We will look into tools for building web-based interfaces that work well on mobile devices.  Most teams will need these tools for their projects. Optional Readings: Getting Started With jQuery Mobile jQuery Mobile Tutorial: Creating a Restaurant Picker Web App Lecture Slides Code:

“Direct Manipulation” is a design paradigm that underlies most of the graphical interfaces you use: in direct manipulation interfaces, objects have visual representations that are continuous in time; you can direct perform operations on those objects and the results of the operations are instantly visible.  The operations are also reversible.  Command line interfaces are...

We will have two guests today (one of them a former CS 179 student and TF) who will share their experiences and insights related to product development. Hamish Forsyth (CEO) leads OneLeap’s overall development and is responsible for major innovation strategy and capability projects with key FTSE100/F500 clients, often at excom level. He speaks...

After we hear five pitches (one from each studio), I will introduce you to the concept of Personas, a technique for designing coherent products for diverse audiences.  This is an important concept: you will need to develop personas as part of your needfinding work for Assignment 7.  The personas you generate will also be...

This will be our first look at the mechanisms that motivate people to engage with digital services.  We will start with gamification. Depending on how much time we have, I will introduce one or two other mechanisms (the transtheoretical model of behavior change, information gap theory of curiosity, or those aspects of social psychology...

What makes for an effective product concept pitch?  How can you influence how your team functions even though you are all peers and nobody is the boss? This class will help you with Assignments 5 and 8 and with the final project presentations.  It is also relevant to your day-to-day interactions with your teammates....

For your final project, you can build yet another app that makes ordering cat food a little easier or you can go after a problem that actually matters. Today’s guests will tell stories of tough, but very rewarding design problems, from two very different worlds. Design That Matters is a design studio in Salem,...

In-class activity: you will conduct heuristic evaluation of another team’s design and they will evaluate yours. Heuristic Evaluation is a common technique used to uncover major bugs in design prior to engaging any real users. (mandatory attendance) Required readings (post your written response before class): 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design How to Conduct a Heuristic...

How do you know if your product concept is any good?  This class will cover a range of techniques for rapidly prototyping product ideas and for soliciting informative feedback from your potential users. This class is directly relevant to Assignments 4, 9 and 13. Required reading (post your written response before class): Retail Isn’t...

Fundamentals of JavaScript; event-based programming. The class will combine lecture-like presentation of material and hands-on programming activities. This class is relevant to all the future programming assignments and project 2, where you will have to implement an interactive prototype of your product concept. Bring a computer & install Chrome! Required reading (post your written response before class):...