Program Overview

Program Overview

The program in Créativité et design participatif is designed to bring together students from EPFL and UNIL, leveraging interdisciplinarity, creativity, and participatory design to imagine new modes of life, work, and cohabitation. This is achieved through the creation of a prototype of an object, service, or experience.

Course Description

Based on a project-based approach and human-centered design, this course questions current modes of life, work, and cohabitation to explore new innovation opportunities. It tests these opportunities in real contexts through one or more prototypes. Key questions addressed include:

• How to structure a creative approach to problem-solving?
• How to approach a new problem and what approach to use to solve it?
• Why and how to integrate users into the initial phases of a project?
• How to quickly test an idea?
• How to work in an interdisciplinary team?

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Apply different ideation and prototyping techniques consistently
• Realize a physical or virtual prototype
• Explore different usage scenarios
• Explain the advantage of interdisciplinarity in user-centered creation dynamics

Transversal Skills

• Setting objectives and designing an action plan to achieve them
• Communicating effectively and being understood, including by people of different languages and cultures
• Dialoguing with professionals from other disciplines
• Persevering in difficulty or after an initial failure to find a better solution
• Receiving feedback and responding appropriately
• Collecting data

Teaching Method

Students develop their projects in groups and benefit from weekly follow-up to guide them through the different stages of design and experimentation. The teaching is essentially practical, based on theoretical and methodological foundations from design, agile development, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Expected Work

• Information research
• Development of a prototype
• Documentation of the design process
• Work in an interdisciplinary team

Evaluation Method

Groups and their projects are subject to the following evaluations:

• Mid-semester presentation of the intermediate project (30%)
• End-of-semester documentation of the design process of their project (30%)
• End-of-semester presentation of the final project (40%)

Resources

Bibliography

• Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Creativity. Harper Perennial, 2013.
• Tassoul, Marc. Creative Facilitation. VSSD, 2009.
• Mastrogiacomo, Stefano, and Alexander Osterwalder. High-Impact Tools for Teams. John Wiley & Sons, 2021.
• Wedell-Wedellsborg, Thomas. What's Your Problem? Harvard Business Press, 2020.
• Lidwell, William, et al. Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated. Rockport Pub, 2010.
• Martin, Bella, et al. Universal Methods of Design. Rockport Pub, 2012.
• Weinschenk, Susan. 100 More Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People. New Riders Pub, 2015.
• Savoia, Alberto. The Right It. HarperCollins, 2019.

Study Plans

Programme Sciences humaines et sociales

• Bachelor semester 5
• Semester: Autumn
• Number of places: 50
• Exam form: During the semester (winter session)
• Exam subject: Créativité et design participatif
• Course: 2 hours/week x 14 weeks
• Type: Obligatory

UNIL - Autres facultés

• Semester: Autumn
• Number of places: 50
• Exam form: During the semester (winter session)
• Exam subject: Créativité et design participatif
• Course: 2 hours/week x 14 weeks
• Type: Optional

UNIL - HEC

• Semester: Autumn
• Number of places: 50
• Exam form: During the semester (winter session)
• Exam subject: Créativité et design participatif
• Course: 2 hours/week x 14 weeks
• Type: Optional

Reference Week

Legend:

• Course
• Exercise, TP
• Project, Lab, other

Tuesday, 13h - 15h: Course CE1103

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