tl;dr know which participants you need to conduct research that generates value and design screeners to ensure that you get them. We recently finished a round of interviews designed to put ourselves in a position to explain how experienced middle school teachers select literary texts to use in their ELA curricula. We recruited people through […]
Great news! We have a new publication out today summarizing some of the work we’ve been doing in an online debate community (kialo.com). In particular, we discuss how conflict can serve as well as undermine the work that moderators do, and we highlight ways that UI design could be a scalable way to facilitate conflict […]
For the final project in my undergrad human-centered design class this year, I gave students a design brief focused on GroupMe. The challenge was broad, and the deliverables were diverse and interesting. In addition to generating presentations, I asked students to create one-sheets showcasing their projects. One of the teams (David Lu, Alex Yun, Kevin […]
We’re closing in on the end of the spring semester here at Penn State University, and, unlike in year’s past, I’ve already finished my syllabus revisions. Download the new version here. The speediness of these revisions is due to a stellar graduate student who is also the instructional assistant who helped me teach the class […]
I teach an introductory course on human-centered design here at Penn State, and the students in my class recently completed a redesign of the product rating system on Amazon.com. I gave them an abstract design brief, which meant that they were responsible for scoping the problem and generating a solution. This is a great cohort […]
I piloted an in-class activity with my human-centered design class today. In preparation for class, students read Don Norman’s essay, Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful. Then, in class, I presented them with the following brief: Using Adobe Photoshop, create a one-sheet explaining/describing the main principles of human-centered design to non-designers. Export the one-sheet as a PDF […]
We are making great progress with the Dive mobile app. Adi and Adam have created some stellar mock-ups and a clickable prototype, we’re close to finishing the manuscript for our first paper, and app development is underway. In short, people should be able to read about our work and download Dive on the app store […]
design inquiry 