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.
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:
- Produce your finished final project work (see the project specifications)
April 21, 2008: Beginning the Final Project
In class:
- Review our revenue models
Homework:
- Create a first draft of your final project (see the project specifications)
- Here’s a couple examples of attractive concept layout that might inspire you as you start thinking
about your final project…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:
- 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:
- 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:
- Illustration with no text (Business Link)
- Process photos and CAD drawings (Crisis management and radiation testing)
- Mood board style (McDonalds)
- Single-panel story (Space Elevator)
Resources:
- 22 Panels That Always Work
- Microsoft’s Clip Art Gallery Live
- 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:
- Revise your business models based on our in-class discussion (see Tweaking Our Business Model), including:
- State which of the three generic strategies your product follows
- 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:
- 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)
Spring Break! Class does not meet.
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:
- Read
- What the CEO Wants You to Know, by Ram Charan, Part II (Chapters 4-5)
- BCG Growth-Share Matrix, a 1-page summary of the “cash cow” model we talked about in class.
- Porter’s Generic Strategies, a short review of the three generic strategies we discussed.
- Blue Ocean Strategy, the Wikipedia summary.
In class:
- Attend the Chip Kidd lecture
- Discuss the lecture and how marketing and client relationships influence the design of his work
Homework:
- 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.
- Read
- What the CEO Wants You to Know, by Ram Charan, Part I (Chapters 1-3)
- A C.E.O. Sells the Store “Visiting stores, quizzing the staff, critiquing everything in sight — and most of all, meeting customers — is at the core of how Mr. Drexler runs J. Crew.”
- Company Building for Eight-Year Olds. If an eight-year old can do it, you can too!
- Wanted: VPs of Design More designers are reaching the executive ranks. But where are they getting the general business knowhow they need?
In class:
- Watch some user research videos…
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Victor was sick :-( — no class.
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:
- Review and become familiar with the primary research process
- Read this primer on primary research
- Review the Jan Chipchase presentation for inspiration
- Create a physical mock-up of your concept that can be used for primary research.
- Create a plan to use your mock-up to do primary research.
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.
- Find at least 5 key ideas that give you a better understanding of the topic (for example, tours of college campuses)
- Find at least 5 key insights about how your concept could work, the technology, customer experience, etc. (for example, a tour using electronic paper)
- For each research idea or insight, record it as shown in the example research points (though hopefully yours will look more attractive than mine)
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:
- Read and become familiar with the secondary research process
In class:
- Introductions / class housekeeping
- Eat snacks
- Get an overview of the class
Homework:
- Read ALTERNATIVES: Exploring Information Appliances through Conceptual Design Proposals
- Create your own design concept…
- that helps people explore the Pratt Brooklyn campus
- that is highly improbable but still possible
- that is expressed simply as in the reading with 1. a title, 2. an illustration or photo, and 3. a two paragraph description