Christine Toh

I have teaching experience in creativity and ideation in design, interaction design, and product dissection and analysis. In addition, I have shared my knowledge and skills regarding other topics such as video editing, global product design, and ideation methods through guest lectures. Below you will find information on classes I am currently teaching and past courses.

Courses taught.

ITIN4000/8006: Interaction Design

This course provides an integrative perspective on the types of techniques that can be used to analyze existing products and develop learn both qualitative and quantitative methods to measure user interactions and apply innovative principles to develop creative design ideas for future products. The material will be presented through a variety of hands-on activities including a semester long design project.

ITIN3330: Product Design & Development

Information technology is ubiquitous. The challenge we face is to build effective systems that are both reliable and flexible, and to do so in a timely way. The course addresses that need through an in-depth practical experience emphasizing human-centered technology design and development. The course focuses on key elements of product design for information technology applications through a series of learn-build-evaluate activity cycles. Throughout this course, students will practice and implement important interaction styles, early-phase design activities, prototyping, testing and evaluation, and design critique. While this course will not focus on the cognitive underpinnings of human-computer interaction, it will emphasize design practice and execution, and students will be expected to develop and reflect on low-fidelity prototype implementations of user- centered design artifacts.

ITIN2990: IT Innovation Seminar

The seminar exposes students to information technology innovators from multiple industries and varied backgrounds. It teaches the practical aspects of IT Innovation from those that have done it and are doing it in both research and practice. The purpose is to cause students to reflect on applying innovation to the real-world, connect them to the innovation community and to equip them with best practices and tools to make their innovations a reality.

ITIN2220: Applied IT Innovation

The course extends the concepts learned in the Introduction to IT Innovation course and focuses on market dynamics and monetizing innovations. It moves past idea generation and focuses on identifying and gathering resources, innovation implementation, sustainable innovation models and how ideas can be monetized. The goal is for students to take their original ideas from concept to initial implementation with thoughts towards commercialization. A brief introduction of business plans and how to bring ideas to market will be offered. Upon completing the course, students will have created at least a rudimentary implementation of an original idea and have a defendable plan for how the idea can be monetized.

ITIN1110: Introduction to IT Innovation

This course focuses on teaching first-year students in IT Innovation how to generate creative ideas and provides students with skills to develop and critically evaluate their innovations. The course also provides an overview of the design process in the early stages of conceptual design, including identifying customer needs, idea generation, concept selection, and prototyping methods and user testing.

Courses to be offered.

ITIN8220: Design Process

In this class, inter-disciplinary design teams will work together to design and innovate products of the future. The design projects in the course are developed to directly address a problem brought forward by a technology company in the Omaha area in order to provide students with a design experience that directly impacts real-world product development. Students will focus on the technological (interface), physical (ergonomics) and aesthetic quality of design, and will learn how to conduct rigorous user studies in a laboratory setting. The projects will range from mobile applications to medical equipment. Teams will be cross disciplinary and consider all aspects of the design, creation, testing, and fabrication of the products.

ITIN8230: Creativity and Innovation

This course focuses on building graduate students' appreciation, understanding, and engagement with advanced concepts in product design creativity and innovation. This includes an in-depth analysis of creativity and innovation frameworks and methodologies, the cognitive aspects of human creativity, individual attributes related to creativity, organizational perceptions and strategies for innovation and disruption, and societal implications of an "innovation economy". This material will be presented through a series of lectures, in-class discussions, peer-learning assignments, and a research-focused team project.