Classes

Product and Experience Design for Desirability

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2021

SEAS ES22 / GSD SCI 6276 is a Harvard University course cross-listed in the engineering and design schools, and open to students from all schools. It appeals to those interested in designing products and services that are desirable. In today’s competitive landscape, products and services that connect with human meaning, usability, and emotions are more likely to be successful. Designing for desirability begins with questions of what we mean by 'desirable' and 'for whom'. It can mean irresistible, delightful, meaningful, cool, covetable, viral, easy, and more. The class explores...

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Integrated Design

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2020

INTEGRATED DESIGN is an advanced design course designed by Altringer and co-taught with colleagues at SEAS (Krzysztof Gajos) and HBS (Alan MacCormack). Leading advanced design projects requires the integration of multiple skill areas and ongoing learning about the best data-driven tools to guide development. This course is structured to provide a comprehensive education in all stages of the new product design process, from idea generation to concept development, detailed design and prototyping, testing and integrating data into design decisions. The emphasis is on the way that design...

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Innovators' Practice: Finding Building and Leading Good Ideas With Diverse Others

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2018

THE INNOVATORS' PRACTICE COURSE was created by Altringer at SEAS in 2011 and has been described as “Harvard’s real-world obstacle course for practicing innovation“. Student teams from the first two years of the class have won awards, including the Dean’s 100K Cultural Entrepreneurship Challenge and various funded fellowships to continue developing their ideas beyond the classroom.

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Human Centered Algorithms Design

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2017

 

HUMAN-CENTERED ALGORITHMS DESIGN was a one-time course at SEAS that evolved out of the ai-kitchen group. Due to growing demand in 2016, the ai-kitchen discussion group expanded, becoming a course on Human Centered Algorithm Design designed and taught by Altringer at SEAS in Fall 2017. The team later worked with other groups at Harvard, MIT, and beyond that are better-positioned to take the conversation much further, namely, the BKC-MIT AI Initiative.

How Might We Make Understanding Algorithms Easier for Everybody?

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Integrating Fashion Design and Wearable Technology

Semester: 

Winter

Offered: 

2016

INTEGRATING FASHION DESIGN AND WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY is a course that explores how top fashion, sportswear and lifestyle designers approach designing for wearable desirability, and how we might apply what we learn to design more desirable wearable technologies. Our immersion is part of a broader exploration of whether and how we might – through product design – learn to build products and experiences that better meet people’s existing needs (e.g. expression, identity, performance, comfort, functionality) and also to help them make more responsible decisions (e.g. wearing...

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Sustainable Design and Digital Nomadism

Semester: 

Winter

Offered: 

2015

SUSTAINABLE DESIGN AND DIGITAL NOMADISM is a winter term immersion course focused on the growing brick and mortar and digital nomad startup community in Ubud, sustainable living practices, and community- and sustainability-driven startups. Students explore and develop a point of view on what we can learn from this growing phenomenon in Bali – about startups, digital nomads, sustainable communities, and working at the top of your field from anywhere in the world. They explore which ventures, organizational structures, networks and technologies are context...

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Cultural Entrepreneurship

Semester: 

Winter

Offered: 

2014

CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP was a multi-disciplinary applied design course created by Altringer at SEAS and Professor Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School. The course was offered in partnership with the Harvard Innovation Lab in Winter Session in 2013 and 2014.

This project emerged from observing a persistent and superficial assumption that startups have to move to the Bay Area to become successful. A short field study yielded high-level patterns in the startup communities in the Bay Area, NYC, and Boston. In particular, New York City hosts many startups in...

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