Prof. Evangelos Karapanos

Keywords: experience design, design and emotions, research through design

This course introduces students to the process and methods of experience design, the design of interactive products with a focus on the experiential and social consequences of their adoption.  The course consists of two main components: a) reading assignments where students read and reflect upon theories and methods of experience design, and b) group work where students get to apply research methods in an actual design project. Each year we select a particular theme. For spring 2010/11 the theme is “Mobile Interactions”. Methods render across three main phases of the design process: a) Understanding users, b) Ideating concepts, c) Evaluating prototypes.

At the end of the course, students:
Will have a deep understanding of the psychological and social dimensions of design
Will be able to select appropriate methods for becoming informed on the context they are trying to design for, to draw design implications from empirical data, to come up with creative solutions to design problems, and to select appropriate methods for assessing design claims.
Will be able to present and support their design choices in oral presentations and written reports
Will be able to work effectively in teams

Assessment
The course will be assessed in three parts, each of which will take the form of an assignment with a written report and a final presentation as deliverables:
Understanding users (35%)
Ideating concepts (30%)
Evaluating prototypes (35%)

Literature
Bill Buxton. 2007. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, USA.
Bill Moggridge (2006). Designing interactions. MIT Press.                                                                                              
Marc Hassenzahl (2010). Experience Design. Technology for all the right reasons. Morgan Claypool.