Gilly Leshed is a senior lecturer in the Department of Information Science at Cornell. Her teaching and research interests are in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), in which she uses quantitative and qualitative methods and technology design to examine how individuals and groups accomplish tasks and socialize and the roles information technology plays in these interactions. She is particularly interested in designing interactive technologies that empower marginalized populations. Some of her works include visually-impaired users of social media, smallholder coffee farmers in Latin America, and Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. She is the Director of the Master of Professional Studies in Information Science, and is the faculty supervisor of the Design & Tech Initiative Project Team.
Course Overview
When designing a product, we must always consider the experience that the user will have while interacting with it, and we do this by visually sketching the product and our vision of how a user would interact with it. A pen-and-paper sketch helps us to conceptualize abstract design ideas more effectively, communicate these ideas to others, and get feedback. Regardless of your artistic skills, you can effectively, quickly, and inexpensively communicate design ideas by sketching; it is much faster (and cheaper) to modify or throw away a pen-and-paper sketch than a full prototype.
In this course, you will learn numerous techniques to improve your sketching skills in order to more clearly convey your design ideas and improve your design. In your course project, you will sketch many design ideas so that you can explore alternative ways of meeting the user requirements. You will also create a design concept based on one of those sketches, then expand the idea into a full scenario and storyboard of the user completing several tasks. Additionally, you will develop a user interface design concept to better envision how your users will actually interact with your design. Finally, you will update your sketches to better fit your user's mental model, as a designer's concept of the design doesn't always match with how a user thinks about it.
The following courses are required to be completed before taking this course:
- Human-Centered Design Essentials
- Effective User Research
- Creating User Personas
Key Course Takeaways
- Effectively sketch your ideas to help you explore the design space
- Express your design concept through scenarios and storyboards
- Develop the user interface (UI) for your design concept
- Explore the user's mental model to further improve the user interface
Download a Brochure
Not ready to enroll but want to learn more? Download the course brochure to review program details.How It Works
Course Author
Who Should Enroll
- Product managers
- Web designers
- Software developers
- Marketing professionals
- UI/UX designers
- Graphic designers
- Instructional designers
- Accessibility specialists
- Anyone focused on customer experience evaluation
100% Online
cornell's Top Minds
career