Class Agendas + Homework
Spring 2019
Class 1: Introduction to AI
Date: 01/22 | Location: DFA 4.106
Lecture: We’ll start with the basics to know about this class, then buckle up, the first lecture is a doozey, but it’s fun with lots of crazy stories, videos, and sci-fi homages! We’ll will cover the history, current state, essential concepts, ethics, challenges, and future visions surrounding Artificial Intelligence.
Discussion and Q&A
Homework 1
Listen:
Read:
Write:
Write a Medium story describing your own predictions, hopes, fears, and crazy possibilities for the future of AI — 100 years from now.
Class 2: What can AI do + Roles on AI teams
Date: 01/29 | Location: DFA 4.106
Lecture: In this class we will take a look at how AI is being used today and what’s coming tomorrow. We’ll also look into the typical roles on an AI Development team, the tools teams use, and the more technical side of how AI applications are built.
Discussion and Q&A
Reference:
Homework 2
Read:
Write:
Write a Medium story describing two visionary ideas you’d like to see AI be able to achieve one day, be it tomorrow or 100 years from now. Include a description of:
- the problem or opportunity this idea solves for
- who your users would be
- what they would love about it
- what the challenges in creating it will be from an ethics standpoint
Class 3: Creating a Value Proposition for an AI Product
Date: 02/05 | Location: DFA 4.106
Lecture: Learn how to begin ideating a problem to solve with you team as well as how to create a Value Proposition for your product idea.
Discussion and Q&A
In Class: You’ll be assigned to a team of 5–7 people that will play the following roles — Product Managers, Designers, Engineers, and Researchers. These will be your teammates for the rest of the semester.
As a team, choose the AI Problem you’re going to focus on for the semester
Download: Value Proposition Design book
Download: Class 3 Presentation
Homework 3A
Read
Write
As an individual, write a Medium post describing what you envision your role to be should you end up working on an AI team one day. What types of research, experiences, or products would you want to create? How do you foresee AI effecting the field you’re majoring in? Based on your major and your own talents, what do you think you’d be awesome at contributing to this AI team? Is there anyone out there today already doing this job you can watch and learn from? What worries you and inspires you about this job you’ve just imagined?
Homework 3B
The Concept Proposal
1. As a team, brainstorm and choose two problems with potential for being solved with AI. Pick problems that you can research in person with users. Make sure you are interested in solving this problem for this user.
2. As a team, write a Medium story explaining TWO concept proposals using the Value Proposition Design framework that you want to pursue for the topic of your final project. Include Customer Profile Map, Value Map, and your Elevator Pitch.
Be clear about why you care about this problem and why AI is a good way to solve for it.
Tip to succeed here:
- You should be able to identify the user and have relatively easy access for research, to this type of user.
- Don’t worry about scope. Try going “out there” as much as possible with your ideas. I will help you bring those ideas to reality.
- Make sure you are interested in solving this problem for this user.
Class 4: Accessibility and bias in AI
Date: 02/12| Location: DFA 4.106
Lecture: Learn about the complexities and multifaceted layers of designing AI that that takes humanities diversity into consideration.
Discussion and Q&A
In class: Review of Value Proposition homework
Homework
Read
Write
Based on the problem your team has chosen to solve, identify areas where you see opportunity for addressing accessibility and bias in your design. As an individual, write a Medium post describing how you will account for your own biases in your research and towards what the solution should be.
Class 5: Intro to Strategic Research
Date: 02/19| Location: Online class!
Lecture: How to plan for and execute your research plan
In class work: Work with your team on the homework assignments below.
Design Research Principles Resource >
Design Research Methods Resource >
Download: Class 5 Presentation >
Download: Example of a Research Report >
Important note: 20% of your grade for the Research Report will be determined by your peer evaluations. This can make a significant difference in your final grade. Be a good teammate by showing up, participating, collaborating, leading, and contributing to the workload. SRSLY.
Homework 5
1. Create Your Research Plan
As a team, complete the design your Research plan and post as a Medium article. Include in your article:
- Your user, business, and problem frame
- Research objectives/goals/what you want to learn
- What “prove me wrong data” will you be looking for
- Secondary research resources you’ll investigate
- Methods of primary research you’ll be using
- 3 week schedule of events and their owners
- How you plan to collect/record data
2. Interview script and exercise design
As a team, write the first draft of your interview script and exercises and post as a Medium article. Remember these things your script should include in addition to your own problem space specific questions:
- an introduction about who you are, your goals for the interview, and if you have their permission to take pics, video, or audio
- questions/tasks for understanding your user’s primary and outlier traits
- questions/tasks for defining their ecosystem of apps, devices, and data
- questions/tasks for understanding their journey in solving for your problem space with current technology available
- questions/tasks for understanding their wishes and pain points
3. As a team, conduct the first week of your Research Plan
This should consist of both primary and secondary research activities. The work and accountability should be distributed across team members.
