Applying Design Methodology to Business Problems
Wednesday, January 9th from 7:30 pm - 9 pm
Steve Boyer, Senior Lecturer, Otis College of Art and Design

Design is primarily a problem-solving discipline. Designers are trained to find elegant and efficient solutions that generate desire for their products.

This 90-minute class will introduce five proven techniques from the design world that can be directly applied to problems in any field. Students will practice techniques that will result in innovative solutions that will be widely and immediately applicable to business problems.

Target Audience:

This class is meant for people with business or engineering backgrounds who are interested in benefitting from the creative skills that are commonly the domain of artists and designers. The class is also specifically suited for designers who are looking to expand their design practices by offering design solutions to a broader variety of clients.

Student Takeaways:

Participants will learn design techniques that can be applied to general problems in business and engineering to yield creative solutions including:

• Understanding constraints
• Upstream problem analysis 
• Establishing clarity of intent and making pre-decisions
• Deferred solution discovery
• The role of group critique
• Finding equilibrium between multiple conflicting forces 

Prerequisites:
None. However, students are asked to think about an intractable problem they face in their product or business that may benefit from a design-centric approach and solution.

About the Instructors

Steve Boyer is a designer, inventor, entrepreneur and educator with over 25 years of experience developing technology and creating content for a wide variety of interactive media including video games and electronic toys. He has served as a software engineer, hardware engineer, designer and producer at top media entertainment companies and has been on the faculty of the finest design and technology programs in the US including Otis College of Art and Design and The University of California at San Diego.

Mr. Boyer earned his Master of Architecture degree at The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) commonly recognized as one of the finest architectural design programs in the world. He also served as Director of Research and Development at Vivendi Games and is the founder of 2 startups. This balance of academic, corporate and entrepreneurial experience leaves him well-qualified to address a broad variety of problems, synthesizing technical, artistic and economic skills.

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Our Refund Policy: Plans change? We get it. But if you can't make it to a class/workshop, please email us at classes@generalassemb.ly at least 7 days before the scheduled event date. No refunds will be given after this timeframe.