Name what's working and why. "I like how _____ because _____."
Name what could go further. "I wish _____ because _____."
Open a door. "I wonder what would happen if _____."
"I don't like it" or "It's good" — vague reactions don't help anyone improve.
Your Week 1 Dear Data drawings are displayed around the room.
Two Post-it colors:
🟢 Green: what's working
🟡 Yellow: what could go further
Circulate. Look at everything. Leave feedback on at least 5.
What did you see in the work? Which approaches surprised you?
Where did last week’s theory show up? Who used data as a design tool?
What skill did this week’s work start to develop?
See data in everything
Design the invisible
Design things worth keeping
See a world as data — document, analyze, find insights
Translate a place into something someone else can feel
Articulate your design principles
Design the collaboration, not just the product
Honest iteration — early work is material, not precious
Edit ruthlessly — what you remove matters as much as what you keep
Know who you are as a designer — and show it
Week 2
Gentner & Markman (1997) — deep vs. shallow analogy. Structural mapping transfers relational structure, not surface features.
Dahl & Moreau (2002) — far-field analogies produce more original ideas. Distance between domains matters.
Hargadon & Sutton (1997) — technology brokering. Innovation by recombining existing ideas across industries.
Pine & Gilmore — when does a product become an experience? The experience economy framework.
Disney — the experience starts before you arrive. Anticipation as design.
Apple Store & Unboxing — every surface is a controlled reveal. Emotional choreography.
DVF Wrap Dress — one resonant idea, no technology. An iconic opening built on conviction alone.
"Iconic Beginnings"
Every design is an experience journey. Interview your dyad partner. Find a product they love whose early experience is undesigned. Map the full journey, then redesign the beginning — anticipation, discovery, first encounter.
Deliverables: experience journey map (3+ stages — primary deliverable), supporting artifacts (images, video, prototypes — presented live), sensory choice beyond visual, principle transfer statement, portfolio PDF.
Due: Monday by 12pm.
Gentner & Markman (1997)
Structure mapping in analogy
Dahl & Moreau (2002)
Analogical thinking in design
Hargadon & Sutton (1997)
Technology brokering
Pine & Gilmore
The Experience Economy
Norman (1999)
Affordances — Recommended
Groups assigned in class. Each student reads one.
When we draw an analogy, we are not matching surface features — we are transferring relational structure from one domain to another. A deep analogy maps systems of relationships, not just individual attributes. Saying "an atom is like a solar system" works not because they look alike but because both have a small dense core with things orbiting around it in predictable paths. Shallow analogies match appearances; deep analogies match how things relate. For design: when you borrow from another domain, ask whether you are borrowing the look or the logic. The logic is where the real transfer happens.
Designers who draw analogies from distant domains produce more original ideas than those who stay close to the problem space. A furniture designer inspired by origami will generate more novel solutions than one inspired by other furniture. But there is a tradeoff: far-field analogies are harder to execute and require more effort to translate. The distance between domains is what creates novelty — the unfamiliar source forces you to invent the connection rather than copy the solution. This week, when you look at Disney or Apple, notice how the best design choices came from outside the obvious category.
Innovation rarely comes from inventing something entirely new. It comes from moving ideas between industries that don’t normally talk to each other. IDEO’s designers act as “technology brokers” — they collect solutions from one domain and recombine them in another. A shopping cart borrows from rollerblades. A medical device borrows from a toy. The key is access to a wide range of industries and the ability to see connections others miss. For this week: DVF’s wrap dress came from bankrupt stocking machines. That’s technology brokering — taking what exists in one world and recombining it in another.
Products become commodities. Services become commodities. The next competitive frontier is staging experiences — designing memorable events that engage customers in an inherently personal way. A cup of coffee costs pennies as a commodity, a dollar as a product, three dollars as a service, and fifteen dollars as an experience. The shift is from delivering function to designing time well spent. An experience has a beginning, middle, and end; it engages multiple senses; it creates a memory. This is the framework behind Disney, Apple Stores, and every "unboxing" that feels like a gift.
An affordance is a relationship between an object and a person — a chair affords sitting, a handle affords pulling. But what matters for design is the perceived affordance: what the user thinks they can do before they think about it. A flat plate on a door affords pushing; a handle affords pulling. When the design gets this wrong, people push doors they should pull, every single day. Affordances shape behavior before conscious thought kicks in. For first-contact design, this is foundational: the object must communicate its use through its form.