Class 6: Research Progress Review
Date: 02/26| Location: DFA 4.112
In class work: Give the class an update on your research plan progress and get feedback for next steps.
Download: Class 6 Presentation >
Get your student Mural account >
Homework 6
As a team, capture and synthesize your research findings up to this point into the first draft of your final presentation that you will share as a team with the class next Tuesday.
Research Presentation Outline
I. Original Concept Proposal
- Original elevator pitch
- Original solution description and specifications
II. Research Report
- Overview of your research plan
- User Personas
- As-is journey map and pain points
- 5–10 insights you discovered during research, supported with key statistics or quotes from users
- Experience Principles
III. Updated Concept Proposal
- Revised elevator pitch
- Revised solution description and specifications
Class 7: Research Report 1:1 Team Feedback
Date: 03/05 | Location: DFA 4.106
Teams will work together on refining their final Research Report, due the following week.
Homework 7
Your team will have 30 minutes for your presentation, including time for questions from your classmates. Components of your grade:
- Quality of product strategy feasibility and elevator pitch — 20 pts
- Design and execution of primary and secondary research plan — 20 pts
- Relevance of resulting insights and experience principles — 20 pts
- Overall preparedness of presentation and ability to respond to audience questions — 20 pts
- Peer Reviews — 20 pts
Class 8: Research Report Presentations
Date: 03/12 | Location: DFA 4.106
Each team will present their Project and Research Reports to the class. Team members will submit peer review feedback and scores.
Homework 8
Part 1: Submit your peer reviews through email.
Part 2: Earn IBM’s Design Thinking Practitioner Badge
Spring Break: No Class
Date: 03/19
Class 9: Kickoff: AI Design Strategy
Date: 03/26 | Location: DFA 4.106
Lecture: An introduction to Design Thinking for AI. Get the Final Presentation assignment.
Discussion and Q&A
In Class: Begin to work through the exercises in the Mural board.
Download: Class 9 Presentation >
Download: AI Design Guide
Join: Free Mural subscription for students
Get Started: AI Design Thinking Mural Board Template
In class exercise
- Sign up for the free student version of Mural.
- Use the AI Design Thinking Mural Template to start your board.
- As a team, begin to work on completing the first three AI Design Exercises.
Final Presentation Assignment: 100 pts
You’ll be presenting in front of an audience. You have 30 minutes for your presentation, including time for questions from the audience.
Your presentation should be in the style of a pitch, not a book report. Do not do a boring walk thru of what we did in class. Every assignment you’ve completed up to this point is fodder to use in your final presentation. You are not required to include any of those elements verbatim, but they hopefully provide you with what you need to tell and support your concept story.
Focus on what you think the audience needs to know to understand your concept from start to finish. Test it on a few people. Get it so that anyone you show it to understands it. Then you’re probably in good shape.
Example Finals:
Grading Criteria
- Cohesiveness and clarity of storytelling to quickly establish empathy for the problem, who the user you’re focusing on is, key points of your concept/user journey, and product strategy — 20 pts
- Your concept’s success in using AI Design Thinking to create a new, valuable, user focused solution — 20 pts
- Your concept’s accuracy in it’s use of AI capabilities — 20 pts
- Overall preparedness of presentation and ability to respond to audience questions — 20 pts
- Peer Reviews — 20 pts
Final Presentation Outline Example
Part 1: Introduction Section
1. Team introductions
2. Emotional story connecting the audience to the Problem Statement from Press Release. Who’s your user? What are their key traits? Why are you focusing on this user/problem/business frame?
Part 2: Research Insights, Strategy, User Journey
- Elevator Pitch or Solution statement from your Press Release
- Key insights from research report that drove your solution
- Elevator pitch statement / Subheading from Press Release. Use your Introduction + Solution Statements from Press Release to inform the story of your user journey
- Take us through the user journey of your product experience step-by-step
- Explain the Experience Principles / Big Idea Vignette Themes you centered around by calling out key moments, features, results from your demo that demonstrate how you delivered on the key insights and experience principles
Part 3: Considerations
- Technology descriptions, architecture models and data sources
- Accessibility
- Bias
- Ethics
- Privacy and security
Part 4: The Future
Where you see this idea going in the future
Homework 9
On your own read:
As a team:
Complete first three exercises of the AI Design Exercises in Mural.
