Digital products are now an integral part of our lives. Successful products meet a need, evoke emotion & provide simple user experience. The workshop incorporates design theory and practical hands-on experience.

Course Goals: In this course you will learn the craftsmanship of designing great products, from ideas up to a working interactive prototypes at the end of the course.

Digital products show up in every part of our lives. The design of a product can make the difference between a delightful customer experience and successful product, or frustration and failure. Great products and design rarely happen by accident - the goal of this course is to introduce the craftsmanship of great interactive products, from idea to execution, and the various stages in between. The course incorporates design theory and practical, real-life examples with personal, hands-on experience.

Many of the products we touch with on a daily basis are digital, ranging from social networking, mobile services and games, dashboard for customer management, internal organizational systems and more. The product manager is required to understand the needs of the users, to promote the characterization of a product that matches the needs and to align it with the business needs of the company. Beyond that, the product manager's responsibility is to allow products to grow and change over time which requires her to accompany the product even after its launch, measure its use, test different usage paradigms and know how to prioritize necessary changes. Finally, the product manager must know how the product will reach the market and how to justify it financially. Course Goal: In this workshop you will learn the role of the product manager through practical work of analyzing existing products. A workshop is based on prior knowledge you have acquired such as defining a need, target audience, product characterization phase, and will deepen your knowledge in aspects of product management, business model and marketing.

“Next” or “Skip”? “Cancel” or “Clear”? How does your app or website speak to its users? Is it funny or serious? Does it give them all the information they need, or does it leave them scratching their heads? Does it engage them, or are they dropping off without completing forms or processes? Welcome to the world of UX writing (also known as microcopy). Without those tiny blurbs of text on a website or in an app, we would be lost in cyberspace. UX writing guides us through forms and tells us what we did wrong; it preempts our questions and lets us know what to do next. In this course, we’ll dive deep into the fundamentals of English-language microcopy, starting with voice and tone, followed by processes and user thinking, and finally how to practice UX writing effectively.

Course Goals: By the end of the semester, students will be able to:

● Define their product’s voice and tone (i.e., how the product “speaks”)

● Get into the head of users and consider their experience

● Facilitate the UX writing process from ideation to delivery

● Ask the right questions for effective content strategy

● Craft impactful, user-friendly UX writing Assignments and Requirements:

● Attendance and active participation in class sessions

● Completion of weekly assignments to practice concepts introduced

● Completion of final project that synthesizes the principles and foundations of UX writing

This course will focus on the fundamentals of the design world in reference to interfaces and user experience in the industry, from research to concept to detailed design. We will learn from the industry best practices, see how it's implemented in various products and services, and practice how to create a design that will align with world-wide standards. Course goals: The goal of this course is to provide students with practical skills and knowledge about the user interface design world. During the course students will learn the design process in product companies and the terminology a designer should know. The course will help students with practical tips and the know-how towards the real world job responsibilities.

This course provides an overview of selected topics and theories in cognitive psychology that are relevant for HCI researchers and designers. The course is composed of twelve lectures and corresponding reading materials on selected topics and theories in cognitive psychology, focusing on the basic cognitive processes as perception attention memory and high cognitive processes as intelligence and creativity. Students will be asked to complete assignments intended to allow them to apply the knowledge they gain in class on HCI related projects, both academic and industrial. The syllabus is designed to suit for the changes needed due to the corona crisis, both expected and future changes during the semester, as it is expected to involve remote teaching only using the zoom platform, and some courses combining zoom teaching and small group teaching in a hybrid form. All content units have been adapted for instruction in Zoom, by editing the materials for a combined lesson, which has a combination of shorter lectures (15-20 minutes) and after each lecture unit there is an interactive unit of class discussion, interactive questionnaire, and use of additional interactive platforms such as Miro. This is intended to deepen the material learned and produce better involvement in the zoom platform. After the interactive unit, there will again be a lecture unit, according to the order of the topics in the syllabus. In addition, according to the pace of progress and the level of attention, in the last third of each lesson there will be another interactive element that will include division into rooms for small group discussions when the lecturer moves from group to group (when relevant of course and not in each lesson). The activity will include discussion, interactive questionnaire, or use of platforms for collaborative thinking. The Adjustment of the courses content units was performed according to the experience gained at the IDC in the second and summer semesters of 2020: breaking the lecture into shorter content units, using visual materials, using videos, integrating discussions. Students are asked to be prepared for learning with a laptop that has a camera, microphone and a good internet connection. Opening the camera and the possibility of remote communication is critical to the success of learning in this course. Course Goals: The students will gain knowledge on cognitive principles that are relevant for HCI and should be understood and used by HCI developers and designers. By considering this knowledge, students will be able to adjust their future work to human cognitive demands and to adapt their design to human cognitive processing. It will also provide the students with tools for evaluating existing HCI products

