Lectures

Lecture 1 (1/24/17): Design thinking and needfinding

A brief overview of Design Thinking followed by an introduction to one of the most fundamental design skills: needfinding, or the ability to discover valuable problems.

This lecture is relevant to Assignment 1 and it covers key techniques for Assignments 2 and 7.

Lecture slides can be found here.

Required readings: none

Optional readings:


Lecture 2 (1/26/17): Design exercise

We will do an in-class design exercise.

Optional readings (if you didn't attend the first lecture):


Lecture 3 (1/31/17): Affinity diagramming

Affinity diagraming. You will analyze the data you collected in teams. The lecture slides can be found here.

Attendance at this class is mandatory.

Required readings (post your written response before class):


Lecture 4 (2/2/17): Creativity

We will discuss the cognitive underpinnings of creativity, common barriers to creative insight and techniques for improving individual and team creative outcomes.

The concepts and techniques from this class will help you with product concept ideation for Assignments 3 and 8. The discussion of effective design critiques will help you get the most out of the studios.

Lectures slides can be found here. Further clarification of the attribute listing method can be found here.

Required reading (post your response here):

  • Creativity, choose one of the following two options:
    1. Participate in an experiment on creativity (takes ~10 minutes). If you choose this option, in your discussion response reflect on the process you went through while generating ideas. What was challenging? What helped you keep going? Any thoughts you have on the process are welcome. One paragraph is enough.
    2. Read a short paper on creativity (Goldenberg & Solomon, SCIENCE 1999). If you choose this option, comment on the paper in your discussion response. What did you think about the suggested methods? What was the most interesting/surprising idea to you? One paragraph is enough.
  • Critiques, read both of these short articles on giving and receiving feedback. Write one paragraph about 1-2 key points you would like your studio members to pay attention to:
    1. How to Survive a Critique: A Guide to Giving and Receiving Feedback by Karen Cheng
    2. Moving from Critical Review to Critique by Jared Spool

Optional additional readings on creativity:


Lecture 5 (2/7/17): Coding lab 1

Fundamentals of JavaScript; event-based programming. The class will combine lecture-like presentation of material and hands-on programming activities.

This class is relevant to all the future programming assignments and project 2, where you will have to implement an interactive prototype of your product concept.

Bring a computer & install Chrome!

Required reading (post your written response before class):

Optional readings:

Activity slides

Skeleton code


Lecture 6 (2/9/17): Prototyping and rapid evaluation

How do you know if your product concept is any good? This class will cover a range of techniques for rapidly prototyping product ideas and for soliciting informative feedback from your potential users.

Lecture slides can be found here.

This class is directly relevant to Assignments 4, 9 and 13.

Required reading (post your written response before class):


Lecture 7 (2/14/17): Heuristic Evaluation

We will be conducting heuristic evaluations in class. Note your prototypes need to be ready by Tuesday's lecture.

Required reading (post your written response before class):


Lecture 8 (2/15/17): The Anatomy of a Good Pitch

What makes for an effective product concept pitch?

This class will help you with Assignments 5 and 8 and with the final project presentations.

Lecture slides

Required prep (post your written response before class):


Lecture 9 (2/21/17): Guest lecture by Kate Margolese, Chief Marketing Officer, Perkins school for the blind

This week we will hear from guest speakers about their work on hard and important design problems. We hope these lectures will inspire you to go after problems that really matter in project 2.

Perkins is a progressive, multi-faceted organization committed to improving the lives of people with blindness and deafblindness all around the world. Kate will share a case study of designing an app that helps blind users use public transportation.

Optional reading:


Lecture 10 (2/23/17): Guest lectures by Malory Johnson from Design that Matters, and Kris Carter from the Boston's Mayor Office of New Urban Mechanics

Design That Matters is a design studio in Salem, MA that works on robust and affordable medical devices for the developing regions. Their work beautifully exemplifies the design process we aspire to: they gain deep insight into their customers’ actual needs and iteratively develop solutions that work. Malory will share stories of some of their projects.

Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics is a city agency that was formed in 2010. It pilots experiments that offer the potential to significantly improve the quality of City services. Boston’s MONUM focuses on four major issue areas: Education, Engagement, the Streetscape, and Economic Development. Kris will share stories of some of their projects.

Required readings (post your written response before class):

  • No Laptop Left Behind. Chapter 1 of Kentaro Toyama’s “Greek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology”

Optional readings:

  • The Law of Amplification. Chapter 2 of Kentaro Toyama’s “Greek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology”


Lecture 11 (2/28/17): Ethical considerations in design, guest lecture by David Gray from MIT Philosophy Department

In lecture 9, Kate Margolese talked about accessibility. What are our moral obligations as designers to ensure that our products are accessible to different people?

Lecture slides

Required readings (post your written response before class):


Lecture 12 (3/2/17): Pitches + Teamwork

We will start the lecture by with a quick follow-up on discrimination in design. Then we will hear 5 product pitches from project 1. In the remaining time, we will talk about effective teamwork.