Reflection assignment: Find a designed thing in the world that represents one of these concepts. Bring it to Wednesday's discussion.
Disney
Anticipation as design
Apple Store
Every surface is a controlled reveal
Apple Unboxing
Emotional choreography
DVF Wrap Dress
One idea, no technology, 50 years of icon
Weeks before your trip: countdown timers, personalized itineraries, MagicBand unboxing in the mail. By the time you walk through the gate, you’ve been having the experience for weeks. Disney doesn’t design a theme park — they design a journey that begins the moment you decide to go. Takeaway: Design the anticipation. The opening isn’t the first touch — it’s the first thought.
Glass facade — you see the products before you enter. Transparency as invitation. Every laptop at 76° so you must adjust it, which means you touch it. Genius Bar at the back — the journey is the store. No checkout counter. Takeaway: Design the sequence. What does someone see first, touch first, feel first?
The box resists opening at exactly the right speed — air pressure designed in. Every layer is sequenced. Nothing is accidental. Apple employs a dedicated box opener. Takeaway: Design the sensory arc. Each moment should add a new dimension — sight, then touch, then sound.
1970: Diana Vreeland writes to Diane von Furstenberg — “Your clothes are absolutely smashing.” 1976: Newsweek cover. Millions of women, 50+ years, still in production. No technology, no complex system — one resonant idea executed with conviction. The wrap dress IS an iconic opening: the first thing she showed the world, and it defined everything that followed. Takeaway: An iconic opening doesn’t require technology. It requires one idea so clear it becomes the benchmark.
The first moment someone encounters your design is itself a design problem. Every product is an experience and a system. The designers who stand out learn to see and design the parts that were previously invisible.
Disney, Apple Store, Apple Unboxing, and DVF — each turned an opening into an art form by designing something no one had thought to design before. Each teaches a structural principle you’ll apply this week.
Weeks before your trip: countdown timers, personalized itineraries, MagicBand unboxing in the mail.
By the time you walk through the gate, you've been having the experience for weeks.
Disney doesn't design a theme park. They design a journey that begins the moment you decide to go.
Glass facade — you see the products before you enter. Transparency as invitation. Every laptop at 76° so you must adjust it, which means you touch it. Genius Bar at the back — the journey is the store. No checkout counter.
Design the sequence. What does someone see first, touch first, feel first? Every moment in the journey should be intentional.
The box resists opening at exactly the right speed — air pressure designed in. Every layer is sequenced. Nothing is accidental. Apple employs a dedicated box opener.
Design the sensory arc. Each moment should add a new dimension — sight, then touch, then sound. What does your design feel like at each stage of discovery?
The Vespa isn’t transportation — it’s an identity. From 1946 Piaggio factory to Roman Holiday to every café in Europe, the experience begins the moment you see one. The silhouette is the brand. No logo needed.
An iconic beginning can be a shape. When the form carries the entire story, the first encounter is instant recognition — before you touch it, ride it, or own it.
A bankrupt stocking factory’s hosiery machines became fashion machines — analogical transfer that created the wrap dress, a single idea so clear it defined everything that followed.
In 1969, Diane von Furstenberg was 22, married to a prince, pregnant, and had never designed a dress. No fashion training, no factory, no investors. What she had was a single idea about how a woman should feel when she gets dressed: powerful, free, and like herself.
She was interning at Manufactura Ferretti in Como, Italy. Next door was a stocking factory. When pantyhose replaced stockings, that factory went bankrupt. Ferretti bought it. The bankrupt factory’s tubular knitting machines were repurposed with thicker yarn — and that’s how they invented the jersey knit that would become the wrap dress.
This is analogical transfer at the level of manufacturing — the very concept from this week’s readings. Hosiery machines became fashion machines. DVF designed around the material’s strengths: it stretched, it draped, it printed beautifully, it didn’t wrinkle. A dress that tied at the waist, required no zipper, fit almost every body type. She sold the first ones out of a suitcase.
In 1970, Diana Vreeland — the most powerful editor in fashion — wrote DVF a letter: “I think your clothes are absolutely smashing. The fabrics, the prints, the cut are all great. This is what we need.” That letter, from the Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, was the first external validation. But DVF had already been selling the dresses directly. She didn’t wait for permission.
