Human Centred Design - Objectives

Fundamental to Human Centred Design (HCD) is the principle that a designer considers human needs and wants as a higher priority than other influences throughout the design process. The success of a design depends on effectively considering the attitudes, expectations, motivations and experiences of humans. Designers use observations, interviews and experiences to acquire data about people and seek to avoid making assumptions about their needs and wants. You will use designing with empathy as an approach to define problems by understanding and experiencing the needs and wants of stakeholders. You are expected to interact with stakeholders throughout the process. Your ideas and design concepts should be evaluated throughout the process using feedback from stakeholders to determine suitability.

You will learn to:

1	describe the features that define HCD problems and design criteria.
2	represent ideas, design concepts and HCD information using schematic sketching, ideation sketching and low-fidelity prototyping in the explore and develop phases.
3	analyse needs and wants using data about stakeholders, existing designs and HCD information.
4	devise ideas using divergent thinking strategies in response to HCD problems in the develop phase.
5	synthesise ideas and HCD information to propose HCD concepts in the develop phase.
6	evaluate ideas and HCD concepts against design criteria to make refinements.
7	make decisions about and use visual, written and spoken communication for stakeholders.

The objectives correspond to the Design Process model we will be using throughout this course.