User experience design (design track A)

The course aims to provide the theoretical background on human experiences mediated by interactive technologies as well as practical, hands-on experience with designing and assessing interactive systems in this respect. User Experience (UX) Design is about understanding people in order to design interactive systems in a way that fits people’s needs, wishes, abilities, and habits. We need to ascertain ourselves that the artefacts we design meet a broad set of human-centred requirements. These include utility and usability, but also hedonic factors and human values. In this course, we will explore the principles of user-centred design. We will introduce theories, techniques, and tools for designing and evaluating user-friendly, effective, ethical and stimulating digital environments. The course is relevant for interactive application design in a number of domains, ranging from professional applications in healthcare or automotive contexts, to interfaces for consumer electronics or mobile phones.

In particular, topics include:

• Historical perspective from usability towards user experience

• Theory on and models of human experience

• Introduction to design frameworks such as user-centered design, experience design, design thinking, value-sensitive design and participatory design

• Different approaches to product development, and how to incorporate user experience in such a process

• Application of methods for needs elicitation, prototyping, and evaluation in the context of a design case

The course includes a design challenge, in which groups of students together design an interactive system focusing on the user experience. The group work results in the final group report. In parallel, each student writes an individual report which reflects on the methodology used, the ethical aspects of the product, as well as the design and group process and outcomes.

After completing the course, students can:

• Explain what constitutes a 'worthwhile experience', and how user experience design differs from other approaches to user-centered technology design like usability and human factors engineering.
• Apply the user-centered design cycle to a design case, investigating users' experiences, analyzing the results, deriving a design concept and developing a prototype to evaluate the resulting design.
• Critically evaluate methodological and design decisions made in a user-centered design project, providing well-founded arguments and suggesting improvements where needed.
• Critically reflect on the ethical implications of a user experience design project, providing well-founded arguments.

You must meet one of the following collections of requirements

• Collection 1
• Completed Final examination Bsc program
• Collection 2
• Completed Pre-Master

• Capita selecta