Designing Aesthetic User Experiences
Course info
Programme
Staff
Course semester
Exam
Abstract
Creating aesthetic user experiences requires designers to pay attention to all the subjective, sensorial and emotional qualities that can make a design delightful, pleasant and interesting to users. This course offers a theoretical and methodological foundation for thinking about aesthetics in your design projects. The course is structured around practical design projects addressing challenges from external partners in the cultural sector and/or the creative industries.Description
An important part of designing attractive user experiences is aesthetics: That is, all the subjective, sensorial and emotional qualities that can make a design delightful, pleasant and interesting to users. This course offers a theoretical and methodological foundation for thinking about aesthetics in your design projects. The course is structured around practical design projects addressing challenges from external partners in the cultural sector and/or the creative industries.
Please note, that this is NOT a course in graphic design or (primarily) visual design. Our focus is on the aesthetic and experiential qualities in interactions with technology.
Themes:
- experience design,
- humanistic HCI,
- HCI in museums,
- hybrid design,
- meaning-making.
Formal prerequisites
This course is an elective on the 3rd semester of the MSc in Digital Design and Interactive Technologies.
Students interested in enrolling in this course are expected to have followed KDDIT 1st semester courses in design and programming or similar.
Intended learning outcomes
After the course, the student should be able to:
- Create innovative user experiences for entertainment and/or cultural purposes (e.g. for employers in the creative and cultural industries, the cultural sector etc.)
- Apply theory about aesthetics and experience design to practical design of user experiences
- Build, test and evaluate experience prototypes with emphasis on their experiential qualities
Learning activities
Project work, lectures,
exercises, feedback, peer-to-peer feedback
Course literature
The course literature is published in the course page in LearnIT.
Student Activity Budget
Estimated distribution of learning activities for the typical student- Preparation for lectures and exercises: 20%
- Lectures: 15%
- Exercises: 15%
- Project work, supervision included: 40%
- Other: 10%
Ordinary exam
Exam type:C: Submission of written work, External (7-point scale)
Exam variation:
C1G: Submission of written work for groups
Semester projects, group report + individual essay (10-12 pages).
Group and individual
- Group size 3-5 students (expected)
reexam
Exam type:C: Submission of written work, External (7-point scale)
Exam variation:
C1G: Submission of written work for groups
Group and individual
- Group size 3-5 students (expected)