Welcome to this edition of Perspectives, the e-newsletter of the
Stanford course, Perspectives in Assistive
Technology.
What
is the course? - Perspectives in Assistive Technology is a
Winter Quarter course at Stanford that explores issues surrounding the design,
development, and use of assistive technology benefitting people with
disabilities and seniors. More information can be found on the course
website.
Invitation to attend - You are invited to attend
all class lectures. They will be held in the
Thornton Center - Classroom 110 on Tuesday
and Thursday afternoons at 4:15 to 5:30pm and are free and open to the
public.
Next class session - Tuesday, January 15th at
4:15pm:
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Need Finding for Assistive
Technologies
Gayle Curtis 1 &
John C. Tang, PhD 2
1 UX Design Consultant & 2 Microsoft
Research |
Abstract: When we look
at the drivers of innovation we see two complementary themes emerging: new
technologies or methods that open the way to new solutions, and new insights or
experiences that bring a better understanding of the problem. With a design
thinking approach, we first look to build empathy with the user and the
situation, then we use ideation, prototyping and iteration to explore,
formulate, and test solutions.
In this class session we will
go into more depth with the candidate projects and build our understanding of
the problem areas. We want to learn more about the user needs, goals, and
values around the problem, as well as the constraints and requirements of the
situation itself. One goal for this session is for you to identify a set of
questions that you want to address through interview and observation with real
users of assistive technologies, as well as some good ideas about people that
your team might talk to and work with to inspire both innovation and relevance
for your project.
Biosketches: Gayle
Curtis is a design consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area, specializing
in user interface architecture and design strategy for online ventures and
interactive products. Recently he was Principal Interaction Designer at Yahoo!
Earlier he was Creative Director for Information Architecture at Vivid Studios
/ ModemMedia, and he has led the interaction design and user experience
architecture for several startup ventures. At Stanford he has taught courses in
Product and HCI Design, and he is most recently part of the teaching team at
the d.school. At Yahoo! he developed a practice area in strategic ideation and
disseminated it through workshops in the US and Asia.
John C. Tang is a
Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research where he designs and studies new tools
to support distributed collaboration, which he uses to connect with his
research team up in Redmond, WA from Silicon Valley, CA. John's approach
combines understanding users' needs through social science methods with
designing and prototyping new technologies. John graduated from the Design
Division at Stanford University.
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