Learning objectives

• User-Centered Design (UCD): Master the principles and processes of product development with a focus on intelligent product design.
• Research Methodologies: Competently apply qualitative and quantitative methods to identify user needs.
• Data-Driven Analysis: Utilize statistical techniques and probability models to analyze user behavior and support design decisions.
• Prototyping & Evaluation: Develop design concepts into prototypes and conduct scientific user testing or controlled experiments for iteration.
• Professional Communication: Effectively present design ideas through both verbal reporting and non-verbal techniques (sketching, diagramming).
• Ethics & Inclusion: Understand the ethical norms of user research and commit to creating inclusive designs that serve diverse user backgrounds.

Main content

• Foundations: Product life cycle, market research, and the history of IT product design and User-Centered Design.
• User Research: Interview and observation, task analysis, analysis of behavioral patterns, questionnaires, and reliability/validity testing for qualitative and quantitative data.
• Statistical Analysis: Descriptive statistics, linear regression, and hypothesis testing.
• Design goals and conceptual design: Quality Function Deployment (QFD), function analysis, morphological chart.
• Testing & Iteration: delphi methods, AHP, heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, usability testing, and controlled experiments, and usability testing to validate and refine solutions.

Teaching history

I taught this course across multiple semesters from 2022 to 2026.