Brainstorming and Design Principles

Presenter

Dan Saffer, Kicker Studio

Workshop

One of the core skills of interaction designer is the ability to rapidly generate concepts. This hands-on workshop will look at some of the best practices for doing just that, and, just as importantly, what to do once you have those concepts, both in clustering and categorizing them, but also in selecting the best. How do you go about deciding which concepts to prototype? One answer is Design Principles. By generating design principles, you can create criteria for determining your best concepts, but also “guiding stars” for making design decisions throughout the prototyping and production process.

In this workshop you’ll learn:

- How to give your brainstorming sessions structure
- Simple tricks to generate more ideas, including laddering
- How to make sense of your ideas when finished
- How to write design principles to guide your work

Biography

Dan Saffer is a founder and principal at the design consultancy Kicker Studio. Dan has designed devices, software, websites, and services since 1995, and these products are currently used by millions every day. An acclaimed speaker and author, his two books are Designing for Interaction, Second Edition (New Riders) and Designing Gestural Interfaces (O’Reilly). Dan is an internationally-recognized thought leader on design who has spoken at conferences and taught workshops on interaction design all over the world. He has a Masters of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University, and his design innovations have received several patents.