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Syllabus Design Driven Innovation: Methodologies & skills for meaningful insights - 11161
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Last update 22-02-2024
HU Credits: 2

Degree/Cycle: 1st degree (Bachelor)

Responsible Department: Cornerstone program

Semester: 1st and/or 2nd Semester

Teaching Languages: English

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Sharon Levite-Vakin

Coordinator Email: design201@innovate.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours:

Teaching Staff:
Ms. SHARON LEVITE

Course/Module description:
An online, asynchronous course designed for an interdisciplinary academic environment.
Previous knowledge and/or experience in design is not required in this course.
Bachelor students from the Hebrew University, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and Azrieli College of Engineering will co-learn core design methodologies that can be implemented in product and venture creation processes.
The learning process in the course is built in a structure that brings together theory and real world practice.
Participants will enjoy an interactive, “hands-on” practice of design research tools, step into the designer’s shoes and use their unique attitude to problem solving, human-needs-centered-design and product oriented design.
The aim: Explore new ideas and discover meaningful needs and opportunities.

Course/Module aims:
● Broaden the student’s perception on what “a product” is (artifact, process, service, interaction, experience, workflow) and exercise the ability to identify a product’s territory.
● Introduce the students to hands-on design research methodologies, product specs and visual thinking – useful skills for innovation processes.
● Introduce the students to design thinking theories from a critical point of view, and encourage them to adapt and reform the diagrams to their personal perspective and practice.
● Familiarize the students with the industrial design process, expose students to the designer’s mindset and highlight the relevance and importance of this mindset to problem solving and everyday innovative thinking.
● Shrink the gap between the student and his/her future customers/users (physically and mentally)

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
● Articulate meaningful insights about the user and his/her known needs, unmet needs and hidden needs, by using hands-on design research methodologies.
● Identify the emotional value of a product and the potential contribution of this identification to the innovative process.
● Engage with their surroundings and the end users in the innovation process.
● Collect and analyze data using visual thinking tools.
● Articulate the impact everyday innovation can have on the world - socially, environmentally, economically.
● Gain new user and product based perspectives from which students can innovate within their practice

Attendance requirements(%):
100

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: The course is digital and asynchronous, with content being updated on a weekly basis. Therefore, there will be no roll call and there is no attendance requirement.

Course/Module Content:
Unit 1 Introduction:
The need of a human-centered design approach to any product, service or experience in the world

● Building a design mindset: Introduction to the course
● Why do we need to think like designers?
● How does good and bad design affect us all?
● The complexity of the devices and services in our everyday lives
● Design & human behaviour: Affordances and signifiers in product design
● How to design for human intuition
● A first attempt to solve a failed design

Reading materials: Norman, D. (2013). The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books. pg. 4-9
Unit 2
Product Based Perspective:
Broaden the personal and professional perspective on what a product is, and learn about the necessity of emotional value when designing a good product

● Introduction: Design and emotions - the hidden side of product value
● Case study: Stairs - their functions and how they make us feel
● Case study: Emotional design and the chronicles of the progression bar
● Let’s define a product: Product Design, Experience Design, Interaction Design
● The Emotional sides of traveling experiences: Air BNB, souvenirs and authenticity
● How it's made: product specs anatomy
● Journey mapping and user stories
● Is it a function or a feature? Defining the difference

Reading materials: Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., Ariely, D., The “IKEA Effect”: When Labor Leads to Love, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Volume 22, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 453-460
Unit 3 Human Centered Design Research:
Learning to empathize and ask questions

● Introduction to human-centered design: Designing for people
● Design thinking by Tim Brown (IDEO)
● First steps to empathy: How to actively engage with the user, gain meaningful insights and understand his/her needs?
● Case study: Innovation in healthcare & nurses hackathons
● Qualitative research & human needs: Asking the right questions
● Field exercise: Revisiting bicycle lanes (part 1: interviews)

Reading materials: Lupton, E., Carpentier, T., Lambert, T. (2014). Beautiful Users: Designing for People. Princeton Architectural Press. pg. 18-24
Unit 4 User Centered Design Research:
Learning to document and analyze the scene - visually

