TEACHING
SPRING 2021: DESIGN THINKING 101
Course Overview
This course is a foundation-level course that enables students, regardless of background, to understand the concept of design thinking, considering the benefits from various fields of study (and life), and provides students with the basic tools to leverage the design process. In the remote version of this course, students take part in a variety of lectures, exercises, and projects in a fully asynchronous format (AKA - without meeting at the same time). The overarching goal of the course is to help you build your creative confidence and give you the tools you need to bring design thinking into your own work and field.
Instructor: Aaron Ganci
Teaching Assistant: Amrita Datta
Level: Freshman and Sophomore
Credits: 3 Credits
Student Work Spring 2021
FIND YOUR PROBLEM SPACE
The "big" project for this course seeked students to take more control over how they move through the Design Thinking Process to develop innovative solutions by collaborating with students from the class.
Overall project goal
Define and pitch a solution that will address the HMW students establish to positively impact the people inside the problem space.
Covid Safety Group - Shelby Green, Arielle Goodman, Keion Taylor
Coronavirus has made this past year unpredictable, with everybody just trying their best to get through it. It is a difficult task to try and keep society safe from the pandemic, when we don't know a lot about the virus in the first place. Universities have especially been under a lot of pressure in the past year trying to keep students safe while still trying to keep the student's education as normal as possible. IUPUI has done a very good job of staying on top of the Coronavirus, but could they be doing more?
HMW: How might we make the students of IUPUI feel safer un times of COVID?
Team Social Media - Isabel Lentz, Camryn Johnson, Abdou Sidiya
For this group project, the team focused on the problem of social media addiction. The broad category for this idea was mental health related, and specifically how social media has an effect on everybody. The team considered this as a huge issue within high school and college students. Social media addiction has been around for quite a while with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Now with Tiktok on the rise, as well as a global pandemic, social media is experiencing more use and screen time than ever before. It’s an addiction that starts easy, and it can turn consuming and hard to escape. Their solution focused on how to break the habit of social media addiction, as well as how to prevent it from starting in the future.
Team Art 4 Students: Katie Priest, Mack Enlow, Alexis Hawkins
This group focused on a social / high school student problem. Artistic students who live in rural areas do not get the proper attention they need to grow as artists due to the lack of care their communities have for the arts. Typically, high schools in rural and blue collar areas tend to focus more on FFA and sports, rather than rounding out their students fully and supporting the arts. Students are impacted by this issue, but also the families of the students who have to support their creative children in some fashion.
How might we get high schools in rural areas to focus on the arts?
How might we get more support for the arts in high schools?
How might we gather student interest for the arts?
How might we encourage guardians to support their artistic students?
FALL 2020 & 2019: DESIGNING PEOPLE-CENTERED EXPERIENCE
Course Overview
Designing People-Centered Experiences is a succinct course about the experience design industry and it’s processes. This course provides a methodological overview of experience design from the perspective of a visual communication designer. By exposing the range of design activities associated with experience design, this course prepares visual communication design majors to make an informed decision about which capstone course they will take in the second 8 weeks of the Fall and the Spring semesters.
Instructor: Aaron Ganci
Teaching Assistant: Amrita Datta
Level: Senior
Credits: 3 Credits
Student Work Fall 2020
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE: STAYING CONNECTED
Due to the pandemic all classes were hosted online. As a result, students were tasked with designing digital service experience that interested them the most during this time period. Students were tasked with designing a new digital experience that enabled people to stay connected with other people, a community, or current events but avoids the mental health downsides of current social media platforms
They were asked to design their own interfaces in order to gain user-experience design research skills through this project as many were dabbling in this area of design for the first time!
Nick Asbell designed an app called Unfiltered - A social media app that allows the users to filter out what they don't want to see on their feed, but still have the option to look through posts/tags/users that they filtered out. Also this app requires a photo ID to make sure there aren't people making fake accounts to harass anyone. Prototype Link
Savannah Bell designed an app called HANGZ, where you can not only connect with people you already know, but also with new people (recommended based on the initial questionnaire and your location) and plan hangouts (aka HANGZ) using the calendar section. You can also enjoy the typical social media aspects such as instant messaging, sharing, exploring your feed, etc. Prototype Link
Shivam Gupta, created an app called Private Space which is a one-stop for all the applications. The user gets the flexibility of what all apps they want to access privately. The private mode acts as a VPN which when turned on allows users to use any application without compromising their personal information. The apps Offline Mode when enabled, allows you to be free from notifications and enjoy the real world. Prototype Link
Student Work Fall 2020
POST-PANDEMIC EATING EXPERIENCES
Students were tasked with designing the service experience for a new restaurant that transitioned from digital to physical spaces. As a way to practice designing a new experience, we took a look at the restaurant industry. Restaurants provided a clear examples of how patrons aligned an experience with their goals (end, experience, life). Since the Covid era had upended the restaurant experience and reshaped our relationships with these services. There is a clear need to shape the restaurant experience more carefully to accommodate nontraditional ways of ordering, receiving, and enjoying our food. We also noticed that many covid-era interactions with restaurants feature digital-to-physical transition, where you would order online and then either pick up or are delivered your food in person.
Students were tasked with designing a new eating experience that mapped better to our new ways of interacting with restaurants. Students designed a service experience flow (via a map) and some artifacts (branding, app, signage, etc) that helped tell the story of their solution.
Sundown - Elijah Shanton & Frank Udeze
Erin Alberda and Nabila Shaeri
Fuel Theater Map - Jennifer Edwards and Erin Fenoughty
Ranger Barbque- Shivam Gupta & Kendrick Underhill
Student Work Fall 2019
Re-designing the experience at IUPUI
Students were tasked with designing the service experience for students at IUPUI by forming small groups in which they could collaborate. The assignment explored topics like job fairs, student enrollment, library services, multi-cultural student services and class registration.
HMW - Help Students manage stress? - Elizabeth Foreman, Bailey Weaver, Essence Jones, Jonah Alvarez
HMW- Improve the transfer student experience? - Abigail Rahman, Kendra Eberhard Kristalynn Duncan, Shelby Elrod, Taylor Harch
Student Work Fall 2019
Eating with Purpose: Final Deliverables
Students were tasked with designing the service experience for a new restaurant that carries a value proposition for its patrons. As a way to practice designing a new experience, we decided to take a look at the restaurant industry. Restaurants usually provide a clear examples of how patrons align an experience with their goals (end, experience, life). Students were asked to consider all the options someone has if they want to eat a hamburger (McDonald's vs. Five Guys vs. Bru Burger) or a taco (Taco Bell vs. Chipotle vs. Nada).
Students chose restaurants based on the goals they are trying to accomplish at that moment. One way that businesses help people align their goals with them is by integrating a 'value proposition.' The task was be to design a new eating-based experience that maps a value proposition to patron goals.
Value propositions Examples:
Public Health and Safety
Example: earthquake preparedness
Example: earthquake preparedness
Global warming
Example: Air quality in Indianapolis
Example: Air quality in Indianapolis
Social justice
Example: Racial biases in law enforcement
Example: Racial biases in law enforcement
Work credit: Zachary Camp & Lauren Motsinger (Fall 2019)
Work credit: Tori Foster & Shelby Elrod (Fall 2019)
Work credit: Elizabeth Foreman & Selina Hardy (Fall 2019)