Class 10: Big Ideas + Press Release + User Journey Storyboards
Date: 04/02 | Location: DFA 4.106
Lecture: Discuss how to use the As-is AI Opportunities and Big Idea Vignette exercises.
In class: Teams will work together on their Mural boards.
Download: Class 10 Presentation >
Homework 10
As a team, exercises 3 and 4 in your Mural Board.
Class 11: Prototyping, Test, Repeat — demoing your user journey
Date: 04/09 | Location: DFA 4.106
Guest Speaker: Lee Brenner, Principal Design Lead @ Duo Security
Lee will discuss the Agile approach to designing a product and various methods for prototyping, testing and revising.Discussion and Q&A
In class: Teams will work together on finalizing their User Journey, specifically defining how they’re going to design and build their demo, and getting feedback from guest experts.
Download: Class 11 Presentation
Learn: How to create a prototype with InVision
Learn: How to create animations in Keynote
Learn: How to complete your video prototype with Adobe Premiere
View: Example of a video demo prototype
View: Wander: Final presentation from Adv Design for AI Spring 2018
View: SpeakWOW: Final presentation from Adv Design for AI Fall 2018
Homework 11
Part 1
As a team, complete your To Be Journey, submit Mural link.
Part 2
Describe the vision or your final product by writing a Medium post using Amazon’s Press Release exercise.
“If the press release is hard to write, then the product is probably going to suck. Keep working at it until the outline for each paragraph flows. “
The Amazon Press release exercise>
Press Release Mural Template >
Advice:
- Keep it simple.
- 3–4 sentences for most paragraphs.
- Don’t make it into a spec.
- Accompany the press release with a FAQ.
- No Geek-Speak (Imagine you’re sitting on Oprah’s couch and have just explained the product to her, and then you listen as she explains it to her audience. That’s “Oprah-speak”, not “Geek-speak”.)
Part 3
As a team, create a storyboard of your user journey. This should include sketches of how you’ll be telling each frame of the story + aside moments for describing the solution/tech moments in the journey that form your cognitive experience.
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Extra Credit: 15 pts
Write a Medium article that describes your experience using the AI Design Thinking Exercises and Human-to-Machine Communication Model to create an AI experience. What worked well? What could’ve worked better? What would you change? Any tips for future users?
Class 12: Designing your final presentation
Date: 04/16 | Location: DFA 4.106
Guest Speakers: Kaley Coffield, Interaction Designer @ IBM, will be talking to us about storytelling and how to deliver a presentation that engages your audience.
In class: Lecture about storytelling, work on your storytelling exercise, discussion about presentation tips and techniques.
Download: Class Presentation 12 >
Homework 12
- Complete version 1 of the design and development of your Product Demo.
- Complete version 1 of your Final Presentation deck
- Be prepared to present your Final Presentation and Product Demo during the next class
Class 13: Working session
Date: 04/23 | Location: DFA 4.106
In Class: All work, all class. Collaborate with your team. Get feedback on your product journey concept.
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Extra Credit
For an extra 20 points, earn IBM’s Build Your Own Chatbot Badge by completing the 5–6 hour course. Not due until the last day of class!
Class 14: Working session
Date: 04/30 | Location: DFA 4.106
In Class: All work, all class. Collaborate with your team. Get feedback on your product journey concept.
Class 15: Final presentations!
Date: 05/07 | Location: Doty Fine Arts Library
Welcome to the Advanced Design for AI Finals! Each team has 30 minutes to present and answer questions. You’ll be presenting in front of a panel of AI experts. The top teams will win free entry into Fast Company’s Innovation Awards for 2019.
Final Presentations — 100 pts
Your team will have 30 minutes for your presentation, including time for questions from the audience. Components of your grade:
- Cohesiveness and clarity of storytelling to quickly establish empathy for the problem, who the user you’re focusing on is, key points of your concept/user journey, and product strategy — 20 pts
- Your concept’s success in using AI Design Thinking to create a new, valuable, user focused solution — 20 pts
- Your concept’s accuracy in it’s use of AI capabilities — 20 pts
- Overall preparedness of presentation and ability to respond to audience questions — 20 pts
- Peer Reviews — 20 pts