By 1976, she was on the cover of Newsweek. The tagline, in her own handwriting: “Feel like a woman, Wear a dress!” Twenty-five thousand dresses were selling per week. One million sold by the time of that cover. She had built the entire brand on a single silhouette. One idea, one form, one message.
The wrap dress became a symbol not because it was the best-made dress, but because it was the clearest idea. Women didn’t just buy a garment — they bought the feeling the garment represented. DVF understood that the opening experience wasn’t the store or the packaging. It was the moment you put it on and looked in the mirror.
Fifty years later, the wrap dress is still in production. Still in dozens of prints. DVF’s “Journey of a Dress” exhibition at LACMA drew hundreds of thousands of visitors. The dress is in the permanent collections of the Costume Institute at the Met and the Smithsonian.
Every case study we’ve seen this week — Disney, Apple Store, Apple Unboxing — involved large teams, massive budgets, and years of iteration. DVF’s wrap dress is a counterpoint: a bankrupt stocking factory’s machines repurposed through analogical transfer, one woman’s conviction, and an idea so clear it became the benchmark for an entire category. Dahl & Moreau would call it a far-field analogy — hosiery manufacturing to haute couture. The distance between domains is exactly what created the novelty.
The question for you this week is not whether you have Apple’s resources. It’s whether you have one idea clear enough to define everything that follows.
Newsweek, March 22, 1976 — “Rags & Riches”
Diana Vreeland’s 1970 letter from Vogue: “This is what we need.”
“Journey of a Dress” — LACMA Exhibition
Millions of women. Still in production. One idea.
An icon is a representation — a very powerful symbol. These criteria separate “good” from “iconic”:
Step 1: Explore it, taste it. Pay attention to every step.
Step 2: Write down every moment you just experienced — the wrapper, unwrapping it, the weight in your hand, the first taste, the texture, the flavor as it dissolves, the aftertaste.
Step 3: Redesign the first three steps to make this candy iconic. Same candy. Same cost. What would make someone remember this experience, tell someone about it, want it again?
Unwrap. Taste. Map. Redesign.
“Iconic Beginnings”
Interview + Identify
Find a product your partner loves whose early experience journey is undesigned
Experience Journey Map
3+ stages with intended emotion
Supporting Artifacts
Images, video, prototypes — whatever makes your redesigned journey clear and compelling
Principle Transfer
Structural, not surface
Gallery Slides
Your 4 slides in the weekly shared class deck
Due Monday before class
Every design, even a simple one, is an experience journey. Interview your dyad partner. Find a product they love whose early experience — how people find it, anticipate it, first encounter it — is undesigned. Map the full journey, then redesign the beginning (or another undesigned or underdesigned part of the experience, depending on what you learned from the interview). Identify which impact trajectory your redesigned product sits in. The experience journey you’re designing IS a service system — name it.
Dyads: randomly assigned partner. You design for them, they design for you.
Experience journey map (3+ stages with intended emotion at each — this is the primary deliverable). Supporting artifacts — include a slide with supporting artifacts (images, video, storyboard, or prototype) to help communicate the idea for the redesigned experience. This can be as simple or refined as you like. We will briefly present these slides live in class at around 3 minutes per person (6 minutes per team). One sensory choice beyond visual (named and justified) — building on the example of Apple unboxing from this week’s slides, in which Apple designed the air resistance of the box lid, the sound of the pull tab, etc, identify one non-visual sense (touch, sound, smell, etc.) and intentionally design for it in your experience journey. Name which sense and explain why it matters for your redesign. The idea is to push past making something that just looks good. Principle transfer statement — your principle transfer statement each week is where you show engagement with takeaway concepts from the theory slide and/or case studies in your design. For example: “The principle I transferred from [specific reading on theory slide or example from case study slides] is [analogical transfer], applied as [my partner talked about a problem with a vaccine shipment that was frozen in transit but no one realized it and was compromised and thus ineffective when used later on. This invisible part of the product experience had not been designed for, and was a failure mode, so I chose to work on that and identified the analogy I was looking for as: a ‘temperature change identification’ problem in different ways. I looked for ways this problem of temperature change identification has been solved in totally different products and industries. I found an example of one where a thin membrane bursts at freezing temperature, and thought of creating a sticker filled with a small amount of food coloring made of that membrane. So if it reached that temperature, it would burst and release the food coloring, making it clear the vaccines were compromised.]” Your principle transfer can come from any of the theory or case examples from the week. The idea is for you to engage with the concepts from that week in your design and articulate how.
