This course introduces students to the concepts, methods, techniques, and theory of visual design in the context of creating digital products. Students will analyze examples, past and present, of form in relationship to content on web and mobile. From there, they will learn and practice basic principles for typography, color, and composition through prototyping, visual iteration, and critique. Brand elements, UX principles, accessibility, user research, and pattern libraries will be discussed.
You will not be a full-fledged, "full-stack" digital product designer at the conclusion of this five-week course. You will, however, understand better how and why we should care about how people experience our products, and how seemingly arbitrary design decisions are in fact not arbitrary, and have consequences. We will be both working at the micro-scale (typography, color, form) and at the macro-scale (design patterns, accessibility, ethics) towards this understanding. You will understand better what makes a good designer, so that you’re not just relying on job titles to figure out who knows what. We will also work towards habits of seeing and of critique that will make you a better collaborator with other disciplines.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
– Contextualize digital product design within the history and current state of a broader range of design practices
– Appreciate and articulate the importance of brand identity and design systems in the making of digital products
– Assess and articulate good and bad design practices in terms of user experience, accessibility, and ethics
– Practice basic design principles for typography, color, composition, and user flows using contemporary prototyping tools
Student responsibilities:
– Come to all classes ready to engage and give feedback
– Complete readings and assignments (to be added to a shared artifacts sheet)
– As with Product studio, absolutely no use of digital devices in class, except for in-class exercises
Grading:
– Bad/good UX: 20%
– Exercises: 60%
– Final prototype: 20%
Schedule:
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Introduction: what is design? Tuesday, January 22
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A short history of design tools, setting up a workflow Thursday, January 24
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Color and composition Tuesday, January 29
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Typography Part 1 Thursday, January 31
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Typography Part 2 Tuesday, February 5
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User experience Tuesday, February 12: This class will be held in the Bloomberg Auditorium
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Product design Tuesday, February 19
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Branding and design systems Tuesday, March 5
Class structure:
9:30am–9:40am: UX good/bad/ugly (10min)
9:40am–10:20am: Lecture (40min)
10:20am–10:45am: Q&A/Exercise (25min)
Software and tools:
Design software in general and prototyping software in particular is a changing, and contested space. For this class, we will be using Figma, which is a newer workflow, in part because it's available on Mac and PC and has an easy learning curve. Please set up an account at https://www.figma.com/. (If you have front-end coding skills, you may also want to check out Framer, but we won't be doing anything in the scope of this class that requires front-end coding.)