Become a proficient explorer of the world around you and find inspirations that may lead to human-centered design solutions. This course will introduce you to crucial methods in design research, which will help you to discover inspirations for innovative solutions. We take a task-based approach to build your competencies and skills: You will learn to spot workarounds, observe potential users in their context and explore the basic skills of conducting insightful interviews.

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Learning Objectives

- spot and analyze workarounds to identify user needs

- prepare and conduct good qualitative interviews

- analyze interview notes and identify insights

- evaluate the quality of your peers' work and provide constructive feedback

Course Structure

WARM-UP / Week 1 (24.8. – 30.8.2017)

This is a chance for you to introduce yourself and get to know the learning environment and your peers with the help of an exercise.

Time commitment: 1h – 1:40h

OBSERVATION / Week 2 (31.8. – 6.9.2017)

The week focuses on the skill of careful observation and introduces you to workarounds and misuses.

Time commitment: 1h – 1:40h

CONDUCTING QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWS / Week 3 (7.9. – 13.9.2017)

This week focuses on the role of qualitative interviewing and how to conduct a good interview.

Time commitment: 3h – 3:40h

INFERRING MEANING FROM INTERVIEWS / Week 4 (13.9. – 20.9.2017)

After you conducted your own interviews, this week's module introduces you to interpreting your findings and inferring meaning from them - the first step towards gathering inspirations for design solution!

Time commitment: 1h – 1:20h

WRAP-UP / Week 5 (20.9 – 28.9.2017)

In this week, we will provide a summary of what you have learned. We will talk about future steps and discuss some of the best assignment results with you.

Time commitment: 0:30h – 1h