Effective information systems are not accidents. On the contrary, experience has shown that great design teams do certain
things over and over again. Great teams study user
activity as it really happens and examine the whole context of use throughout product development.
Early in the process, great teams are
not afraid to make mistakes and enthusiastically examine dozens of options before settling on an approach.
Additionally, great teams continually improve their methods and shape organizational processes to support successful
practice.
Most of all, great teams practice proven design methods.
For this reason, in this course you will investigate a wide range of design methods.
A design method is a procedure or activity that leads toward a final solution.
The output of a design method is a document, sketch, or model that then becomes the input to
the next step in the development process.
Design methods can be organized into three classes of activity:
- Research. What do people do? What are peoples' needs and wants? What are the
current barriers and opportunities?
- Invention. What options exist for lowering barriers or innovating in new directions?
How should the options be represented
and judged? How should the interface behave? What should the interface actually look like?
- Evaluation. How can design ideas be validated, user interface options tested,
and existing systems examined with precision?
In this course, you will practice methods of design that lead to good answers to these kinds of questions.
Today, most interesting design problems are too large to be solved by individuals.
Thus, design is fundamentally a social enterprise.
To be an effective team player, however, two types of individual knowledge are essential:
1. Technical skill in design methods. Examples:
- Representations of user needs (e.g., scenarios)
- Blueprints for an information system (e.g., notations for creating web site-maps).
2. Knowledge of underlying principles. Examples:
- How technological innovation changes user needs (e.g., task-artifact cycle)
- Models of human problem solving (e.g., gulf of evaluation and execution)
In this course, you will learn about information system design by following design
methods to create things.
The instruction format will typically be short lectures followed by class activities.
The weekly lab will be used to review and discuss design solutions to the design exercises
and the prototyping project.
Except for one group exercise, worth 10% of the final grade, all design exercises are individual efforts.
In Design and Development of Interactive Systems (INFO-490), you will learn how
design methods are practiced in teams.
How does this course relate to others in the program?
First, we will largely ignore the underlying technology used to implement
information systems. Instead, we focus on the user interface and the structures just beneath its surface.
Second, we will focus on individual use of information systems. Topics concerning the social use of
information systems and how to design for sociability are covered in Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work (INFO-447).
Finally, this course will introduce you to discount methods of evaluation only.
Assessment and Evaluation Techniques (INFO-370) covers the full range of
rigorous evaluation techniques that are used by social scientists.
Perhaps most of all, this course will introduce tools
for solving problems from a design point of view. You will find these tools, and underlying
sensibilities for employing them, useful in any situation where you need to discuss or envision
how people use technology.
Finally, design is very difficult. There is never enough time. Thus, designers develop
the best solutions they can in the available time. Come to this class with questions,
be an active listener, and draw on your experiences. If you do that, all of us, including the
instructor and teaching assistant, will learn from each other and become better designers.
