Planning Workshop: Understanding People

Instructor

John Cain

Introduces an approach and tools for understanding people –what they do and why they do it- as a basis for new product, service and strategy solutions. The course will focus pragmatically on ‘how-to’ methods for understanding and modeling human experience - the situations and contexts in which everyday life takes place.

Special emphasis will be placed on critical areas within human-centered innovation programs that often break-down or fail to yield powerful results. These include secondary studies, cultural inventories, analytic techniques, experience modeling, opportunity mapping, and solution mapping.

The class will work on real-world business problems as both the main assignment and framework for the course. Students will be assigned to a team that will remain together for the duration of the course. Teams are to create a solution to the problem(s) posed using the methods, tools, content presented in this course.

Learning objectives:
• The basis for why we would want to understand and ‘model’ experience at all.

• The issues and challenges involved in the integration of social science-based research techniques into product, service and strategy development. This course will emphasize the importance of understanding people –what they do and why they do it- as the primary reference point for ‘good’ design.

• Review and be able to apply to design problems a limited set of research techniques including secondary literature research, contextual inventories, ethnographic fieldwork, among others.

• Understand and apply techniques for analyzing data. Be able to characterize ‘experience models’ through analysis –descriptions of the ways in which data elements interact

• Be able to develop opportunity and solution ‘maps’ –articulations of possible changes to the conditions of the model

• Understand and be able to articulate the business conditions that steer design development programs and ultimate need to be satisfied

• An ability to work in teams, analyze cases, think critically, and present ideas

Format & Grading

Class time will be primarily lecture / discussion. There will be two 2-page written assignments to be completed individually at the outset of the course. There will be team-based projects that will run for the bulk of the semester and count for a majority of the grade. Emphasis will be placed on the team assignments as the framework for the course content. The final class will be dedicated to the presentation of student projects and their critique.

30% class participation, 20% written assignments, 50% team project