Postgraduate Course: Experience Prototyping (Online) (EFIE11539)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
| Course type | Online Distance Learning |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | In this hands-on course, students will gain hands-on experience of rapid prototyping to explore, evaluate and communicate future services, concepts and experience. The course will introduce range of accessible tools and methods to create simple prototypes, alongside approaches to deploy, share and reflect upon prototypes and service experiences with end-users and stakeholders. The course requires no prior design knowledge or making, and will follow a dynamic, design sprint model in response to a real-world challenge. |
| Course description |
Prototyping is an essential part of any design process to explore, evaluate and communicate how people might respond to and experience a new product or service. Getting concrete, and working out how to move from an initial idea, through to a tangible prototype or service experience helps to test assumptions, explore practical challenges, and forces decision making. Prototypes can range from paper-based storyboards and props, adverts or fictions, through to detailed mock-ups of a digital application. However, key to their success is being able to clearly identify the core purpose of any prototype, and how to present and evaluate this with different end-users or stakeholders.
This course will provide students from any background with a core grounding in the value of prototyping, and approaches to develop and test prototypes and service experiences. Students will be introduced to a range of accessible tools and methods to support rapid prototyping, and will be supported by the teaching team and EFI Makerspace to develop ideas and concepts into a tangible prototype or service experience. By the end of the course, students should have a clear understanding of the value and accessibility of a range of prototyping tools and approaches, and be well placed to go on and develop further practical and technical skills to make prototypes should they wish.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Online Hybrid Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities. Students should note that their interactions may be recorded and live-streamed (see the Lecture Recording and Virtual Classroom policies for more details). There will, however, be options to control whether or not your video and audio are enabled.
You will need access to a personal computing device for this course. Most activities will take place in a web browser, unless otherwise stated. We recommend using a device with a screen, a physical keyboard, and internet access.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 6,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 4,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course will be assessed by means of the following components:
1) Group Slide Deck (25%)
Working in groups students will be asked to produce a detailed slide deck (up to 25 pages) documenting the outcomes of prototyping methods and testing, including evidence of iteration, undertaken during the intensive days in response to a specific brief.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 2, 3, 4
2) Individual Reflective Essay (75%)
Building on the group work undertaken, students will be asked to write a 2,000 word individually reflective essay on the limitations of their initial prototype and testing, and to describe how they would seek to further iterate and develop their prototype given more time, resources and a wider audience or a specific context of deployment.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 1, 2, 4 |
| Feedback |
Feedback on any formative assessment may be provided in various formats, for example, to include written, oral, video, face-to-face, whole class, or individual. The Course Organiser will decide which format is most appropriate in relation to the nature of the assessment.
Feedback on both formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided in time to be of use in subsequent assessments within the course.
Feedback on the summative assessment(s) will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Formative Feedback Opportunity:
Formative feedback is ongoing feedback which monitors learning and is intended to improve performance in the same course, in future courses, and also beyond study.
Students will receive feedback at various points during the course:
- During timetabled sessions as work towards assessment is developed (formative feedback).
- Through a presentation of group work (formative feedback).
- Ahead of submission of their final individual essay (formative feedback). |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Understand the theory and rationale for holistic prototyping methods as part of an iterative and human-centred design process.
- Understand and gain practical experience of a range of lo-fidelity and rapid prototyping methods and tools.
- Demonstrate ability to make and test a prototype of a service experience in response to emerging contemporary social, economic and data-driven challenges.
- Document, critically reflect and learn from prototyping and testing of service experiences.
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Reading List
Essential Reading:
Marc Stickdorn, Markus Edgar Hormess, Adam Lawrence, and Jakob Schneider, 2018. Chapter 7: Service Prototyping. This is service design doing. O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Marion Buchenau and Jane Fulton Suri. 2000. Experience prototyping. In Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques (DIS '00). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 424-433. https://doi.org/10.1145/347642.347802
Johan Blomkvist., & Stefan Holmlid (2010). Service prototyping according to service design practitioners. In Conference Proceedings, ServDes. 2010, Exchanging Knowledge, Linköping, Sweden, 1-3 December 2010 (Vol. 2, pp. 1-11). Linköping University Electronic Press.
Recommended Reading:
John Vines, Mark Blythe, Stephen Lindsay, Paul Dunphy, Andrew Monk, and Patrick Olivier. 2012. Questionable concepts: critique as resource for designing with eighty somethings. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1169-1178. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208567
Samuel Huron, Till Nagel, Lora Oehlberg, Wesley Willett, editors. Making with Data: Physical Design and Craft in a Data-Driven World. First edition, AK Peters: CRC Press, 2023_ISBN 9781032182223 (Paperback), ISBN 9781032207223 (Hardback)
Rachel Krause, 2018. Storyboards Help Visualise UX Ideas. Norman / Nielsen Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/storyboards-visualize-ideas/
Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz (2016). Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. Simon and Schuster.
William Odom, John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, Hajin Choi, Stephanie Meier, and Angela Park. 2014. Unpacking the thinking and making behind a user enactments project. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS '14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 513-522. https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2602960
Chris Elsden, David Chatting, Abigail C. Durrant, Andrew Garbett, Bettina Nissen, John Vines, and David S. Kirk. 2017. On Speculative Enactments. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 5386-5399. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025503
Further Reading:
James Pierce and Eric Paulos. 2014. Some variations on a counterfunctional digital camera. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS '14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 131-140. https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2602968
David Chatting, David S. Kirk, Abigail C. Durrant, Chris Elsden, Paulina Yurman, and Jo-Anne Bichard. 2017. Making Ritual Machines: The Mobile Phone as a Networked Material for Research Products. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 435-447. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025630
'Mother of All Demos' - Doug Englebart, 1968. https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/ |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Design Methods,Service Design,Prototyping,Making,Experiential Futures,Service Prototyping |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Inge Panneels
Tel:
Email: Inge.Panneels@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr David Murphy
Tel:
Email: dmurphy7@ed.ac.uk |
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