Needfinding

Catalog description

Needfinding is an approach that puts people and their needs at the center of product development and business strategy creation. Over 90% of new products introduced into the marketplace fail. A good portion of these failures are due to lack of understanding of end consumers and their needs. To develop truly successful new products, it's not enough just to ask people what they need or want. Designers and engineers need tools and techniques to get beyond what people can explicitly state and determine their implicit needs. Needfinding is an approach for developing deep insights that provide strategic direction for corporations and open up new possibilities for product development. In this class students will gain a toolset from which to develop their own approaches to conducting researching for design: learning how to think about other people, about culture, and about new perspectives. They will also learn tactical skills: how to define research questions, how to conduct observations and interviews, how to interpret results, how to synthesize them into fodder for design, and how to communicate their findings in a way that is compelling and actionable for designers, marketers, and business strategists. This class is designed for graduate students and upper level undergrads with a specific interest in product design or design thinking.