MAPD4300 Design for Experience Emneplan

This course introduces students to the concept and complexity of experience. Experience is understood as a series of complex interactions between humans and their technological, social, and natural environments, which users interpret into general impressions. The course addresses this complexity by introducing multifaceted approaches to designing for the experience of products and/or services.

Students will be invited to explore practical design concepts concerning socio-cultural contexts, technological interface interactions, and the phenomenology of experience, as well as employing theoretical approaches to engaging users. These explorations will include applied experiments and design iterations through testing and scenario building. To create more meaningful experiences, issues of user motivation, mastery, and well-being will take central focus in revisions and discussions.

Admission to the Masters program

On successful completion of this course the students are expected to have these learning outcomes acquired:

Knowledge:

The candidate can

• discuss and describe user experience using phenomenological, cognitive and behavioral theoretical concepts
• choose relevant methods for exploration of design for experience

Skills:

The candidate can:

• organize and plan design process using phenomenological, cognitive and behavioral theoretical concepts
• implement experiments, user testing and probing in lab conditions and in the field
• design product features and service components considering experience as a key factor
• critically assess their designs, product features, service components and implications of the design intervention for the experience

General competence:

The candidate can:

• critically assess wider societal perspective about the effect of experience of products and services
• practice evaluation of ethical issues and cultural relevance when conceptualizing and developing design for experience

Individual or group portfolio examination. The portfolio consists of:

• Product in optional/relevant media.
• Research-based design project/proposal (2500-3000 words and visualizations integrated in the text).

The examination result can be appealed

The most important teaching and learning methods for this course are workshops, lectures, group work, studio courses and tutoring.

Issues concerning design and culture require designers to adopt a broad, humanistic point of view. In this course, students will enhance their knowledge and awareness of cultural values and meanings, and their impact on design. Design is widely acknowledged as an increasingly multifaceted field, involving communication and interaction between people and material culture. Communication is complex, and language is key to creating meaning.

Design comprises several forms of articulation, and in this course, students are challenged to use and interweave visual, material, and verbal articulation to create new meaning. The course introduces strategies for integrating research methods to foster aesthetic awareness, empathy, criticality, and reflexivity, which can be activated in the development of products or services for chosen cultural contexts.

Admission to the Master's programme.

After completing the course, the student is expected to have achieved an advanced level in the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills, and general competence:

Knowledge

The student has:

• knowledge about how design culture can have an impact on developing products and cultural values
• knowledge about how design culture works as a bridge between design history and modern society
• attained knowledge of methods that involve documentation of relational matters e.g., (i) between products (things) and people, (ii) products and environment
• a good understanding of how aesthetic awareness works as a crucial factor in informed design practices
• a good understanding of how reflexivity and criticality work as crucial factors to challenge established perspectives and norms in the field

Skills

The student can:

• use aesthetic practice-based methods to enhance exploratory and analytical processes and to communicate the design process and the results
• use methods for documentation, e.g., auto-ethnographic method, to uncover and describe materialized processes and fieldwork
• interweave different forms of knowledge from practice and theory by using various forms of articulation (materialized, visual, and text)
• use methods to communicate the design process, and the results, the product(s) in a cultural context

General competence

The student has a developed understanding for:

• the relevance of knowledge of cultural values and meanings and their impact on design
• responsibility for the development of design in a culturally sustainable context

Lectures, excursion, workshop, various platforms for presentations, discussion and reflection, self-study.

The following required coursework must be approved before the student can take the exam:

• Project description with a defined research field, aim(s), research question, and theoretical and methodological approach (500-700 words and visualizations integrated in the text).
• Participation in an oral presentation and dialogue; (i) communication of the project, (ii) constructive feedback of the projects to fellow students.