About This Course

This course is the next phase of the Interaction Design and Social Entrepreneurship Project. Students will begin to iteratively prototype and test designs related to a particular humanitarian and social problem space. Students will build physical and digital artifacts as necessary to describe their design solution, and will test that material in the actual context of the particular design problem.


Core Concepts and Ideas

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

  • Criteria and insight definition, applied, in order to begin a comprehensive design effort
  • Rapid Ideation, applied, intended to explore multiple design solutions to a single problem, and to reframe problems from various new and interesting perspectives
  • Evaluation, applied, in order to understand how a given design solution is perceived by an intended audience
  • Development and Refinement, applied, in order to continue advancing the fidelity of a design solution and understand tradeoffs of various design changes
  • Client facilitation, applied, in order to keep a set of stakeholders informed, excited, and involved with a design direction

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 illustrate, through prototypes, sketches, and presentation materials, a cohesive design idea to positively address a particular large-scale social and humanitarian problem
  • Be able to describe and rationalize the particular design decisions that have led to the development of a particular design solution

Course Schedule

Class In Class Out of Class
1

Re-articulation of design opportunities from last quarter, initial design ideas, design criteria

Identify a single forward-facing direction to pursue; be as specific as possible. Craft or refine a design statement that acts to indicate what you are and are not designing.

Begin sketching; consider all service and human touchpoints in your work. Work iteratively. Work collaboratively.

Sat 1.14
2

Rapid ideation

Begin narrowing your design direction.

Design, sketching all of the various touch points in narrative format. Emphasize the user interface in as much detail as possible.

Consider starting with the primary use cases – also known as hero flows – before moving into the remaining touch points.

 Sat 1.21
3

Rapid ideation

Design, sketching all of the various touchpoints. Emphasize the user interface in as much detail as possible.

Sat 1.28
4

IxDA in Dublin

Get closer to the design, refining issues of flow, aesthetics, navigation, word choices, and other elements the user will encounter.

Perform user testing as necessary and as appropriate.

Sat 2.4
5

Detailed design

Get closer to the design, refining issues of flow, aesthetics, navigation, word choices, and other elements the user will encounter.

Contain the design, and begin to build a product or service roadmap to indicate when in the future features you have removed will be added back.

 Sat 2.11
6

Detailed design

Get closer to the design, refining issues of flow, aesthetics, navigation, word choices, and other elements the user will encounter.

Perform user testing as necessary and as appropriate.

Begin to design the extremities, focusing on important but not critical user interactions (branding, manual, installation, etc)

Refine your product roadmap. Include any of the additional details that you didn’t think of during the design phase.

Begin to build your design in HTML, flash, or as a high fidelity paper prototype

 Sat 2.18
7

Detailed design

Complete your design in order to demonstrate it publically in its entirety.

Sat 2.25
8

Final presentation of design solution

Sleep.

 Sat 3.3