Lecture slides

No required readings.

Optional readings:

Lecture 13 (3/7/17): Personas (in-class exercise, mandatory attendance)

We will learn about Personas, an important technique for designing products to diverse audiences. You will have time to work on Personas for project 2. Come with the data you collect in your observations for HW 7.

Lecture slides

Required readings (post your written response before class):

If you miss lecture, also read:


Lecture 14 (3/9/17): Gamification and Motivation

Lecture slides

Required prep (post your written response before class):

Optional reading:

Lecture 15 (3/21/17): Principles of Direct Manipulation

“Direct Manipulation” is a design paradigm that underlies most of the graphical interfaces you use: in direct manipulation interfaces, objects have visual representations that are continuous in time; you can direct perform operations on those objects and the results of the operations are instantly visible. The operations are also reversible. Command line interfaces are one example of interfaces that do not fit in the direct manipulation paradigm. We will talk about the history, principles and key techniques of effective direct manipulation interfaces. A number of the concepts we will mention in this class you have already seen in our Hall of Fame/Shame exercises. The principles of direct manipulation are the bedrock of interaction design. You will build on them in as you design the interfaces for your final projects.

Lecture slides

Required prep (post your written response before class):

  • Watch the highlights of the Mother of All Demos (parts 1 through 9). Total of ~24 minutes. Things will get a little slow during parts 5 and 6, but then they will pick up again in 7 and 8.

Optional:

Lecture 16 (3/23/17): Human motor performance on basic input tasks

We will dive deep into low level aspects of human neuromotor system. From there, we will discover Fitts’ law, which will allow us to make quantitative predictions about how much time people would need to perform basic tasks with different interface designs. Along the way, we will empirically (and then analytically) answer one of the most important questions of our times: Which is better — Mac or PC?

Lecture slides

Optional readings:


Lecture 17 (3/28/17): Pitches + jQuery Mobile

The winning team from each studio will present their pitches. Then, we will do a coding exercise to look at how you can work with jQuery mobile in your final projects. Bring a laptop!

Activity slides

Skeleton code

Optional readings:


Lecture 18 (3/30/17): Designing experiments

We will talk about A/B testing and experimentation with interfaces in general.

Lecture slides

Required prep (post your written response before class):


Lecture 19 (4/4/17): Visual design + introduction to Bauhaus [mandatory attendance]

We will talk about visual design and interface aesthetics (how they influence user perception and usability, how you can make your visual designs better). In the last 30 minutes of the class we'll have Melissa Venator from the Harvard Art Museum introduce us to the Bauhaus school of design, as preparation for our tours to the museum later in the week.

Lecture slides

Required prep (post your written response before class):

Choose one of the following options:


Lecture 20 (4/6/17): Bauhaus exhibit tour at the Harvard Art Museum [mandatory attendance]

On Thursday and Friday we will go (in studio groups, see piazza message for logistics!) on a tour at the Harvard Art Museum, guided by Melissa Venator.

Required prep (post your written response before class):

Optional readings:


Lecture 21 (4/11/17): Bauhaus --> UI design + Analyzing Experimental Results

On Tuesday, we will first reflect on our museum tour and will talk about some influences we see in today's design and how designs evolved over time. In the second half of the lecture, we will go back to our experiments lecture and will talk about analyzing experimental results. Specifically, we will look at real data collected in the website aesthetics experiment most of you participated in as prep for last Tuesday's lecture and will look at the connection between complexity and colorfulness to visual appeal.

Lecture slides

Required prep (post your written response before class):

  • Remind yourself of the central limit theorem. You can use any resource you want, but if you are new to the concept or forgot it completely, I recommend Ch 6 of the Cartoon Guide to Statistics. Despite the whimsical appearance, it's effective at communicating the intuitions behind the most fundamental statistical concepts.

Activity instructions

Data spreadsheet

Lecture 22 (4/13/17): Guest lecture by Julia Mitelman (CS 179 alumni!) from OneLeap

Julia will share her experiences working in design working at OneLeap.


Lecture 23 (4/18/17): Intelligent Interactive Systems

There's a lot of buzz around AI and integration of intelligent capabilities into systems these days. We'll take a look at the past and present of intelligent interactive systems (both in existing products and in research projects) and will try to identify emerging design principles.

Lecture slides

Required prep (post your written response before class):


Lecture 24 (4/20/17): Using design to solve societal problems

We will think of how design can be used to solve problems like bias, fake news, etc.

Lecture slides

No required prep.


Lecture 25 (4/25/17): Beyond CS 179: What's hot in HCI research and how you can get involved

During the semester you've learned about various design processes and principles. Our last lecture will recap what we've discussed and will cover some of the cutting edge research in human-computer interaction. We will also talk about research more broadly and ways you can get involved. Prof. Gajos will join us and will tell you about research in his group and ways you can get involved.

Lecture slides

*I can also tell you how you can get involved with research in my group if you are willing to consider graduate school in Israel :-)