CAS1 - Interaction Design Fundamentals

1.1 Design Process and Methodologies

The increasing complexity and fragmentation of the interaction design panorama represent a big challenge for the designers of the future: they will be confronted with rapidly changing scenarios and a multitude of fields of application. This requires a strong methodological basis, a clear overview of the design process and the capability to understand people’s and society’s needs and expectations. This course will give an overview of a Human-centred design process and focus on the initial phases of research, analysis, and ideation. The classes will entail theoretical matters and practical exercises to execute a (mini)design process.

1.2 Creative Coding with P5.js

The goal of the course is to give students an introduction on coding with special focus on graphics programming and interactivity. Every week the students will learn new principles, concepts and language syntax of programming, using the P5.js environment and editor. The students will practice coding by means of structured exercises with continuous support by the teacher. A project brief will be given to allow the students to put in practice the learned materials, designing and prototyping a personal project that will be evaluated at the end of the course. The course follows the learn-by-doing principle featuring hands-on activities. The approach follows the step-by-step process through incremental exercises.

1.3 Designing Digital Experience

Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the widespread use of high-speed mobile networks, smartphones have been our primary way to access information and services related to any aspect of our daily life: from social networks to media, from financial services to transportation, from healthcare to shopping. Great digital experiences today are made possible by providing highly contextual, personalized, and emotional experiences to the customers. How can we design delightful digital experiences through multiple digital touch points, rather than focusing just on a single product or service? How can we create mobile experiences and show relevant information on small screens? In this course we will learn how to design a mobile application starting from the foundation of Digital experiences design: from defining its end-users, to value proposition and key features definition, building a solid UX framework and Information architecture and creating a distinctive visual language to design and prototype a modern mobile User Interface. Students will be given a design brief and will be asked to design, prototype and test a mobile application. The course will mix online lectures, hands-on activities and reviews moments to support students in the learn-by-doing approach through their personal projects.

1.4 Digital Fabrication

The course aims at giving the basics knowledge on how to design parametric objects in Fusion 360 to fast prototype with the main machines available in almost any Fablab that are the 3D printer, laser-cutter and CNC milling machine. The course aims to transfer the key competences to take advantage of the parametric design approach and a methodology to quickly prototype with digital fabrication tools as interaction designers. Fusion 360 has been selected for its flexibility and powerful tools as well as its collaborative design features.

Basic knowledge about 3D printing, laser-cutting and CNC milling will be given during the course along with specific design best practices for each machine that will be then applied in the 3D modelling exercises. Despite its online format, the course will enable the students to properly design a digital file that can be transferred to a digital fabrication process.

1.5 Creating Tangible Interfaces

The course introduces the domain of physical computing for interactive product prototyping. The focus is how to create physical modalities and experiences for accessing and manipulating information through sensing artifacts. The course is based on the approach of “learning by doing”: students learn how to design and implement interactive behaviours developing basic prototypes with the Arduino platform. The goal of the workshop is to learn how to design and implement interactive product behaviours through sensors and actuators controlled by Arduino. The goal will be achieved by learning basic notions of physical computing and by learning how to handle different typologies of sensor and actuators and how to connect them through the Arduino platform.