Designing for Messy Humans

Catalog description

"How can we create services - digital or otherwise - that scratch psychological itches in ways that take into consideration the uncontrollable nature of users? In this course, we marry the art of design with the science of psychology. The offspring of this match is complicated, unexpected and never predictable - but indelibly informed by both its binary and analogue parentage. Leaning on a variety of international case studies that tickle our human passion for enquiry, for storytelling, for sensation, and for sense-making, plus short philosophical readings about the nature of the indefinable, each class will dissect what we know about something inherently human (from beauty to joy to elegance), and how technologists and machine-makers have tried to predict it. We will spend time in this course reverse engineering black boxes and imagining how they could have been designed otherwise. The final project will be an """"engine"""" or machine - mock-up, paper design or working prototype - that proposes to produce the solution to a messy human question every single time. The course will be divided into three thematic sections of three classes each: a theory week, an analysis week, and a prototyping week. Each thematic section will examine single-topic human “needs” frequently designed for in apps and tech. Students will be expected to take part in group discussions, and brainstorming sessions that will imagine systems that could achieve that topic. Latterly, the last session will be workshops, in which students will work together or alone on their own projects based on one topic of their choice."