About This Course

This course teaches methods of creative problem solving and ideation, including sketching, drawing, diagramming, and the underlying approaches of abductive thinking and divergent thinking. Students learn how to quickly visualize ideas, iterating through variations, and allowing an idea to evolve quickly and effectively.


Core Concepts and Ideas

This class emphasizes the following main ideas, themes, and concepts:

  • Drawing and sketching as a public activity, in order to foster and facilitate collaborative discussion
  • Diagramming as a method of understanding and synthesizing complicated data, and as a collaborative decision making tool
  • Whiteboarding and group facilitation, for strategic group work and for fostering collaboration across disciplines
  • Rapid Ideation of interaction design solutions, using wireframes and other mid-level fidelity tools

Outcomes and Competencies

The following outcome statements articulate the competencies, abilities, and skills a student will have as a result of completing this class. Students will...

  • Be able to quickly visualize ideas through various tools, including analog and digital sketching, rapid physical prototyping, whiteboarding and diagramming
  • Be able to model complicated systems and services through the use of diagrams, and use these diagrams to provoke facilitation and design discussion and rationalization
  • Understand how to communicate through sketching, both in a formal capacity as well as in a real-time, facilitation style

Course Schedule

Class In Class Out of Class
1 Tue, 11/1 Lecture: Introduction to Rapid Ideation and Creative Problem Solving

Lecture: Writing Use Cases & Use Case Diagrams

 Assignment 1: Creating Use Cases
2 Thu, 11/3 Lecture: Telling the Story – Writing Scenarios Assignment 2: Creating Scenarios

Refine Use Cases, Begin Scenarios
3 Tue, 11/8 Assignment 1 due

Lecture: Visual Details

Guest Lecture: Jennifer Sukis

 Refine Scenarios
4 Thu, 11/10 Assignment 2 due

Lecture: Telling the full Story – Using Narrative to Create Diagrams and Storyboards

Software Demo: Using Photoshop and Illustrator for diagrams

 Assignment 3: Creating Storyboards
5 Tue, 11/15 Drawing for storyboards

Guest Lecture: Pat Marsh

 

 Refine Storyboards
6 Thu, 11/17 Assignment 3 Due

Lecture: Process Flow Diagrams

 Assignment 4: Creating Process Flows
7 Tue, 11/22 Lecture: Wireframing & Paper Prototyping Refine process flows
8 Thu, 11/24 No Class: Thanksgiving Holiday Refine process flows
9 Tue, 11/29 Assignment 4 Due

Lecture: Building Software

Lecture: Interaction Models

 Assignment 5: Wireframing & Prototyping
10 Thu, 12/1 Lecture: Putting it all together – Research, Synthesis, Scenarios, Diagrams & Wireframes Begin sketching initial high level software designs, scenarios, and flows
11 Tue, 12/6 Heuristics, Conventions, and Affordances. Refine initial high level software designs, scenarios, and flows
12 Thu, 12/8 Lecture: Lecture: Clickable Prototypes Articulate complete flows, scenarios, and designs
13 Tue, 12/13 Lecture: Cross-platform prototyping: Introduction to Arduino (Matt Franks)

Interim Critique & Work in Class

 Refine materials to better communicate detailed UI elements
14 Thu, 12/15 Lecture: Methods for creative facilitation and presentation Begin developing digital representations of wires and interactive simulation
15 Tue, 12/20 Interim Critique & Work in Class Continue refining wires and interactive simulation
16 Thu, 12/22 Assignment 5 Due

Final presentation and critique

 Sleep