Course Description

Summary

This course aims to provide reflection on past design activities and point to directions where science can support our understanding of the design process.

We study the design process from multiple perspectives. We explore design process models and their individual sub-processes informed by scientific studies in diverse disciplines. Examples include psychological and social process models, decision-making and preference elicitation models, organizational and business models, and engineering and computational models.

The material is studied from lectures and reading assignments. Students work individually and in teams on in-class and out-of class activities designed to explore concepts and enhance understanding of issues at both scientific and experiential levels. Students study the literature and propose and test a novel design analysis method or design process modeling element of their choice, in small teams. Teams with diverse backgrounds are particularly encouraged. Students present their findings as end-of-term projects. There is no final exam. Class meetings will typically comprise two hours of lecture/recitation and one hour of individual and team activities.

The course is open to all seniors and graduate students (3 credits).

Prerequisites

For Design Science majors, DESCI 501 (Analytical Product Design) is a prerequisite. Other students are expected to have previous design experience through coursework such as a typical capstone design course, studio or professional work.

Coursework

Term Project

Purpose

The project’s goal is to develop an operationally useful understanding into the design process or one of its elements. The deliverable is a report (possibly accompanied by software or other artifacts), a presentation to be delivered in class, and a poster for the Design Expo. ‘Operationally useful’ means that someone engaged in designing should gain from the project results a specific understanding, skill or tool that will improve his/her design abilities: How can a student taking a design course like DESCI 501 or design capstone course use the project results to do a better job in the course?

Format

This is a team project. Diversity in the team in terms of skills, backgrounds and viewpoints is highly desirable. The team will need to select and agree on a project topic. Each team will present their proposed project in class, give an update at a later time in the term, and a final presentation at a scheduled time at the end of the term.

The projects may take several forms:

• Empirical studies: You may state and explore a hypothesis or a theory, and test its validity through interviews, surveys, or observations. Online survey instruments are available using the Sawtooth software.
• Scholarly studies: You may conduct research in the existing literature, scholarly or otherwise, to discover some “facts” about the design process or its elements; you can also state and explore a hypothesis and try to prove it or disprove it through existing evidence.
• Design tools: You can develop a systematic way to support a design process or its elements. For example, you can develop checklists, databases, or visualizations. These tools may take a software or other digital form.
• Lesson plans or activities: Develop instructional material to illustrate and teach some design process activity, which can be used in a course like DESCI 501 or DESC502 in later years.

Other format ideas you may have are open for consideration.

Your classmates can serve to test ideas or collect data. This may be done during or outside the scheduled class times depending on the activity and time required.

Links with Lecture Topics

The final report must include a section titled ‘Links with Lecture Topics”. In this section, you must add as a minimum a short paragraph stating how each lecture topic was relevant to your project and, if not, why not. The rationale for this exercise is that the design process is holistic even though we create categorizations to support our understanding of it. The lecture topics are interconnected and we want to explore/ascertain this connectivity.

Milestones and deliverables

The project report will be 20-30 pages long (e.g., 12 pt Times, single space), excluding appendices and other material. Deliverables are as follows: Project proposal (3-4 pages), progress update (10-15 pages), final report (20-30 pages). Short informal presentations will be given for the proposal, and more formal progress and final presentations will be given at the middle and end of the semester. A team poster for the Design Expo is expected.

Critical Review Assignments

These are weekly required individual assignments. A scientific paper is assigned for home study and a critical review is submitted the following week. The critical review is one page long (about 400 words) and must address the following:

• What problem do the authors address (in your own words)?
• What results do the authors claim? Do they validate these results and, if so, how?
• Do you agree with the problem as stated? Do you believe in the results?
• How would these results affect how we design?

When two papers are listed, students may be allowed to select one of the two for critical review. A class discussion on the review assignments will take place each week.

Further Study Papers

Several papers are listed for further study throughout the semester. These can be useful in project work and a small number of them will be required reading for the quizzes.

Quizzes

Two short in-class quizzes will be conducted to help test understanding of the topics covered in the lectures and the further study papers.

Grading

The grading distribution is as follows: Term project 55%, critical review assignments 20%, class participation 20%, sketching homework and sketching quiz 5%. Project work grading will take into account individual and peer evaluations throughout the semester.

Detailed project grade breakdown is as follows:

• Project proposal: 10%
• Progress report: 15%
• Final report: 20%
• Presentations (all): 5%
• Poster: 5%

Late Policy

You have limited opportunities to submit assignments up to one day late:

• First late submission, up to 1 day late (within 24 hours), receives a maximum of 100% credit.
• Second late submission, up to 1 day late (within 24 hours), receives a maximum of 50% credit.
• Third late submission or any submission more than 1 day late receives zero credit.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how different domains of knowledge study particular aspects of the design process.
• Practice critical scientific thinking skills in assessing published research in design.
• Develop depth in a particular element of the design process
• Conceptualize and implement an instructional module for the particular element of the design process that can be used within a design course.