Fall 2022
Interaction Design undergraduate program, University of Washington
Junior level course, 25 students


This Fall, I completely redesigned the introductory interaction design course in our junior year. Based on my experience teaching DES371, I identified opportunities to improve our curriculum to cover fundamentals in Fall quarter to better prepare students for more advanced projects in Winter and Spring. I designed an in-depth introduction to the building blocks of screen-based interaction design. Topics include design systems, design patterns, components, navigation, layout, flows, information architecture, rapid usability testing, and rapid user research. Students learn to create hi-fidelity interactive prototypes using Figma.

In order to scaffold learning of many advanced concepts in 11 weeks, I structured both projects as redesigns of an existing streaming or maps application (Figure 1, previous page). This allows students to analyze, apply, and adapt existing design systems and patterns from apps such as Netflix or Google Maps. This also allows students to work across multiple platforms (mobile, web, tablet, and possibly interactive TV and watch).