Design
ThinkingCornell

Certificate Program

The material in this course was developed in response to the friction created while trying to blend design thinking with traditional systems engineering. The resulting formula is a hybrid process that offers efficiency and effectiveness -- not just for engineers, but for anyone engaged in addressing problems of significant complexity.

In this course you will begin an empathy-based process that leads you to a solution which serves a broad, diverse user base. Along the way, you will identify key stakeholders who will drive critical decisions later in the design cycle. Your process begins when you identify an opportunity and develop a challenge statement summarizing what you are trying to do along with your aspirations. From there, you will gather support for your idea and refine your intent. Your effort will culminate in presentation-ready document that summarizes and describes in detail the challenge you are trying to address and what you hope to achieve by taking on the challenge.

In this course you will conduct fieldwork to collect information about the users whose needs you are trying to meet within a challenge and empathy space that you have defined. You will venture out into the empathy field and observe and interact with people to gain the insight you need. Ultimately the insights gained from this fieldwork will help you develop a robust model of your users' needs, expectations, and connections with one another.

The following course is required to be completed before taking this course:

• Identifying and Framing a Challenge

In this course you will convert the raw data from your empathy fieldwork to create a powerful problem definition that sets the right context for brainstorming solutions. You will prepare a physical or virtual space in which you will thoughtfully unpack your observations to create a robust record of your experiences in the field.

You will apply methods to extract empathy data from first, second, and third person empathy experiences. You will then distill this data into a series of needs, insights, and surprises that will drive creativity and innovation later in the process. At the same time, you will analyze the empathy data to identify patterns and connections within and among your observations.

The resulting model is rich with not only qualitative data such as user personas, but also quantitative results that can be reviewed and shared throughout the remainder of the process. The act of constructing this model can bring into sharp focus the defining features of your problem.

The following courses are required to be completed before taking this course:

• Identifying and Framing a Challenge
• Gathering User Emotions

In this course you will build on the extraction and interpretation of emotional data generated while unpacking observations. You will work through the personas that you previously defined and situate these in context diagrams that examine the relationships between individual users and the problem space. You will also use emotional relationship data maps and flow of thoughts to create capabilities diagrams that crystallize the needs your system must address.

With an actionable model of your problem in place, you will engage in a series of brainstorming sessions that use as their core inspiration the personas, capabilities diagrams, and context diagrams. From this process you will gather ideas that will propel you toward the creative solutions in your problem space.

The following courses are required to be completed before taking this course:

• Identifying and Framing a Challenge
• Gathering User Emotions
• Crafting User Narratives

In this course you will evolve a first design, called design zero, for your problem. Your design zero builds on all the prior work, including your capabilities diagrams and the brainstorming sessions you recently completed. You will create visualizations of your personas in action called persona concept sketches. You will use other modified systems engineering tools to document your product features.

From this point, you will create rough prototypes and role play as end users who are working with these prototypes. From this process you will learn about your product's strengths and shortcomings.

The following courses are required to be completed before taking this course:

• Identifying and Framing a Challenge
• Gathering User Emotions
• Crafting User Narratives
• Generating User-Centered Solutions

In this course you will test your design zero, which is the culmination of the design process leading up to this point. In the testing process you will use tools similar to those used when gathering emotional data. In a similar way, you will end up collecting needs, insights, and surprises along with tensions, contradictions, and synergies. The purpose here is to hone in on a viable system that truly meets user needs.

The gathering and analysis of user data will point you in the direction of a refinement of your design zero, which is referred to as design one. Your design one may look deeper into product details, and it may also lead to subtle refinements or radical changes. Your design one is the starting point for a subsequent round of testing, and in adopting this approach you will see how iterative development brings your system closer to the best possible product for your users.

The following courses are required to be completed before taking this course:

• Identifying and Framing a Challenge
• Gathering User Emotions
• Crafting User Narratives
• Generating User-Centered Solutions
• Design Prototyping