2015 NTHU Design Workshop(2): UX Workshop Content Creation

Assuming it would be the participants' first time experience, the workshop's content should be easy to understand and fun. In addition, learning by doing, it is what I believe the best way to learn.

Time management is really important at workshop. Therefore, after creating the content, I also considered the duration of time. There is only 3 hours, what did I want them to learn? I keep asking myself this question.

For UX, you have to think of empathy as putting ourselves in someone else's shoes. Obviously, my target audience is student. How to make students interested in learning?

I can't make everyone be inspired. It's impossible. I knew that.

In my opinion, I viewed this workshop as an experimental challenge. It was like giving them an appetizer, trying to arouse their interests. Let everyone enjoy the delightful afternoon. That would be my goal.

In Mandarin, there are four characteristics for good writing. It's called 起、承、轉、合

As a result, I came up with this agenda.

1. Introduction:

– Icebreaker: It help people get to know each other and buy into the purpose of the event.

– Introduction: An brief introduction of UX, my interpretation and examples
– Warm-up for brainstorming: let them to understand what's the difference between drawing in papers and Post-it notes

2. Body

Given a problem, they could go through the UX process

3. Conclusion

They would pitch their ideas to the class and I would give them feedback. Finally, recap the procedures and a takeaway ending.

For the icebreaker, I tried to let them to know each other and jump out of the box. They could use any thing in the classroom. Even they could use a pen to draw a line, that would be pretty brilliant.

Introduce myself and mentors

What is UX? I tried to lead them to think

An official introduction of UX

In my opinion, UX is just make our users happy by the easiest way

Why UX is important? Why do we need UX? I will give two examples to illustrate the idea.

Example (1)

Have you ever washed rice before cooking?
Don't you feel annoyed that the rice will lose when removing the water?

Can you tell the difference of these two designs?
What's that for?

It's a magical washing rice pot designed by VitaCraft,

manufacturer of multi-ply stainless steel cookware

Example (2)
Have you ever written answer sheet?
Teachers feel upset about students peeking at others' answers

Can you tell how the design is special?

Again, I asked them why UX is important? Why we need UX?

Empathy is the key of UX.
To listen, to understand, to put ourselves into others' shoes

Especially for Asian students, we usually jump into the solutions right away.

However, we should consider users and markets before ideation.

For instance, you could tell it was a nice restaurant
Spacious setting and beautiful decoration.
However, there was no customer. If you were the owner, what would you do?

We hired the best chief and created the best steak dishes.
We spent a lot. However, there was still no customer coming to our store.
Why?

Maybe, it's a family neighborhood, or even a retirement community .

Or, its' an Indian neighborhood. They don't even eat beef.

Therefore, before creating a design, is there any systematic thinking process?

Lean startup circle

We might think Steve Jobs is a genius. He could come up with fantastic ideas right away.

However, I do not think so. He must love to observe and empathize with users.
As a result, Apple could create products that customer feel easy to use and satisfy their needs.

Then, I would talk about my experience at different events. They were fun and I loved those contests.
That's why I want to let engineering students to experience, open their mind.

About the objective, it's important that the instructor should clearly state and define the goals.

What are you trying to achieve? What is most important?

The answers to these questions will determine your choice of teaching methods, the sequence for the learning activities, and the appropriate evaluation strategy.

workshop flow – body

After introduction, we started let the students go through UX process. Here is the brief UX process flow. At first, I will give them a problem. Instead of jumping into solutions, they should understand their target audience first by discovering user needs and creating customer journey map. Next, it's time for brainstorming and prototyping. Finally, students will give a 3-min pitch.

Are you ready to see how will the workshop be? Let's find it out in next article!