The course

The course ‘User Experience Theory and Practice’ was an elective investigating different methods of including the user into the design process. 

The initial stage was the reading of literature on the topic and identifying research methods which was also discussed within the lectures. Afterwards, groups of students had to come up with a concept or a past project to implement the knowledge they gained. The concept was then tested on different levels to achieve the final goal of developing a research tool for the design process that ensures a successful user centered outcome.

 

The outcome 

The design result was a phone case that displays a list and status of the user’s tasks on the back of the device. Users can ‘tick off’ their tasks through a set of physical sliders, connected to the to do list on

their phone. This provides more visibility for the tasks the user has to do, which in turn makes it harder for the user to forget their tasks. 

The research tool that was developed to support this concept was a mixture of user and self-interviews on the basis of storyboards.