he Design Initiatives team collaborates with partner school districts and community organizations, as well as with Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College students, faculty and staff, to develop innovative solutions to the “wicked” problems in education. To
achieve this, we use an intentional, collaborative, open-ended design process that values local context, diverse perspectives, intrapreneurial thinking and iterative testing of solutions.
“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” — Herbert Simon
Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs involved, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas...
Completed in 2017, IKC de Geluksvogel school in the Netherlands is known for its focus on sustainability and its teaching approach, which centres on the use of technology. In today’s Q&A we speak to Misak Terzibasiyan, the director of UArchitects, the firm behind the design of this award-winning school.
A complete companion to wireframing, guiding you through theory and practice of creating good designs across every stage in the product development process.
ABC is an effective and engaging hands-on workshop that has now been trialled with great success over a range of programmes. In just 90 minutes using a game format teams are able to work together to create a visual ‘storyboard’ outlining the type and sequence of learning activities (both online and offline) required to meet the module’s learning outcomes. ABC is particularly useful for new programmes or those changing to an online or more blended format.
Multifunctional learning spaces, colorful interiors and small niches for concentration and contemplation. Rosan Bosch Studio has created an immaginative design for the newly built Vittra school Brotorp in Stockholm
Did you know that users are more likely to choose, buy and use products that meet their needs as opposed to products that just meet their wants? An Empathy map will help you understand your user’s needs while you develop a deeper understanding of the persons you are designing for. There are many techniques you can use to develop this kind of empathy. An Empathy Map is just one tool that can help you empathise and synthesise your observations from the research phase, and draw out unexpected insights about your user’s needs.
An Empathy Map allows us to sum up our learning from engagements with people in the field of design research. The map provides four major areas in which to focus our attention on, thus providing an overview of a person’s experience. Empathy maps are also great as a background for the construction of the personas that you would often want to create later.
An Empathy Map consists of four quadrants. The four quadrants reflect four key traits, which the user demonstrated/possessed during the observation/research stage. The four quadrants refer to what the user: Said, Did, Thought, and Felt. It’s fairly easy to determine what the user said and did. However, determining what they thought and felt should be based on careful observations and analysis as to how they behaved and responded to certain activities, suggestions, conversations, etc.
We designed the Empathy Map at XPLANE many years ago, as part of a human-centered design toolkit we call Gamestorming. This particular tool helps teams develop deep, shared understanding and empathy for other people. People use it to help them improve customer experience, to navigate organizational politics, to design better work environments, and a host of other things.
These standards provide a measure of quality assurance for online courses in order to serve the e-learning needs of Penn State students. They are directed to departments and colleges that wish to share online courses with other campuses or with students external to a Penn State geographic location via Penn State’s World Campus or e-Learning Cooperative.
Purpose
The Quality Assurance e-Learning Design Standards are intended to provide a measure of quality assurance for online courses in order to serve the e-learning needs of Penn State students. These standards are directed to departments and colleges that wish to share online courses with other campuses or with students external to a Penn State geographic location via Penn State’s World Campus or e-Learning Cooperative.
This article will teach you two popular design workshop techniques: empathy mapping and user journey mapping. Empathy mapping is a way to characterise your target users in order to make effective design decisions. User journey mapping is a way to deconstruct a user’s experience with a product or service as a series of steps and themes. Put simply, these methods encourage your stakeholders to think about user needs effectively, identifying pain points and opportunities in a systematic and straightforward way.
S. Warburton, и Y. Mor. EuroPLoP'22: 27th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, New York, NY, United States, Association for Computing Machinery, (2022)