UOCD课程

Students develop detailed concepts and models of authentic new products and services. Our focus is on user-oriented, collaborative approaches to design and seeking holistic solutions integrating user and functional perspectives. We emphasize the importance of process and the development of strategies. Students observe and engage people to develop a deep understanding of their values and the patterns of their lives. They work collaboratively in a studio environment to create a shared understanding of the people they design for (and with) and the product ideas they develop. Topics covered include design thinking, ethnographic methods, concept development and interaction design.Olin College of Engineering

课程内容

Course Description

This course focuses on user-collaborative design methods for generating inclusive product solutions that integrate stakeholder and product functionality perspectives. Students create specified product concept models through the use of recursive user feedback, engagement methods, experimental prototyping, and divergent and convergent ideation strategies. Featured topics include design thinking; stakeholder research; concept development, screening, and selection; and interaction design.

Learning Objectives

Learn to develop user empathy and recognize the importance of discovering deep insights into the life circumstances and perspectives of target stakeholders in the collaborative design process.
Develop the ability to accurately represent user needs, values, and perspectives and create generative insights as the basis for future design processes and decisions.
Develop divergent and convergent thinking skills as applied to concept and design embodiment generation, and concept and design embodiment screening strategies, respectively.
Learn to weigh different design solutions according to their potential consequences for contextual target stakeholder needs and socio-environmental circumstances.
Course Outline
This course is broken down into three phases. Each phase description link includes the its purpose, activities, readings, and class slides for that phase.

Phase 1: Explore

Develop empathy skills and learn to discover user insights by engaging a diverse range of stakeholders and stakeholder experiences. You will learn to create accurate representations of user experiences and values through recursive insight discovery and user immersion, and communicative presentations regarding the refinement of user insights.

Phase 2: Ideate

Learn divergent and convergent product conceptualization, ideation, and experimental prototyping (A.K.A. Quick & Dirty solution) strategies. The user feedback engagement strategies of Phase One are revisited throughout to refine and establish product functionality, design direction, and the user insights on which they are based.

Phase 3: Develop

Learn interaction design between product functionality and contextual stakeholder goals. You will create potential design embodiments for their selected concept, prototype, and produce the final design specifications for external presentation.