Pratt COMD – Business & Design, Spring 2008

Victor Lombardi
Feel free to contact me with questions or comments…

  • email: victor (at) victorlombardi.com
  • AIM: vittoriolombardi
  • mobile: 347.249.9470

You can download the Class Overview that we reviewed our first class.



May 5, 2008: Innovation

In class (the last one!):

  • Email your final project
  • David J. Walczyk, Assistant Professor in Pratt’s Cultural Informatics Design Lab will be here to talk to us about the diffusion of innovation.

Here’s some of the final projects:



April 28, 2008: Refining Our Final Project

In class:

  • Review the rough versions of our final projects

Homework:

  1. Produce your finished final project work (see the project specifications)


April 21, 2008: Beginning the Final Project

In class:

  • Review our revenue models

Homework:

  1. Create a first draft of your final project (see the project specifications)
  2. Here’s a couple examples of attractive concept layout that might inspire you as you start thinking
    about your final project…

    1. Navitas
    2. Bluebird

    I *don’t* expect to you generate 3D renderings of your product. But both
    of these layouts illustrate effective ways of positioning beautiful images
    along with smart text, and that’s something I do expect.



April 14, 2008: Revenue Models

In class:

  • Get back our quizzes and review them
  • Review our storyboards
  • Discuss how to create a revenue model for our concepts

Homework:

  1. Research the revenue and cost aspects of our concepts and create a simple revenue model following the example in the class (Excel version, PDF version)


April 7, 2008: Creating Storyboards

In class:

  • Meet at the library, basement level, for a 1-hour research tutorial with Holly Wilson, a Research & Instruction Librarian
  • Talk about the specs for our final project (see the project specifications)
  • Talk about storyboarding
  • Review the changes to our business models

Homework:

  1. Sketch a 10-panel storyboard of the consumers’ experience of your concept, plus write down any key aspects of the consumer experience that isn’t captured by the storyboard.

Examples:

  1. Illustration with no text (Business Link)
  2. Process photos and CAD drawings (Crisis management and radiation testing)
  3. Mood board style (McDonalds)
  4. Single-panel story (Space Elevator)

Resources:

  1. 22 Panels That Always Work
  2. Microsoft’s Clip Art Gallery Live
  3. Comic-like stock art from Sun Microsystems (10MB download)


March 31, 2008: Research and Refine Our Business Models

In class:

  • Watch a Gordon Ramsay video about saving a restaurant business
  • Diagram the business model of the restaurant
  • Review and revise our business models

Homework:

  1. Revise your business models based on our in-class discussion (see Tweaking Our Business Model), including:
    1. State which of the three generic strategies your product follows
    2. Name your fictitious company that is designing the concept and include it in the business model


March 24, 2008: Illustrating Our Business Models

In class:

  • Field trip to Luigi’s Pizza to observe their operations and customers’ experience
  • Discuss what we observed, identify problems, and use brainstorming and a Yes, And… exercise to generate ideas to solve the problems.
  • Diagram Luigi’s business model
  • Review the last quiz
  • Take a quiz based on the reading

Homework:

  1. Draw a business model of your Pratt Campus Tour concept. You can do it for your existing concept, or you can create a new concept if you weren’t happy with the old one. Here’s an example business model for my concept. (.pdf file)


March 17, 2008

Spring Break! Class does not meet.



March 10, 2008

In class:

  • Review our Coffee Shop results
  • Take a quiz based on the reading
  • Look at how business fundamentals play out in different types of design projects

Homework:

  1. Read


March 3, 2008

In class:

  • Attend the Chip Kidd lecture
  • Discuss the lecture and how marketing and client relationships influence the design of his work

Homework:

  1. Play Coffee Shop
    • Play the whole game (for 14 “days”) and try to make as much money as you can.
    • When you’re done take a screen shot of the screen showing your dollar total and email it to me, or print it and bring it to the next class.
    • Whoever makes the most money wins a prize. But most importantly I want you to understand how different decisions about making coffee results in different business performance.
  2. Read


February 25, 2008

In class:

  • Watch some user research videos…
    1. Digital Camera Test — Notice how the researcher asks the participant to do a task, then watches as he struggles without helping him, observing what it’s really like for someone to try and do that task.
    2. Interact With The Neighbors — A more elaborate test of a system that explores a new way to let neighbors interact. You can learn a lot from the emotional reactions the participants have to the activities.
    3. Paper Prototype — The mock-up is so simple and rudimentary, yet it allows the researcher to get great feedback on how people will interact with the machine and the language used.
    4. A GPS-Based Tour Device — Testing a product in the field can reveal unexpected things; the users may have trouble hearing a video in a noisy room, or that they didn’t get enough orientation at the start of the tour.
    5. You can find more examples by searching YouTube for terms like user test
  • Look at our mock-ups and discuss our primary research plans

Homework:

  • Conduct your primary research, according to the plans we’ve made over the past two weeks.
  • You should end up with a research summary, following the example we reviewed in class. Most importantly, you should have an answer to your key research question. Bring in the summary and your mock-up next week.


February 18, 2008

Victor was sick :-( — no class.



February 11, 2008

In class:

  • Check in on the secondary research assignment
  • Talk about the primary research process
  • Review our concepts, secondary research, and outline our primary research as a group

Homework:



February 4, 2008

In class:

  • A visit from Mary Quandt, a product manager on the MarthaStewart.com design team. Mary will talk about her background, her position, and one of her design projects
  • Talk about the secondary research process

Homework:

  • Review the secondary research process from last week and the example research points from this week
  • Conduct secondary research of your concept from week 1.
    1. Find at least 5 key ideas that give you a better understanding of the topic (for example, tours of college campuses)
    2. Find at least 5 key insights about how your concept could work, the technology, customer experience, etc. (for example, a tour using electronic paper)
    3. For each research idea or insight, record it as shown in the example research points (though hopefully yours will look more attractive than mine)


January 29, 2008

In class:

  • Housekeeping: look at the textbook
  • Watch a video of an IDEO project (and eat dinner, if you brought it)
  • Discuss the conceptual design process
  • See sample conceptual design deliverables
  • Review the conceptual design homework
  • Review a secondary research presentation (towards the end of these slides)
  • Discuss the secondary research process

Homework:



January 14, 2008

In class:

  • Introductions / class housekeeping
  • Eat snacks
  • Get an overview of the class

Homework:


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