Prof. Jos van Leeuwen

Keywords: Design project, Design methods, Interaction design, Media design, Design management

Objectives and Method

The objective of this course is to gain competences in initiating, planning, managing, executing, evaluating, and finalising a complete design cycle in a chosen domain. The topic of the design project is selected by the student in agreement with the supervisor, in the areas of relevance to the course.

At the end of the course, students:

• Have insight and experience in how to manage a design process;
• Have the capability of identifying a design need and exploring solutions to provide for this need;
• Have experience with and capabilities to define and execute a user-centred design process;
• Are capable of taking a design task through all its life-cycle stages, from conception to pre-production;
• Are capable of doing field-studies for identifying user-needs and validating design concepts;
• Are capable of delivering creative design ideas and turning these into feasible concepts;
• Have produced a series of prototypes using appropriate media for the various design stages;
• Are self-critical and have learned how to offer and deal with critiques;
• Have a reflective attitude and are capable of self-improvement;
• Are confident to talk about their design ideas and are capable to present both abstract concepts and finalised prototypes to clients and peers.

In this course, students will work on individual assignments, but collaborative problem-solving and critiques are an essential aspect of the course. The course will have a pattern of studio classes, intertwined with classes that focus design methodology. Students are pro-active and in charge of their design process – the lecturer will mostly play the role of the designer’s client.

The project is planned by the student and scheduled following these steps:

1. Problem framing and user-needs studies;
2. Conceptualisation and concept validations;
3. Prototyping and evaluation (various iterations);
4. Presentation and marketing initiatives;
5. Reflection and self-assessment.

Assessment

The discipline will be assessed in five parts, related to the above-mentioned design process stages:

The Final design & presentation can be improved during the ‘época de recurso,’ in which case the improved work should be delivered on 10 July 2010 latest.

In each of these evaluations, the assessment will be based on the quality of the process, the result, and your reflection on the work. Students are expected to critique each other’s work.

Specific criteria for the assessment are:

• Is the student challenged and taking on a significant design task?
• Complexity of the design problem;
• Creativity in conceptualisation;
• Independence in progressing through the design process;
• Quality of delivered design documents and presentations;
• Timeliness of deliveries and consistency in planning the process;
• Capability to convince the client with designed solutions;
• Reflective attitude and self-improving capabilities;
• Capability to recognise and describe one’s learning process.