Is your principle transfer structural, not surface? Does your journey map include the invisible parts — before and after? Does your sensory choice add something vision can’t carry?
Ask about your partner’s best and worst designed experiences. Your goal is to find a product your partner genuinely loves whose beginning is undesigned. It can help to learn about more than one and then find the one with the richest material for redesign.
Listen First
Ask about first encounters — how did they find it, hear about it, decide to try it? What was the first ‘taste’ of the experience like?
Find the Frustration
Ask about the gap between expectation and reality — when did the early experience fall short of what the product deserves?
Design for Them
You are redesigning their early experience journey, not your own. The interview is how you find where the beginning is undesigned.
Ask about the full journey: Before (how they find it, anticipate it) → During (the sequence of discovery and interaction) → After (what they feel, what they remember).
Ask permission to record so you can go back to it later. If not, take detailed notes. Ask your partner to show you — in person, by video, or with photos — what they describe.
Dyad partners announced (randomly assigned). Design your interview questions together.
Make the invisible visible — every stage, every emotion, every gap. Your journey map is the primary deliverable.
Finish interviewing each other if you haven’t yet. Introductions to 2D and 3D digital fabrication.
Your interview gave you stories. A journey map turns those stories into a structure you can redesign. Five steps:
01
Extract Moments
Listen back to the recording or re-read notes. Write each distinct moment on a sticky/card. One moment = one sticky.
02
Order in Time
Lay the stickies in sequence from first encounter to last. Don’t skip steps that seem “obvious” — those are usually where design is missing.
03
Group Into Stages
Cluster moments into 3–7 stages. Name each stage from the user’s point of view, not the company’s (“Deciding” not “Customer Acquisition”).
04
Add Emotion
Draw a line across the moments showing how your partner felt at each step — satisfaction up, frustration down. Quote them directly where you can.
05
Mark Moments of Truth
Circle the 1–3 moments that most define the experience. These are where your redesign lives. Everything else is context.
A journey map is a diagnosis tool. You’re not drawing for beauty — you’re finding where the experience is undesigned so you know what to redesign.
Simple example — 3 stages, 6 moments, one emotion line. This is the minimum viable journey map.
★ Moment of truth: watching the latte art — the visible craft turned a transaction into a small ritual. The redesign opportunity is the menu board (frustration) and the first sip (mismatch with expectation).
More complex — 5 stages, 10 moments, emotional stakes are higher. Anxiety is a design factor, not just a feeling.
★ Two moments of truth: the wait past the appointment time (anxiety peaks with no information) and the drill sound (even with numbing, the sound triggers fear). Notice the emotion line dips before the procedure even starts — the waiting room is doing damage. The redesign opportunity isn’t just the procedure; it’s the time when nothing is happening.
Four tracks, aligned in columns. Copy this structure — the details are yours.
Draw it by hand on paper, build it in Figma, or use stickies on a wall. The medium doesn’t matter — the alignment across columns does. Mark your moments of truth with a star.
Too Abstract
“The user feels unwelcome” is a conclusion, not a moment. Replace with the specific scene: “She stood by the door unsure if she should seat herself or wait.” Moments are observable.
Company-Speak Stages
“Onboarding,” “Customer Acquisition,” “Engagement.” Those are org chart words. Your partner never said them. Name stages the way your partner would: “Figuring out where to go,” “Trying not to look confused.”
Skipping the Invisible Parts
Most students start the map when the user walks through the door. The best material is usually before that — the days of anticipation, the Google search, the conversation with a friend. Those are undesigned by default.
Your Feelings, Not Theirs
The emotion line belongs to your partner, not you. If you draw a dip at “the menu was confusing,” make sure they said so. Otherwise you’re redesigning your own frustrations with their product.
No Moments of Truth
If everything on the map has equal weight, you haven’t diagnosed anything yet. Force yourself to circle the 1–3 moments that most define whether the experience succeeds or fails. That’s where your redesign should live.
