Interaction Design Capstone Project

Go to Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/interaction-design-capstone

Introduction

## Course Review: Interaction Design Capstone Project on Coursera As the final stepping stone in an exploration of Interaction Design, the **Interaction Design Capstone Project** on Coursera is an immersive and practical application of the skills learned throughout the preceding courses in the series. This course stands out for its hands-on approach to design and its emphasis on real-world applications, positioning learners to tackle genuine design challenges and polish their portfolios effectively. ### Overview of the Course The **Interaction Design Capstone Project** allows participants to apply their knowledge and skills acquired over the course of the program, from needfinding and ideation to prototyping and testing. The course collaborates with various design teams in Silicon Valley, ensuring that the projects are relevant and reflective of industry standards. By the end of the course, students will have a completed capstone project that showcases their capabilities and aids in job hunting or career advancement. ### Syllabus Breakdown The syllabus is robust and thoughtfully structured, guiding learners through essential phases of the design process: 1. **Needfinding**: This module emphasizes observational learning. Drawing inspiration from Yogi Berra's insight into human behavior, it teaches students how to identify user needs and potential areas for improvement. The hands-on nature of this phase helps to internalize the concept of user-centered design. 2. **Ideation**: The course’s ideation module nurtures the creative process by encouraging brainstorming without judgment. This promotes a free-flow of ideas, fostering innovation. The use of collaborative tools and physical mediums (like whiteboards and sticky notes) encourages dynamic participation. 3. **Prototype**: Highlighting the importance of prototypes in the design cycle, this module urges students to express concepts tangibly. The focus on rapid prototyping not only aids creativity but also promotes collaboration and feedback, essential in design evolution. 4. **Design Heuristics**: Here, students learn to evaluate usability through heuristic evaluations. This reflective practice allows for a critical analysis of peers' prototypes, making the learning experience interactive and constructive. 5. **Planning and Development**: Creating a development plan helps in setting tangible goals and managing the project’s pace. The structure encourages learners to document and visualize their process, which is invaluable in professional settings. 6. **Testing**: The crucial step of user testing is emphasized, with students engaging directly with users to gather data and insights for their prototypes. The real-world application of conducting tests with peers enriches the learning experience. 7. **Results**: The course introduces statistical methods for analyzing testing results, equipping students with the ability to discern meaningful user data from chance occurrences. Understanding A/B testing enhances decision-making skills in design. 8. **Show & Tell**: In this culminating phase, learners present their projects, sharing their design journey while highlighting their findings and solutions. This is an excellent opportunity to prepare for real-world job interviews and client presentations. ### Final Thoughts and Recommendation The **Interaction Design Capstone Project** course on Coursera is more than just a learning experience; it’s a comprehensive end-to-end journey through the intricacies of interaction design. It unites theoretical knowledge with practical application, a necessity for anyone looking to make a mark in the design industry. I strongly recommend this course for aspiring designers and professionals looking to expand their portfolios. The collaboration with industry teams ensures contemporary relevance, while the structured and practical approach promotes an authentic understanding of the design process. Completing this capstone will not only elevate your skills but also produce a tangible piece that you can present to prospective employers, making it a worthwhile investment in your design career.

Syllabus

Design Thinking Capstone

Welcome to the Interaction Design Capstone Project!

As Yogi Berra said, you can observe a lot just by watching. Watching how people do things is a great way to learn their goals and values, and come up with design insight. We call this needfinding. This module trains your eyes and ears to come up with user needs, breakdowns, clever hacks, and opportunities for improvement.

To maximize your chances of having a great idea, it helps to generate a lot of ideas. Brainstorming is a strategy for rapidly generating lots of ideas. It was named by advertising executive Alex Osborn in his 1953 book, Applied Imagination. When brainstorming, go for volume and defer judgment. Often, something that seems like a crazy idea can lead to something that’s a really good idea. Immerse yourself: it can help to use a whiteboard, butcher paper, or stick post-its on a wall. These ideas will become the 'soil' for growing your designs.

Prototyping is the pivotal activity that structures innovation, collaboration, and creativity in design. Prototyping gets ideas out of your head and into the world. Like a conversation, your ideas will evolve as you articulate them and make them concrete. Prototypes are quick and dirty, not careful museum pieces. The key to prototyping is to jump right in. It’s a tool to see what’s working, what challenges emerge, and to share your ideas with others. Review the user needs you brainstormed. In this assignment, you will flesh out your design ideas by storyboarding and making paper prototypes.

Design can succeed (or fail) in many ways. That said, there are common heuristics that will get you on the right path. In this module, you will conduct heuristic evaluations (HEs) of another learner's paper prototype. The heuristic evaluations will be a way to highlight usability issues, and think about how to improve them.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Figuring out what that first step is--and then what the one after that is--can be especially daunting with creative projects. Making forward progress is a lot easier if you write down concrete, actionable goals. This is the main benefit of a development plan. A development plan also helps you track momentum. Are things progressing at the pace you expected? Faster? Slower? Writing a time estimate into your plan and tracking how long it actually took helps you gauge your pace. The first steps of your plan should be the skeleton that forms the core screens of your design.

Crunch time! Your interactive prototypes have to be ready for user testing by the end of this assignment.

In this assignment, you will test your prototype in person with two people to find usability bugs & potential improvements.

You've got data from online users that compares two alternatives. How can you tell whether there is a real difference? Statistical tests, like the CHI-squared test, tell you whether the behavior you observed was likely to have occurred by chance, or whether there's likely to be a real difference between the designs. A/B experiments like these are becoming increasingly popular in industry because experiments help you test your assumptions.

You've done all this great work, and your hard effort has paid off. You've brainstormed, prototyped, designed, iterated, refined, and evaluated. Now's your chance to share your work with the world. This is a great opportunity to tell your design story, and use it as a portfolio to impress your friends, family, and potential employers.