Inclusive Experience and Community Engagement

This unit develops students’ ability to reframe problems, generate pragmatic and creative inclusive design solutions, and conduct equity-centered conversations and outreach. Students learn to look beyond products to the full user experience, consider hardware and software trade-offs, and plan community engagement at multiple levels to prepare for prototyping and testing in later units.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze user and community perspectives to reframe problems and identify hidden opportunities for inclusive design using empathy-driven techniques
• Apply pragmatic creativity exercises and hardware/software trade-off analysis to produce inclusive design concepts that prioritize experience over feature lists
• Demonstrate equity-centered communication and facilitation skills by leading courageous conversations and vulnerability-based outreach methods to build trust with diverse stakeholders
• Evaluate and design a community engagement plan that maps three levels of involvement, assigns roles for organizational responsibility, and justifies technology choices to improve accessibility and societal impact