Human-centered design course.
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Human-Centered Design Course Completed by Cortex Team

Dylan Horvath
Dylan Horvath March 04, 2016 • 0 min read

Design Kit: The Course for Human-Centred Design is a seven-week curriculum that introduces you to the concepts of human-centered design and how this approach can be used to create innovative, effective, and sustainable solutions for social change.

Working in teams of 2-6 people, we learned this design process by applying it to one of three pre-crafted real-world design challenges (provided in the course). Each week we explored the main human-centered design concepts through readings, case studies, and short videos. Throughout the course we had the opportunity to interact and gain inspiration from design teams around the world taking the course with us and asking questions of experienced human-centered designers when we felt stuck.

The seven-week course…

  • Equipped us with the mindsets and methods of human-centered design so that we can be more intentional about facing and solving our current challenges
  • Let us experiment with the power of human-centered design
  • Taught us to identify patterns and opportunities for concept development
  • Inspired us to approach challenges differently and experience how human-centered design can add new perspectives to our own work tackling poverty-related challenges
  • Gave us hands-on experience speaking to, prototyping for, and testing solutions with the people we’re designing for

The course was provided by Acumen, a non-profit venture fund with a vision to help build a world beyond poverty through investing in companies that deliver critical goods and services in water, health, housing, energy, agriculture, and education; leaders who are paving the way for new approaches to fighting poverty; and the spread of ideas that will give the world the knowledge and the understanding to change how the world tackles poverty.

Interested in working together? Tell me about your project.

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