dunne, Åse Huus, Dóra Ísleifsdóttir, Lynda Cooper, Mark James, Peter Jones, and Victoria Squire (2021). University of Plymouth Press, https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/18929, February 2022.
Li, Xinyi. “Tactic as art: everyday digital resistance and COVID-19 in China.” in Jilly Traganou (Chair), Panel “Affective and Generative Dimensions in Covid 19 Activism.” presented at the College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, Online, February 10–13, 2021.
Emergency Remote Teaching
Diagrammatic Field Notes 2020






Through a practice of diagramming and drawing on techniques of annotation, concept mapping, causal loop mapping, this project attempts to document, contextualize, and unravel the dynamics and spaces
of emergency remote teaching and implicit values embedded in the platforms used.
of emergency remote teaching and implicit values embedded in the platforms used.
Published by The Teachers Project, Criticisms on Design Pedagogy Issue 01 Summer 2020
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Data Beyond Vision
2019–2020


Published by Startwords, Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton, issue 1 October 2020
︎︎︎Read it
Koeser, Rebecca Sutton, Nick Budak, Xinyi Li, and Gissoo Doroudian. “Data Beyond Vision.” Startwords 1, no.1 (2020): https://startwords.cdh.princeton.edu/issues/1/data-beyond-vision
Koeser, Rebecca Sutton, Nick Budak, Xinyi Li, and Gissoo Doroudian. “Data Beyond Vision.” Installation presented at the Association for Computers and the Humanities Conference (ACH2019), Pittsburgh, July 23–26, 2019.
Koeser, Rebecca Sutton, Nick Budak, Xinyi Li, and Gissoo Doroudian. “Data Beyond Vision.” Poster presented at the Digital Humanities Conference 2019 (DH2019), Utrecht, July 9–12, 2019. https://doi.org/10.34894/LXZFF5