● The job of the industrial designer & the need for an interconnective mindset
● Introduction to visual thinking: Left brain-Right Brain and the benefits of visual maps as tools for creative thinking
● Why do detectives use investigation boards?
● Visual research and meaningful insights: Visual thinking and observational studies in the design process - from moodboards to brainstorms
● Introduction to cultural probes as means of visual field research
● Field exercise: Revisiting bicycle lanes (part 2: Visual documentation)

Reading materials: Mattelmäki, T. Design Probes. Publication Series of the University of Art and Design Helsinki pg. 39-45
Unit 5-6 User Centered Design Research:
Learning to immerse with the user and the scene, and come back with meaningful insights

● Immersivity in the design research process
● The difference between passive and active first hand user research
● What are hidden needs and where we might find them?
● How to Identify market pains by BEING the user?
● Field exercise: Revisiting bicycle lanes (part 3: Being cyclists)
● Building the foundation for your own project
Unit 7
Designing Beautiful Solutions:
The difference between decoration and designing beautiful solutions

● Introduction to beauty and why it is important in design
● Beauty in nature: Symmetry, beauty & the survival of the fittest
● Shape and color as means of communication and information in nature
● Simplicity in design: How beauty and simplicity connected?

Unit 8 Everyday Futures:
Implementing the product-based and the user-centered perspectives on everyday life and needs within a future context

● Everyday Futures by Nick Foster (Google X)
● Our user-centered and product based perspectives on everyday futures
● Identify the ‘background talents’ in the scene - from a product based perspective
● Design fiction with everyday objects: Building a tangible ‘set’ to a possible future
● Case study 1 - How small things can change the world: the hyperlink
● Case study 2 - How small things express big changes - the disposable coffee cup lid
● Case study 3 - COVID19: How a virus changed the world and the way we design products?
● Summary: Everyday innovation - Third world fundamental challenges solved by design of everyday things (Cola Life and Q-drum)
● Assignment: Your offering for everyday innovation

Reading materials: Foster, N. (2013). The Future Mundane. Core 77.

Unit 9-11
Implementation
Implementation

● Implementing the design research methodologies learned into one personal project within your own practice, using:
○ Qualitative research
○ Visual research
○ Immersive research
○ Journey mapping and user stories
● Final assignment submission: articulating an innovative original idea based on the research findings:
○ A research summary
○ One pager of top insights: Analysing problems, unmet and hidden human needs
○ Final offering
○ Evaluation- Peer assessment
Unit 12 Final assignment submission:
A critical understanding of Design Thinking models

● Design thinking theories and thinking like designers
● My takeaways
● Final offering submission
Unit 13 Summary and evaluation

● What have we learned? How can we practice the design perspectives? How can we observe the world, what should we look for when developing a new ‘product’ and why shouldn't we look the other way?
● Final offering peer assessment

Required Reading:
1. Unit 1: Norman, D. (2013). The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books. pg. 4-9
2. Unit 2: Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., Ariely, D., The “IKEA Effect”: When Labor Leads to Love, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Volume 22, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 453-460
3. Unit 3: Lupton, E., Carpentier, T., Lambert, T. (2014). Beautiful Users: Designing for People. Princeton Architectural Press. pg. 18-24
4. Unit 4: Mattelmäki, T. Design Probes. Publication Series of the University of Art and Design Helsinki pg. 39-45
5. Unit 8: Foster, N. (2013). The Future Mundane. Core 77.

Additional Reading Material:
1. Design Series by Design Council
2. Cross, N. (1982). Designerly Ways of Knowing, Design Studies 3(4), pp. 121-227
3. Cross, N., (2011). Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work. Berg Publishers.
4. Brown, T. (2019). Change by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. Harper Business.
5. McKim, R. H.(1980). Experiences in Visual Thinking. Cengage Learning.

Grading Scheme :
Essay / Project / Final Assignment / Home Exam / Referat 40 %
Active Participation / Team Assignment 30 %
Submission assignments during the semester: Exercises / Essays / Audits / Reports / Forum / Simulation / others 30 %

Additional information:
The course includes work on a weekly basis including 5 exercises within the semester. It is not possible to work on this course in "one shot".
 
Students needing academic accommodations based on a disability should contact the Center for Diagnosis and Support of Students with Learning Disabilities, or the Office for Students with Disabilities, as early as possible, to discuss and coordinate accommodations, based on relevant documentation.
For further information, please visit the site of the Dean of Students Office.
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