Course Overview

This cross-disciplinary course will be team project-based. Teams will respond to a challenge to develop innovative solutions through an association of expertise from business, sociology, science, engineering, psychology, anthropology, industrial design students and faculty. Collaborating teams of undergraduate students will apply a Design Thinking Mindset and a Human-Centered approach combined with appropriate methodologies originating from participating students’ primary field of study. Students will contribute to the team project needs and goals through the integration of their individual skills and learning with the support and guidance of faculty. Teams will be formed to maximize a combination of skills and backgrounds. The course will have three primary procedural cycles, 1: Understand 2: Explore 3: Materialize. The team project should conclude with the development and presentation of a comprehensive proof of concept and a contextually resolved solution clearly based upon research conducted during this course. All team members will collaborate throughout the three procedural cycles.

Objectives

Students should leave this course inspired and capable of approaching collaborative opportunity finding and problem-solving in a structured manner to solve problems across a wide spectrum of industries and initiatives. Furthermore, students should possess the creative confidence to apply divergent thinking and push beyond obvious, low hanging fruit solutions. Upon successful completion of this course, a student will have demonstrated the ability to:

• Understand various phases of the design process in a collaborative multi-disciplined environment through an iterative and systematic approach.

• Apply design-thinking strategies to evaluate, conceptualize and synthesize “integrated” design proposals.

• Develop an integrative approach to identify opportunities and create design proposals that combine seemingly disparate design disciplines into a unified and comprehensive design solution.

• Identify project scope and design objectives and methodically plan for its execution; (this includes the development of a design brief and strategy, generating design concepts, and creating design prototypes)

• Construct a design solution (i.e., a service, product, environment, information) from a human-centered, holistic approach focusing on user interactions and overall experience.

• Communicate preliminary studies and final design proposals verbally and visually in 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional and/or time-based prototypes.