Making It Pretty Too Soon
A journey map is a diagnosis tool. Spend your time on accuracy and insight first, visual polish last. A scribbled map that reveals the right moment of truth beats a beautiful one that misses it.
Speedy Hacks
AI
If your partner is fine with it, use transcription options if you record the interview, plug it into your preferred AI tool and explore patterns in it.
Portfolio
Think about the project as a team making two projects. If that works for your duo you get double the portfolio content.
Before Wednesday
Interview partner + read theory + document
Wednesday
Theory + Studio + finish interviews
Due Monday before class
WIP doc + Gallery Slides + Reflection
X-Hour
Intro to 2D & 3D digital fabrication (keep letting us know what you’d like covered in these!)
Interview your partner (45 minutes each, if possible, before Wednesday). Ask permission to record; take detailed notes if not. Ask them to show you — in person, by video, or with photos — what they describe. Read the takeaways in these slides about the theory readings (Hargadon & Sutton, Gentner & Markman, Dahl & Moreau, or Pine & Gilmore). For each concept in the theory slide (slide 8 of this deck), update your collection (your list of 20) with 2–3 designed experiences that you think represent the reading takeaway ideas well.
Theory discussion (10 min): What makes an analogy deep vs. shallow? Why does distance between domains matter? When does a product become an experience? Bridging question: Can you identify which kind of analogy YOUR idea is — surface or structural? Near-field or far-field?
Studio (80 min): Finish interviewing each other if you haven’t yet. Design a more iconic beginning. Ask yourself: “What’s the PRINCIPLE I’m transferring, not the LOOK?”
Your WIP Doc — Week 2 section:
Photos of your interview notes / question design
Documentation of your partner’s product and its undesigned early experience
Your experience journey map (3+ stages, intended emotion at each)
Process work: sketches, storyboards, photos, or video of your service design
Principle transfer statement (“The principle I transferred from [case] is _____, applied as _____”)
Concept tags — mark which apply to your work this week:
Week 2: Structure Mapping · Far-Field Analogies · Technology Brokering · Experience Economy · Affordances · Anticipation as Design · Controlled Reveal · Sensory Arc · One Resonant Idea
Week 1: Service · Energy · Material · Interactive/Sensory · Natural · Artificial · Longevity
Week 2 Challenge Deliverables
Live presentation: Monday Week 3. Present your 4 Gallery Slides to the class (~3 min per person, ~6 min per team).
Gallery Slides — your name section (4 slides):
Slide 1: The Before — describe the undesigned or underdesigned experience you discovered in your interview. What does it look like now? What’s missing?
Slide 2: The After — your redesigned experience journey (3+ stages with intended emotion at each). Show what you changed and why.
Slide 3: Supporting artifacts (sketches, images, video, storyboard, or prototype — whatever you prefer) that help communicate the idea for the redesigned experience. Include your sensory choice beyond visual (named and justified — see Apple unboxing example from the Deliverables section).
Slide 4: Principle transfer statement — what concept(s) from this week’s theory or case studies you engaged with, and how you applied it in your design.
Introductory 2D and 3D digital fabrication topics.
Also a good time to finish interviewing each other if you haven’t yet.
Week 2
Gentner & Markman (1997) — deep vs. shallow analogy. Structural mapping transfers relational structure, not surface features.
Dahl & Moreau (2002) — far-field analogies produce more original ideas. Distance between domains matters.
Hargadon & Sutton (1997) — technology brokering. Innovation by recombining existing ideas across industries.
Pine & Gilmore — when does a product become an experience? The experience economy framework.
Disney — the experience starts before you arrive. Anticipation as design.
Apple Store & Unboxing — every surface is a controlled reveal. Emotional choreography.
DVF Wrap Dress — one resonant idea, no technology. An iconic opening built on conviction alone.
"Iconic Beginnings"
Every design is an experience journey. Interview your dyad partner. Find a product they love whose early experience is undesigned. Map the full journey, then redesign the beginning — anticipation, discovery, first encounter.
Deliverables: experience journey map (3+ stages — primary deliverable), supporting artifacts (images, video, prototypes — presented live), sensory choice beyond visual, principle transfer statement, portfolio PDF.
Due: Monday by 12pm.