Inclusive Perspectives and Community Engagement

This unit develops students’ ability to reframe problems, apply pragmatic creativity, and center equity and inclusion across design processes. Students will examine the role of technology and corporate responsibility in shaping user experiences and practice community engagement strategies to prepare inclusive design solutions.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze design problems by reframing perspectives to identify at least two hidden user needs or systemic barriers and document the insights
• Apply pragmatic creativity techniques to produce a minimum of three divergent concept sketches that prioritize equity and experiential outcomes
• Demonstrate inclusive design decision-making by creating a hardware/software and accessibility checklist and revising a prototype to address identified inclusion criteria
• Evaluate community engagement approaches by designing a three-level outreach plan (inform, consult, collaborate) with steps, stakeholder roles, and measurable trust-building metrics