0 or 3 credits
Fall 2025 Laboratory Lecture Distance Learning Lower Division
Innovating in our complex world requires understanding people and the issues and challenges they face. This unique course brings together perspectives from technology and anthropology to address this by exploring ethnographic studies of people and technology interactions. Through this process, students will practice the problem scoping skills necessary to identify and define problems and begin to generate appropriate design solutions. In addition, students will learn how to observe and talk with people about technology and discuss a range of ways people use technology. Accordingly, the course will focus on human-centered design and how to empathize with people during the design process. This will allow students to learn how to identify opportunities for innovation that emerge when designers carefully observe and listen to humans using technology and/or experiencing problems with current technology. Note: This class engages the material in both the classroom and innovation labs.
Learning Outcomes1Identify opportunities for innovation that emerge from ethnographic studies and divergent thinking approaches to design.
2Apply diverse team approaches to address open-ended and ill-defined design problems.
3Describe and apply ethical decision-making to real-world design settings.
4Demonstrate documentation of the design process from ethnography through choosing a design idea to make, including fieldnotes, drawings and digital presentation techniques.
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