Over the past 80 years, computing has changed almost every way of life, and it is not stopping anytime soon. Transportation, manufacturing, communications, entertainment, medicine, and many other aspects of society are all being disrupted by the increasing availability and power of technology. This course will equip students with an understanding of the foundations of modern-day computing and computational thinking: from the origins of standalone, limited-purpose calculation machines to the interconnected, ubiquitous, and increasingly intelligent technology that is all around us. We will discuss the building blocks of computers and programming; how computing and the physical world interact; the role of “big data”; the Internet, the web, and the cloud; and artificial intelligence.

Technology shapes every aspect of the human experience and is the primary driver of social and ecological change. This course will allow students to be immersed in crucial topics of ethics and technology such as facial recognition algorithms, Search Engines, GPS technology, Online marketing, Robotics, AI, Biotech and more. Course Goals: The goal of this course is to allow prospective designers of the technology (that means you!) to be able to: 1) Be familiar with a range of ethical issues raised by modern technology 2) Understand the importance of questioning and debating over the social and cultural implications of technology 3) Use ethical reasoning to make informed and principled choices 4) Recognize and be familiar with the language and content of ethical discourse 5) Understand modern debates surrounding ethics and technology

About the final project In this final project course students will apply UX research and design methodologies such as Design Thinking and Design Sprint to create an impactful change in a large enterprise, a small company or in a community by researching and testing technological mobile applications that solve real-world problems. In the first semester students will be introduced to the “Design Thinking for Change” and apply previous knowledge of UX research and design methodologies for a meaningful and sustainable change. Students will also meet the companies and present their ideas. In the second semester, students will produce, evaluate and iterate their final project. In their final presentation, students will present to the company/organization or a community their research and implementation. About Design Thinking for Change The field of Human-Computer-Interaction evolved in the past 20 years and the industry matured and has been embracing the UX research and design fields extensively. Methodologies such as Design Thinking and Design Sprints have been developed by IDEO and Google as essential processes to solve problems within the product development domain in the field of Human-Centered-Design. It especially became widely used within the innovation and the entrepreneurship areas. Goals: 1. Students will learn how to develop a prototype and solve a real world need within a company/organization/community collaborating with partners from industry. 2. Students will use Design Thinking/design sprints methods that are widely used in industry for product development and product innovation. 3. Students will understand why and how to implement UX research and design methods such as conducting interviews, surveys and usability testing for product innovation and specifically for any change in a company/organization or a community. 4. Students final projects would be developed through the entire year collaborating with industry and allowing multiple iterations through an in-depth process. 

In the final project, students will meet high-tech companies and build a marketing campaign for them for the digital product. Students will work in groups with each student having a designated role. Semester 1: meeting with the companies participating in the project, receiving a brief, researching competitors, learning the product, building messages and a brand. At the end of the semester, a presentation to the client. Semester B: Production of the marketing campaign for the product on the right platforms. At the end of the semester, a presentation to the client. Course goals: The project will provide students with practical experience working with real companies in the market. The students will simulate an internal marketing group within a company about the various roles that make it up, they will experience real promotion and content development.