text: Designing Experience is a studio course that delves into the intricacies of desirable, feasible, and viable user experience design across various domains such as service, interaction, and business design. The course aims to address common barriers to effective communication and resistance from users and clients through developing a sense of comfort with user confusion and best practices for eliminating such dynamics. Through a student-driven demographic study, students will investigate, research, and develop empathy for the needs of users. The course will require students to generate multiple user experience concepts in response to identified user problems, with the aim of refining a final design direction and user experience outcome based on the findings of their research.
  In addition to gaining an understanding of user needs, behaviours, and biases, students in this course will also explore best practices for efficiently testing within specific user demographics. The course places a strong emphasis on adapting and refining user experience outcomes throughout the design and prototyping process. Furthermore, students will be expected to develop a deep understanding of the context in which their user demographic exists, through research and testing. This understanding will be consolidated throughout the course, enabling students to design user experiences that are tailored to the specific needs and behaviours of their target audience.
  This studio course exposes students to best practices and processes for creating world-class digital experiences and equips them with the techniques necessary to solve real-world problems. The course also incorporates digital communication and presentation strategies to help students become comfortable communicating their ideas and designs in high-stakes contexts. Upon completion of the course, students will have established, consolidated, and developed a significant level of awareness, knowledge, and skills that will serve as the foundation for their ongoing journey as user experience designers, as well as a methodology that will complement their overall creative pathway in becoming established as design professionals.
  In this studio course, students will engage in a range of activities, including conducting user research, journey mapping, developing user profiles, interface design, prototyping, commercial validation, and presenting results in the form of an experiential business case. Additionally, students will be expected to effectively communicate the various stages of this process, both within the course projects and to their peers.
  Project 01: Research
  Project 02: Design Direction
  Project 03: SKO
  Designing With Ambiguity,
  Part I: Establishing An Experience And Design Principles