My new project: Tact, a simple chat app.

My design class

December 18, 2011

I did a two-day design class as part of the newly established DDVE program. The best I can tell, DDVE is trying to bring some new breathing into Estonian higher education with its interdisciplinary Master program that combines design, technology, and entrepreneurship. The people running it have the best intentions and I do wish the program the best of luck and will keep in touch. The world needs more stuff like this.

As it was an eclectic mix of students, with some having design background and expertise and others being new to it, I asked myself, what would I want anyone to know about design, regardless if they are practicing it or just working with designers? What would I want all my future coworkers to know? I tried to put together a broad spectrum of topics without necessarily going too deep in any of them.

See my material here. Most of it I did myself, but the one that clearly looks better than the others and is about visual design, was done by my friend Priidu.

I had a good time putting the material together. They say that teaching is an excellent opportunity to learn, and most of the material is based on what I’ve read or thought about fairly recently in the past 12 months, though of course it incorporates some earlier material, e.g what I myself learned in school.

What makes me happy is that the students liked the course. I did a survey in the end where I asked for satisfaction and feedback based on the Net Promoter method, and my Net Promoter score is 50. Here are some quotes from students about what they liked:

Top notch concerning the iOS and design in general.

Clearness, all the topics were well present and the possibility to connect the exercises with our real projects gave a good opportunity to jump right in.

Both spoke from practical experience. Jaanus walked us through some examples and that was good learning.