Project Theme

This quarter’s project theme will be “Improve something out there”! This means you will have a unique chance to pick some interactive piece of tech that already exists and re-think it to make people happier about using it. Although you can start with something you know and love (or hate) you will also need to design for another group of people who is different from yourself. We will aim to make a really exciting design contribution to a product or service that will improve the user experience for different groups of people.

Over the course of the quarter, you will work as a group on designing an interactive technology to improve any aspect of daily life, for instance:

Traveling
Shopping
Gaming
Health care
Working

You will need to define what are the specific user needs your project will support and what activity you would like to design that will help address these needs. Think about how that activity is currently supported, what doesn’t work about current ways of supporting it, and how your solution will do this better. The specificity of addressing particular groups of people allows you to deeply think about what makes each group unique and how your solution will best support them. So, dive in and see what you can come up with!

Project Structure

Projects are organized around four assignments, each consisting of several milestones:

Get inspired by many great projects from previous quarters:

Note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so their reports may not map to the current project. Also note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work.

Project Websites

Projects

Project Theme

Project Structure

Project Websites

Poster Session