Last week I was responsible for the design specialization at Hyper Island. The 4-day course’s aim was to give all of the students at Digital Media 13 a basic understanding of what design is and how we can work with it.
We started the course with a very basic introduction to design and how to go about when solving problems. The introduction focused on the most important part of the design process: identifying the problem that we are trying to solve.
The students were then given an assignment to redesign something related to Apple, but were free to choose wether it be iTunes, iOS, the dock in OSX, physical products or even the visual identity.One of the most common questions I received afterwards was why we had chosen Apple as a brand. Our idea behind this was:
- - as we had very limited of time we needed to choose a brand that the students already had some sort of relationship with. Regardless if they are Android or iOS users, PC or Mac, it’s safe to say that all of them have a relationship to Apple in one way or another.
- - Apple is somewhat considered as a brand that’s, by many, seen as “perfect”. However, when you do a good research and analysis, you’ll find that there are many small parts in the big machine that could be improved (through design, usability, etc).
The fantastic thing with the presentations was that although there was nearly 50 students, there was at least 40 different design suggestions for improvements. I saw a great redesign of Game Center, an amazing Notes/Reminders app, a great iTunes, a motion sensitive remote as well as a great improvement to AutoCorrect.
I’m really looking forward to coming back to Hyper Island in December to continue working with their great students!