Week 1

Intro to Design

Why Design Matters

  • Bad design can be confusing and even dangerous
  • e.g., bug spray packaged like cooking oil
  • e.g., Glen Cinema Disaster (fire alarm and exits poorly designed, led to deaths)
  • Good design = intuitive, safe, usable
  • Always ask: what purpose is this serving?

Core Principles

  • Constraints — physical, logical, or cultural rules that guide use
  • Affordances — clues that signal how something can be used
  • Context — who is using it, where, and why

Design is creating something to serve a purpose.

Interfaces

  • Interface = boundary where user and system exchange information
  • Good vs bad design depends on context (task, user, motivation)
  • Bad design is more noticeable than good design
  • No “universally good” UI — design involves tradeoffs, best to focus on your most common user rather than pleasing everyone

UX and UI

UX (User Experience)
- Research, testing, planning
- Personas, user stories, journeys, usability testing, wireframes
- Prototyping is iterative and essential
- Goal: understand user behavior and motivations

UI (User Interface)
- How the user interacts with the product
- Focus on aesthetics: layout, typography, colour, branding, interaction design

Workflow
1. UX team: research, personas, testing, wireframes
2. UI team: apply branding, layout, typography, colours to wireframes
3. Developers: build the product from designs

HCI (Human–Computer Interaction)
- Academic research area
- Many UX/UI principles come from HCI

Design Thinking Framework

  1. Empathize — research and discovery
  2. Define — who are we designing for, what hurdles exist
  3. Ideate — brainstorming solutions
  4. Prototype — low-cost, small-scale example for quick feedback

  5. Test — improve and refine

  6. Not linear — can start at any stage depending on the project

  7. Iterative — rarely perfect on the first try

Case study: baby warmer incubator bags for premature babies → affordable alternative to traditional incubators

Project

  • You will be “building” your own app during this course
  • Think like a startup: design something valuable to end users
  • Each lab feeds into the final project

Value Proposition

  • Framework for clarifying your idea
  • Write a problem statement and explain how your app solves it
  • Must show clear benefits for users, not just “better/faster/cooler”

Validating Assumptions

  • Don’t assume users want your solution — test it
  • Validate both the problem and the demand
  • Talk to real users, not just family and friends
  • Methods: interviews, landing pages, competitor analysis, MVPs
  • Goal: fail fast → save time and money if wrong

Entrepreneurship and Startups

  • Entrepreneurship: pursuit of opportunity regardless of resources (Howard Stevenson)
  • Startups: new ideas searching for business models
  • Lean Startup (Eric Ries, 2011): hypothesis-driven experimentation and iterative releases

Agile Methodology

  • Collaborative, adaptive, iterative project management
  • Cross-functional teams, short cycles, transparency
  • Embrace change, even late in process
  • Deliver working product frequently

Agile vs UX Design
- Pain points: UX treated as less important, misaligned goals
- Solutions: multidisciplinary teams, feature-focused work, clear alignment between devs and designers

Tips

Do’s
- Think big, start small
- Test hypotheses, build MVPs
- Be willing to pivot/change

Don’ts
- Rely on “going viral”
- Assume no competition
- Confuse idea with company
- Focus only on being “cool”