Apply the skills you learned during the sequence of courses -- from needfinding to visual design -- as you redesign a new interface, service, or product for your Interaction Design Capstone Project. We’re working with some exciting design teams in Silicon Valley across multiple industries to develop real-world design challenges for this final project. Upon completion, you will have a polished capstone project you can share in your design portfolio to highlight your work and document your design process.
Offered By

About this Course
Learner Career Outcomes
29%
50%
38%
Skills you will gain
Learner Career Outcomes
29%
50%
38%
Offered by

University of California San Diego
UC San Diego is an academic powerhouse and economic engine, recognized as one of the top 10 public universities by U.S. News and World Report. Innovation is central to who we are and what we do. Here, students learn that knowledge isn't just acquired in the classroom—life is their laboratory.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Design Thinking Capstone
Welcome to the Interaction Design Capstone Project!
Needfinding
As Yogi Berra said, you can observe a lot just by watching. Watching how people do things is a great way to learn their goals and values, and come up with design insight. We call this needfinding. This module trains your eyes and ears to come up with user needs, breakdowns, clever hacks, and opportunities for improvement.
Ideation
To maximize your chances of having a great idea, it helps to generate a lot of ideas. Brainstorming is a strategy for rapidly generating lots of ideas. It was named by advertising executive Alex Osborn in his 1953 book, Applied Imagination. When brainstorming, go for volume and defer judgment. Often, something that seems like a crazy idea can lead to something that’s a really good idea. Immerse yourself: it can help to use a whiteboard, butcher paper, or stick post-its on a wall. These ideas will become the 'soil' for growing your designs.
Prototype
Prototyping is the pivotal activity that structures innovation, collaboration, and creativity in design. Prototyping gets ideas out of your head and into the world. Like a conversation, your ideas will evolve as you articulate them and make them concrete. Prototypes are quick and dirty, not careful museum pieces. The key to prototyping is to jump right in. It’s a tool to see what’s working, what challenges emerge, and to share your ideas with others. Review the user needs you brainstormed. In this assignment, you will flesh out your design ideas by storyboarding and making paper prototypes.
Reviews
TOP REVIEWS FROM INTERACTION DESIGN CAPSTONE PROJECT
This course provides you step-by-step approach from ideation to the complete prototype. It helped to build my confidence for future design projects, and there are still a lot left too learn.
Awesome experience. What I loved the most was getting classmates from all around the world and getting enriched with their wide insights and points of view.
This course is amazing! It is well prepered and full of details I couldn’t find in other courses. And also I got many helpful comments from my peers
I enjoyed every week in this project, having the opportunity to experience each stage to finally get a tangible prototype was awesome.
About the Interaction Design Specialization
You will learn how to design technologies that bring people joy, rather than frustration. You'll learn how to generate design ideas, techniques for quickly prototyping them, and how to use prototypes to get feedback from other stakeholders like your teammates, clients, and users. You'll also learn principles of visual design, perception, and cognition that inform effective interaction design.

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