This course will be based mostly on project work and design activities performed throughout the quarter. To supplement this activity, there will be a light amount of reading each week along with a reading reflection due most weeks at 5pm on Fridays. Reading reflections will count towards your overall participation grade and will be graded using the rubric listed below.

All PDFs needed for this course will be placed in this reading folder.

Instructions for Reading Reflections:

For every reading listed below, write a short reflection (200-400 words) to demonstrate you read the paper and thought about how it affects your design process. The reflections should be posted on Canvas by 5pm on Friday for each week of readings. Your reflections may include:

• Summarizing the paper's main ideas and discussing why they matter
• Saying what you learned or what surprised you about the material
• Critiquing the paper in terms of methodological, logical, technical, and ethical issues
• Pointing to other relevant work, such as additional papers for others to read
• Discussing how you might apply the paper's insights or methods to your own design activities this week

Reading list:

• Week 1: "Civic Design" by DiSalvo and Le Dantec
• Week 2: "Needfinding: The Why and How of Uncovering People's Needs" by Patnaik and Becker
• Week 3: "A Guide to Problem Framing" by Xiao
• Week 4: "Universal Methods of Design" (selected pages) by Martin and Hanington
• Week 5: "Rapidly Exploring Application Design through Speed Dating" by Davidoff, Lee, Dey and Zimmerman
• Week 6: "How Prototyping Practices Affect Design Results" by Dow
• Week 7: "What do Prototypes Prototype?" by Houde and Hill
• Week 8: "Crowdfunding: Why People Are Motivated to Post and Fund Projects on Crowdfunding Platforms" by Gerber, Hui, and Kuo

Grading Rubric for Reflections:

We will grade reading reflections on a simple 2-pt scale, giving each student an opportunity to earn up to 16 points (from 8 weeks of papers) for this aspect of the overall participation grade. Late submissions will get 50% credit.

• 2 pts: Your reflection exhibits a strong effort to gain insights from the paper and to connect with your own design experiences, as well as with other papers or online resources.
• 1 pt: Your reflection only shows a satisfactory effort to understand the paper and to share your own design experiences, and does not connect with additional papers or resources.
• 0: if you did not post a reflection.