3: Further design methods

Design stage: Remix, improve, and sketch

We look at further design research methods and also thinking about the tricky task of narrowing down. Design projects often respond to complex challenges. Often complex design challenges offer multiple solutions and thus there is no best answer. However, equally designers, at some point, need to choose and settle on an option. There’s a tricky balance between opening up to new ideas and closing down in sticking to a chosen path.  We’ll have a series of speakers come and talk about different digital civics projects to discuss which influences helped their projects took shape.

Seminar: This session will be focused on producing a poster describing your project to date. This will help you prepare for the 10-minute interim presentation in week 5. If we have the time: We look into some inspirations for designs from different industries and application domains. Discuss which examples you would like to choose and present those in three minutes to your teammates.

Team: Continue the search for inspirations of designs from elsewhere.

  • Revisit your goals: Have they changed and how?
  • Example search: In your team, individually collate a list of products/services/devices that may serve as inspiration for your projects. Then can come from the literature or the Internet. Each member of the team should select two examples and say (1) why selected, (2) how it provides inspiration for the project. In the team, discuss the examples you came up with and note which features about interesting. Have a look at the example ‘innovation search’ in the lecture slides as well as the example provided of Knapp’s approach (also in the lecture slides).
    • What examples have you discussed and why?
    • What of these examples has worked well and serves as inspiration for your project?