Student Outreach: University of Sydney students mash up UX & Open Design

dchinniah

Over the last few weeks, students within the Interaction Design Studio at the University of Sydney have embraced, enrolled and begun a collaborative course with Mozilla Labs as part of our Student Outreach channel.

The Course

The course focuses on the theme of ‘Designing for Social‘ and is being conducted at the University of Sydney by Martin Tomitsch from the Design Lab at the Faculty of Architecture Design and Planning.

Students are required to:
University of Sydney and Design Lab logos

  • conduct user research
  • explore users goals and current problems
  • create designs based on these findings
  • test their designs using prototypes

The course aims to provide students with valuable hands on industry experience by creating real-world applications and products.

They are also exposed to sharing and collaboration skills and techniques. As such they are encouraged to publicly share all their outputs (research, ideas & designs) under open licenses.

Support

Mozilla are committed to provide students with support throughout the course and beyond – aiming to both improve and expose their skills.

Some early initiatives will include providing various guest lectures, feedback & mentoring sessions as well blog and other social media coverage.

Mentors & Champions

We have an amazing lineup of professional expertise – both locally and internationally – to help guide, mentor and support the students. These include:
Mozilla Labs – Jinghua Zhang & Michael Hanson
Industry Professionals – Penny Hagen, Grant Young, Michelle Gilmore, Lisa Herrod, Steve Baty

Going forward

The University of Sydney are playing an important role in the future of our Student Outreach imitative as well as Open Design. As the course continues we will provide further updates with regards to the students progress, their ideas and concepts. Links to the lecture notes as well as public repositories will also be provided.

Update

Jinghua Zhang – our very own ‘Adventurer’ & User Research lead within the Test Pilot team, has been working very closely with this project and has just provided an update post entitled: ‘Engaging User Centered Design in the Open @ The University of Sydney‘.

Further updates are also available by following @MozConcept on Twitter.