Hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) methods are an emerging class of DG methods developed to address the criticism that DG methods have too many unknowns. HDG methods yield linear systems of the same size and sparsity as mixed methods. However, unlike mixed methods, there is considerably more freedom in the choice of approximation spaces in HDG methods. This is because while the mixed method relies on careful combination of spaces to satisfy the inf-sup condition (leading to stability), the stability of HDG methods is achieved via a different mechanism. Unlike many standard DG methods, HDG methods yield optimal error estimates for all variables and admits more efficient solution strategies. While our understanding of the HDG methods for the Laplace equation is fairly complete, its application more complex boundary value problems remains an active area of research. We will examine some issues in the design and analysis of HDG methods for the velocity-vorticity formulation of Stokes flow. P>