Color & Materials Design

Contextual Design Research I: Business, Customer and User Research Methods

This course introduces the methods, tools, and techniques of research that are relevant to designing with people in mind for product, experience, space, or service. The methods and tools fall in the categories of 'what people say,' 'what people do,' and 'what people need.' Business, Customer and User Research methods will be primarily lecture-based, but will also include a variety of hands-on learning activities that are applicable at all points along the design process. Students will practice developing and conducting surveys, interviews, field observational research, and focus groups to identify unmet needs that are both articulated and unarticulated 

Color Lab

Color is relative. Our perceptions of a color always depend on what colors abut or surround it. Students will engage in a series of explorations of the interaction of color to develop an understanding of the elusive behavior of color and how to most effectively employ it in any medium. Students will acquire the vocabulary needed to discuss how color is behaving in any context and to understand and express their own evolving color sensibility.

Learning Outcomes

1. Employ color effectively in a wide variety of situations.
2. Discuss and explain the behavior of color and color choices in their own and others’ designs using both established and evocative vocabulary.
3. Recognize and utilize strong color relationships within design situations across cultural boundaries, as well as acknowledge and expand their own color preferences.
4. Learn how colors interact and modify or transform the perception of one another.
5. Understand the visual color differences between colors with numerical color data and graphical representations of color data.

Graduate Seminar: Foundations of Global Thinking

Seminar I brings together the full cohort of CCS graduate students where they are exposed to key contemporary issues influencing the design professional. Students will attend lectures and workshops with visiting artists, designers, as well as related industry and academic leaders. Graduate Seminar I serves to advance both the investigative and critical writing skills of students. Social context, sustainability, and ethics will be some of the themes addressed, possibly structured within a colloquial format. This Seminar requires extensive reading, research, and short, fast-paced assignments set in the various workshops. Students participate in individual and group presentations in the Seminar.

“Think globally, act locally” is a catchphrase that’s been used since the early 1970s in a wide range of contexts, from management theory to environmental and social activism. But just what does it mean? This seminar provides a foundation for thinking about economic, political, cultural, and aesthetic issues in a global context, especially as they might inform the student’s local action, i.e. individual design practice. The seminar begins by examining the process of exchange and in particular the way humans interact with one another through market transactions. Students then examine various ways of understanding globalization as an economic and cultural system. Subsequent classes focus on the mechanisms of the global market and the increasingly important role design has come to play. Of particular concern are the aesthetic and informational values built into production and consumption practices. This further entails consideration of questions of sustainability and ethics. Provisions are made to accommodate the exploration of individual and group interests as the semester progresses.

Contextual Design Research II: Trend Forecasting and Future Scenario Planning

In this course, students will learn how to identify, assess, and forecast both long-term and short-term trends that can be researched through a variety of information sources, consumer demographics, developments in technology, manufacturing and the sciences as well as cultural, social, environmental  and economic influences. Students will explore how trends shape values and behaviors that lie deep in all of us; and, as importantly, how these values and behaviors influence the ways we perceive and adopt new ideas. Uncovering these insights in a rapidly changing world is an increasingly important challenge for all professional designers.

The ability to understand and identify trends and their impact on consumer behavior is an important skill that will be utilized within the structure of the color and materials design courses.

Materials Lab

Getting to know a material is an essential part of a designer’s job. In Materials Lab students engage in a series of experiments that examine material properties and ways to Exploring the familiar and unfamiliar as new surfaces and forms are developed. The course supports the student in developing and innovating ideas using both proven and non-traditional techniques.

Working in shop and studio environments, projects will immerse students in developing both 2D and 3D surface and form that seek to present new and innovative concepts. The course offers opportunities for both structured group projects and self-directed learning.

Course Learning Outcomes

• Be able to categorize materials using a variety of methods.
• Drive innovation through material-led thinking applicable to the course projects using both traditional methods and new technologies
• Undertake independent research and demonstrate competency in its analysis and interpretation appropriate to the course projects.
• Create form factors using digital fabrication tools.
• Develop their ability to demonstrate professional competence in the area of presentation skills. Present compelling presentations that deliver ideas and concepts before peers, faculty, and professional partners

Business Practices I
Marketing as a Strategy: “The Big Picture”

This course is designed around a framework that organizes and interrelates marketing topics into succinct modules. Using the textbook, Marketing: The Big Picture by Christie Nordheilm, students will apply the Big Picture framework to a live “mini” case that they choose and write themselves using a carefully designed template. Students will then take a leadership role in managing the discussion of these mini-cases. In this way, the class will maximize their relevance to current business practices and also acquaint the students with the ‘business case’ format. Students will also leverage a simulation tool, the Big Picture Simulation, to test their knowledge of the concepts learned in class.

Within the Big Picture framework we conceive of marketing broadly. Rather than being a subset of corporate strategy, marketing can be elevated to include business strategy itself. What distinguishes marketing can be summarized in a single word: CUSTOMERS. Students will explore the following questions:

Students will learn that the primary task of marketing is to achieve the company’s overall business objective by creating and communicating value to the customer.