INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN VALUES IN DESIGN - FALL 2017
M/W 1:30-3:20PM | LATHROP 282 | UNITS: 3
ME115A is a foundational class for Stanford's Product Design Program. The course is a unique forum for learning that prepares you for real-world innovation, breakthrough thinking and future design classes at Stanford.
Lectures, projects, and hands-on, in-class activities survey the central, human-centered philosophy of the program with an emphasis on the relationship between technical, business and human values, the creative process, and design methodology.
You will work both independently and collaboratively with other students on design projects that require a unique combination of curiosity, ingenuity, empathy, persistence and know-how. Design projects include the process-driven development of new-to-the-world product and service concepts based on observed human needs. Concepts are visualized in rapidly-executed mockups and experience prototypes.
ME115A is designed to provide you with design thinking, collaborative, and problem-solving skills. Our hope is that you will leave confident in your ability to be human-centered, prototype-driven, and mindful of process in everything you do. You will also be invited to develop your identity as a designer and a collaborator within a team through individual and team reflection.
With design for human values as a course theme, your projects will attend to the physical, intellectual, and emotional needs of real users. Project and class content will also integrate the technical and business implications of design solutions.
Though content generalists, designers are process specialists. Design thinking is a flexible approach to creative need-finding and problem solving. It generates, selects, sifts, transforms and evolves ideas and the expressions of those ideas. Good design is frequently the result of a sound formative process, and in this course you will have many opportunities to use that process to arrive at and refine your own design process. The reverse side highlights one way to visualize the design process that we invite you to adapt and make your own.
Class days will consist of faculty and guest talks on a variety of design issues, project introductions and presentations, and in-class exercises related to process, content, and context.
Design projects (DPs) will provide a context for all class work. We strongly believe that you cannot learn to design by hearing about it, but must be actively involved in doing it.
There will be 2 primary design projects assigned in this course. Each will provide real-world challenges around which to learn the fundamentals of human-centered design and innovation.
Each DP will be assigned separately. There will be milestones for each DP, including requirements to bring in-progress work to class. Projects handed in late will drop one letter grade.
“Skillprint” - a unique, living artifact of skills & competencies, rather than a retrospective record of time spent & grades earned (as defined by the Stanford2025 project)
Your assignment is intentionally open-ended, but we would like to challenge you to think about a Skillprint as something different from a design portfolio or your transcript. Think about it this way:
If your portfolio were a museum, your Skillprint is the museum map. What’s the big picture snapshot that instantly orients people and informs them about who you are?
You should think of your Skillprint as an artifact that you could show to an employer. It’s different than a portfolio, and helps to orient someone to you and your skills and experiences. It is not an art piece. It is a tool, like the museum map, that helps to translate you. As designers, we practice mastery of a process. The Skillprint offers you the opportunity to demonstrate that mastery to an employer going beyond traditional criteria like a transcript or portfolio. A successful Skillprint captures and translates your fluency with the design thinking process.
At the end of each design project this quarter (2 in total), you will also create a case study. Each case study will summarize your process & outcome from the project (see assignments for details). Imagine your Skillprint as a “cover page” to these case studies; the Skillprint gives an overview of who you are as a designer and your process, and your case studies serve as examples.
Imagine someone visits your personal website and sees a digital representation of your Skillprint. What would you want that person to learn about you, your influences, and your design process
This project is an individual project, so it’s a chance for you to flex your design muscles on your own. More importantly, though, it is an opportunity to make something meaningful, useful, and valuable for you. This project will help you reflect on what you uniquely offer as a designer, including skills you develop in this class, and then compellingly communicate that story. Beyond this class, we want you to become proactive designers of your own path. Think about how you might use your Skillprint as a navigation tool for the quarter to focus and push you, not just as a storytelling device.
Lastly, this is a really rich, interesting way to get to know your project teammates and PD classmates. You might be surprised by what kind of conversations it sparks!
We’re launching the Skillprint at the beginning of the course so you can apply the design thinking process to iterate and improve it over the course of the quarter.
Over the course of the quarter, when you’re around friends, family, dormmates, and classmates, you might take the opportunity to ask them to reflect on what they have observed about your unique interests, skills, and natural giftings.
Create a “POV” for your Skillprint. What’s the purpose of it? What type of future employer are you designing it for? What is their need?
Here are some possible brainstorm topics:
HMW... represent your skills and abilities in a purely visual/tactile way?
HMW... make it dynamic, interactive and a delight to engage with?
HMW... create an artifact as unique as your fingerprint that showcases your one-of-a-kind combination of skills?
HMW... incorporate the element of time, and acknowledge both budding/developing and more matured/ripened skills?
HMW... capture your informal, out-of-class, off-campus learning?
Pick a format for the end artifact for your Skillprint. We leave this totally up to you. It could be physical, digital, a hybrid, or something else entirely. It could be replicable/sharable, or a crafted original artifact. Whatever the form of your final artifact, we want you to capture it digitally so that you can use on a website in the future.
Prototype quick mockups with friends, family, even designers in industry. Communicate your story with sticky details and memorable examples. As a designer, you have a really unique take on the world and approach problems in a fundamentally different way. How can you best communicate this unique approach?
Failure is a powerful teacher and a critical part of the design process. Throughout the course, students are encouraged to stretch themselves by learning new skills and taking creative risks. This class is a safe environment for learning the fundamentals of design. At the end of each project, students and teams will be given feedback on both their underlying design process and their project deliverables.
Course grading will be based on both the journey and the destination. Students who exhibit thorough exploration of the design process, contribute strongly to the class, provide value as a team player, and commit to personal growth as a designer can expect to do very well.
Grading a design course is invariably difficult for numerous reasons: subjectivity is unavoidable, the "right answer" does not exist, creativity and grading are incompatible, and so on. However, we do give letter grades in this class, and here's how:
Did your team dive into the process with rigor and depth in each phase? Have you demonstrated deep empathy for your users and have your hit upon an authentic and meaningful need they have through your solution?
Does your solution respond to the needs and aspirations of your target user group? Do we believe that if implemented, it would bring meaningful change to their experience? Is the solution innovative (you couldn't have come up with it over lunch)?
How well did you utilize technique, craftsmanship, storytelling in creating both physical prototypes and your video?
Curiosity, participation in class, attendance, punctuality, reflection, self-awareness, growth in abilities, collaboration, effort.
NOTE: Being late may affect your grade. Missing class will affect your grade unless an email is sent to an instructor the day before as to why there will be a planned absence.
This course, like most in design, is a lot of work. Simply put, producing tangible expressions of innovative ideas takes time. Additionally, a process must be internalized and made a part of what you do, not just intellectually understood. Ever see anyone try to learn to ride a bicycle by reading about it? Or learn to ski, swim, sing, etc.? You will be doing a lot of design.
And finally, designing is very seductive. You may well find that the experience that designing gives you will draw you into spending more time on it than a "reasonable" course would expect. That is not an observation of ours. It is a comment we've heard from many survivors of the course, particularly those who become competent professionals.
david.kelley@stanford.edu
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manishpatel@stanford.edu
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teagan@stanford.edu
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d.school atrium
abhayka@stanford.edu
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sdaswani@stanford.edu
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tfalase@stanford.edu
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