Course 3: Design for the Users

About Course 3: Design for the Users

Welcome to Course 3 of the QDD Journey, [accessally_user_firstname]!

Course 3 is titled "Design for the Users".

You'll be learning about ways to think about and develop design concepts with your team based on the users: their wants and how they'll use your product.

Let's set up for success! This ABOUT page shows you what we'll be covering. It also shows you how to navigate course material and where to access information related to the course.

What You'll Learn Accessing & Navigating this Course Where to Find Lessons & Materials QDD Conduct Policy Course 3 Lesson Map

What You'll Learn

What you'll learn

Learning objectives

The learning objectives are integrated throughout this course using the materials within this online portal and the practice problems.

Download and view the course syllabus and the tables that relate learning objectives and course activities. You'll gain an understanding of the Course 3 Journey and how to get the most out of this course.

Course syllabus

Additionally, all of the upcoming lessons and their recommended week to consume are listed and linked at the bottom of this page for your information and as another navigation option.

Learner Prerequisites

This course is created for learners involved in product design development. An engineering degree or background is useful but is not a prerequisite to this course.

Topics

We'll be covering topics in these areas: concept development and design inputs, including requirements.

There are 3 main areas of design engineering where we'll be applying these topics:

adjust design activities to add benefits and information about the use process early in the product development process
explore potential features against a customer satisfaction level and with other design inputs for decisions about the product
use frameworks for (you and your) teams to explore, prioritize, and iterate on the product design.

Accessing & Navigating this Course

Accessing and Navigating this Course

Portal Access You must log into this portal to access your training materials. Access to your portal and account are within menus along the top of the website.

Minimum technology requirements Learners must have internet access to the website qualityduringdesign.com. Lessons include content that opens in a webpage for download. Learners may find speakers or headphones useful to enjoy the videos, but they are not necessary: transcripts are available, and the videos have closed captioning. Emails will be sent to correspond with lessons, so learners should have access to email. Some learners may want to print templates or worksheets to do the practice problems.

Interacting with the Coach and other Learners A group discussion forum is accessed through the portal and is the main mode of communication throughout the course. If you have a question, chances are someone else will, also! This portal will be monitored and maintained for a positive experience for all learners. See more about this in the other tab on this page "QDD Conduct Policy".

Live group meetings and other events are scheduled on the QDD Journey Calendar which learners access through the portal (on the sidebar). The instructor's information is Dianna Deeney, [email protected], 1-484-341-0238.

Lessons Each lesson has its own page of materials.

Progress A lesson progress pie shows you how many of the objectives you've completed in that particular lesson. Lesson objectives are listed in the blue box below the video. You can check off objectives to fill up your progress bar and keep track of where you left off.

Changing lessons Navigate to different lessons by visiting this About page with links to lessons at bottom, or by clicking in the menu on the left sidebar.

Where to Find Lessons & Materials

Where to Find Lessons & Materials

Step-by-step This course is designed to be consumed step-by-step, following the lesson number. Each lesson builds upon the concepts from the last. Learners can expect the lesson presentation, materials, and practice problems to take approximately 1 to 2 hours per lesson. At the completion of the course and the lesson objectives, learners may download a certificate of completion for the course.

Media All lessons have a video file with corresponding transcript and audio file that presents the same material, for easier streaming. This gives you a choice of how you want to learn. Extra resources include:

Downloadable worksheets, listed just under the video.
Bonuses, which are located at the bottom of most lesson pages, if available. Bonuses include things like reminder notes, extra videos, and links to more materials.

Release Learners have access to all lessons upon portal login. Lessons for Course 1 are grouped into 3 Modules, with a recommended pace over 3 Weeks. Each week you will have new ideas that you can act on.

Available/Completed/Unavailable Lessons Modules and lessons are listed below. If the icon is in color, you have access to that lesson today. If the icon is gray, then you do not yet have access to that lesson - it will be released in a subsequent week. If the icon is in color with a checkmark, you've completed all of the objectives in that lesson.

Comments and Questions The QDD Journey Discussion Group is where student discussions and Q&A will happen! Do you have a question? Post it in the community - it may help someone else.

Support Technical or systems help is available at the submit support request link in the header. You may also email [email protected].

QDD Conduct Policy

Quality during Design Conduct Policy

As students in the Quality during Design Journey, we are a group of professional people that are looking to better ourselves and our careers. We promote positive, helpful dialogue in the spirit of continuous improvement.

The QDD Journey Discussion Group is a place to have discussions with coaches and other learners relating to the topics covered in the QDD Journey. We encourage you to use it! It is our goal for it to be an active place of engagement.

The QDD Journey Discussion Group is monitored. We will close discussions and may delete discussion threads at our discretion.

Course 3 Lesson Map

Course 3

Design for the Users

Objectives

Upcoming Course Modules and Lessons

Recommended Pace over 2 weeks

Module 1: From Benefits to Design Inputs

Week 1

Lesson 1: Explore Benefits as Drivers to Design

In early concept development, we don't have a list of features to engineer or look at. We do have an understanding of what we're trying to accomplish with this product.

We can use the Concept Space to better understand the benefits of our product. We have intended outputs of our product, but what does that mean to our users? What outcome are they expecting? And what kind of an impact would that make to them?

We break out benefits into outcomes and impacts. This exercise helps divide out our thinking processes and stay focused on what it is we want to learn. Breaking-them down into their parts starts to help us and our team really get into some interesting things that can help form our design inputs for great designs.

Lesson 2: Use Drivers to Explore Characteristics

How do we take the ideas we've been exploring with our team about the concept space and move it more toward design inputs?

We highlight how the drivers to benefits are the beginnings of design inputs.

We can further explore the drivers that aren't quite to the level that we want to design against. A tree diagram is a simple graphical tool that can help us get to that point with our team.

Then, we can use a combination of 2 matrices to compare the characteristics we've been developing against themselves and the benefits. Are we really developing the right characteristics? Which ones are the most important for quality, reliability, and cost?

Module 2: From Use Process to Design Inputs

Week 2

Lesson 3: Analyze the Use Process for Design Decisions

The way our customers actually use our product is the Use Process of our design. They follow steps to accomplish tasks. Which is why we can borrow common tools from manufacturing and business processes to evaluate the Use Process of our product for design inputs.

This team activity may surprise you. There is a lot we can start to understand about our concept ideas just by looking at high-level functions as a process step. Plus, there are many ways we can dig into the flowchart to derive design inputs, depending on what it is we want to learn.

Lesson 4: Relate Tasks to Design Choices

Our design is going to have a user interface of some sort. This lesson explores use errors, their causes (from psychology), and an analysis to be able to design out errors and design-in controls.