Instructor: Yaliang Chuang, Website, email: [email protected]
Nokia's "Human Technology" advisements were a masterpiece of copywriting in history. Even if you never saw a Nokia cell phone, you probably heard the slogan from somewhere. It concisely concluded a crucial factor of many successful products, from Nokia to iPhone and even the ChatGPT. If we look closer at the design stories of those popular artifacts, we will know that they all share an important mindset of human-centered design (HCD). From the early stages of product development, the design team conducts user experience studies to inform the direction of technological development based on the discovered human needs. As a result, the product and technology can conform to people's mental models, allowing users to operate the interface naturally and gain positive experiences without taking additional learning and training in advance.
This course will teach students the fundamental knowledge and methods of designing interactive products or systems and crafting intended user experiences. On the one hand, we will use David Rose’s <<Enchanted objects: Innovation, design, and the future of technology>> to learn how everyday objects can intuit our needs, improve our lives, and form “an ethereal interconnection of gadgets and human desires that...will pervade our lives in the very near future.” On the other hand, the instructor will organize learning activities to guide students in applying interaction design methods to make “Enchanted Objects.” To support students’ practice, we will use the corresponding chapters from Sharp et al.'s (2023) <<Interaction Design>> textbook. The teacher will provide emerging case studies on demand to deepen students' understanding of specific topics. Students are required to be active learners: they must study the assigned chapters before the class and actively join the discussion in class. They also need to complete the assigned exercises and bring the intermediate results back to class for discussion with the teacher and classmates.