Course Syllabus

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Basic information

Enrollment is now closed. No new students may join the class at this point.

📍 Studio times and locations:

  • STU1: Thursday at 6pm with Sirinda / MaxwellDworkin G107
  • STU2: Thursday at 6pm with Siddhi / MaxwellDworkin G135
  • STU3: Thursday at 6pm with Hongbee / PierceHall 213 Brooks Room
  • STU4: Fridays at 10:30am with Mitul / Maxwell Dworkin G107
  • STU5: Fridays at 12:45pm with Kento / SEC 1.316

 

📆 Office hours:

  • Krzysztof: please sign up here. I open new times 1-2 weeks into the future. New options get added weekly
  • ⁠(STU1) Sirinda: M/W 11:10-12:00, set up via calendly or email if none of these times work 
  • (STU2) Siddhi: F morning or T afternoon, set up via calendly or email if none of these times work 
  • ⁠⁠(STU3) Hongbee: T / F 1pm - 6pm
  • ⁠⁠(STU4) Mitul: M/W 11-11:30, F 11:45-12:45, set up via calendly or email if none of these times work
  • ⁠⁠⁠(STU5) Kento: T/Th, set up via calendly or email if none of these times work 

 

📝 Shortcuts:

 

Who should consider this course

This is an introductory design course meant as the first exposure to the design process. Roughly 2/3 of our time will be spent on designing new products and solutions wile 1/3 of our time will go toward the details of effective experience design. The course is taught from the computer science perspective so we will emphasize interactive digital artifacts but the underlying concepts and processes that we teach should be broadly applicable.

All undergrads are welcome, whether you discover your interest in design in your first or last year. There are no per-requisites. First year undergrads are welcome.

Under some circumstances, this course may be appropriate for Masters students. If you are a Masters student considering the course, please make sure that your program will allow it.

Learning goals

  • Design useful interactive systems. Learn how to discover real and valuable needs and aspirations of people who might be very different from yourselves. Make design decisions that appropriately support those needs and aspirations. Articulate and validate your design hypotheses. Identify all relevant stakeholders and design your solutions such that all of them will advocate in favor of your solution. Begin to recognize that technological solutions exist as part of complex sociotechnical systems. 
  • Design usable interactive systems. Recognize that designers and users often have different mental models of interactive systems. Uncover users' mental models of relevant tasks and make design decisions consistent with those models. Analyze existing solutions and design new ones using contemporary knowledge of human perception, cognition, and motor performance. Design for diverse abilities. Appropriately use existing design principles. Create interactive prototypes. Design, conduct, and analyze results from usability studies.
  • Be intentional about and accountable for societal consequences of your solutions. Recognize that design decisions (what problem to solve, for whom, and how) impact the distribution of power and resources in a society. That is, design inevitably has moral and political consequences. Articulate and explain your moral and political stance. Make design decisions consistent with your stance. Analyze your designs for likely indirect and "unanticipated" consequences.
  • Be ready to be part of or lead design organizations. Contribute to effective teamwork. Lead teams with or without authority. Understand the benefits and challenges of diverse organizations. Effectively communicate design research and design decisions. Provide systematic design critique. Productively receive design critique. Use effective team-based creative processes.

Prerequisites

None. We will teach you all the skills required for the course. 

Course format:

Besides the two lectures each week, students will also meet every week in studios. Each studio will comprise of up to 20 students and a TF. Each studio will have its own meeting time of one standard class period on either Thursdays or Fridays (exact times and locations TBD). The studio time will be used by the teams to present their work and to solicit critique, to complete some design activities for the projects, or to practice new skills. 

There will be three team-based projects. The first two will take three weeks each, and the topics for those projects will be provided by the course staff. The third project will take six weeks and it will be a chance for the teams to pursue a topic of their own choice. 

When is course typically offered?

Fall of most years.

Assignments and grading:

Most of the learning in the class will occur in the context of 3 team-based projects. You will work on teams of 3 or 4. You will submit progress reports every week. These reports will be primarily an opportunity for you to receive formative feedback from your studio leader. At the end of each project (and possibly in the middle of project 3), you will submit a more formal report, which will be graded. There will also be formal presentations associated with the projects (some in studio and some in front of the entire class).

Prior to most lectures, you will review some material (read an article, watch a video) and you will submit a brief written reflection.

The following elements will be taken into account when computing your final grade:

  • Projects
  • Written reflections
  • Attendance and participation in studios
  • Attendance in lectures
  • Professionalism

In general, we set up the grading scheme such that course grades mean the following:

  • A. People who competently do their work, are generous and dependable team members, and who demonstrate a non-trivial level of creativity, initiative and effortful curiosity.
  • A-. People who competently do their work and are generous and dependable team members.
  • B+ or lower. In all other situations.

We want to emphasize here that, in most cases, we will focus our grading on the process rather than the outcome. Specifically, it is perfectly fine to pursue a risky design challenge and fail to find a complete solution as long as the team engages in a careful design process and documents their work clearly.

Generative tool (AI) policy:

We have a separate page with our policies for using generative tools in your work for this class.

Course policies:

  • Studio attendance is mandatory. If you have to miss a studio, you must let your team and your studio leader know in advance and receive an acknowledgement from both. You are allowed one excused (i.e., reported and acknowledged) absence for the semester without penalty. To receive credit for attendance, you must arrive on time. Note that if you have a mild illness you can still attend via Zoom (see below).
  • Lecture attendance is expected and contributes to the grade. Note that if you have a mild illness, you can still receive attendance credit by attending via Zoom. If you have a more serious medical/family/life situation, please reach out to your studio leader with appropriate documentation (e.g., doctor's note) if appropriate. If you are very uncomfortable sharing details of a particular situation with your studio leader, you can contact the instructor instead.
  • Attend remotely if you are not feeling well. If you are feeling a little sick, it's best if you stay in your dorm/home. However, unless you are feeling really bad, you should still participate synchronously via Zoom. If you plan to attend a lecture or a studio via Zoom, make sure to notify your team and your studio leader as early as possible.
  • Active participation is essential particularly in the studios and will contribute to the final grade.
  • You are welcome to knit, sketch, etc,  as long as you do it in a way that does not distract those around you.
  • Take your own notes, even though the slides will be made available. We recommend notebooks with dotted paper — the dots provide just enough of a guide so that you can draw neat sketches, but they do not get in the way of your drawings.
  • Simultaneous enrollment is not allowed. 
  • Pass/Fail grading is not available. This is because nearly all work is done in teams and team interactions suffer if different team members have different levels of commitment. 
  • Visitors are OK in lectures, but please introduce them. It’s OK for a class member to bring a guest to a lecture. But if you do so, please alert an instructor prior to the start of the class so that your guest can be introduced to the rest of the class. Also, please make a name tag for your guest at the beginning of the class so that they can be integrated into our community.
  • All students’ first point of contact is their studio leader. All students’ second point of contact is the logistics TF. All TFs have been instructed to respond within one day. 

In addition to the above course-specific policies, we are bound by the more general FAS policies contained in the Harvard College Student Handbook.

Mental health

If you experience significant stress or worry, changes in mood, or problems eating or sleeping this semester, please do not hesitate to reach out to the professor. There are also several free and confidential resources available to you including:

We recognize that mental health challenges can be intermittent, that a person who is doing great in many aspects of their life may have difficulties with others. We recognize that mental health challenges can be invisible to outsiders making it hard to get the support and understanding you need. We will do everything we can to help.

 

Course Summary:

Course Summary
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