Weill Medical College of Cornell University · Courses
eCornell CESYS
13 courses with the subject eCornell CESYS, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
eCornell CESYS511Identifying and Framing a Challenge0
In this course you will begin an empathy-based process that leads you to a solution which serves a broad, diverse user base. Along the way, you will identify key stakeholders who will drive critical decisions later in the design cycle. Your process begins when you identify an opportunity and develop a challenge statement summarizing what you are trying to do along with your aspirations. From there, you will gather support for your idea and refine your intent. Your effort will culminate in presentation-ready document that summarizes and describes in detail the challenge you are trying to address and what you hope to achieve by taking on the challenge.
In this course you will conduct fieldwork to collect information about the users whose needs you are trying to meet within a challenge and empathy space that you have defined. You will venture out into the empathy field and observe and interact with people to gain the insight you need. Ultimately the insights gained from this fieldwork will help you develop a robust model of your users' needs, expectations, and connections with one another. The course Identifying and Framing a Challenge is required to be completed prior to starting this course.
In this course you will convert the raw data from your empathy fieldwork to create a powerful problem definition that sets the right context for brainstorming solutions. You will prepare a physical or virtual space in which you will thoughtfully unpack your observations to create a robust record of your experiences in the field. You will apply methods to extract empathy data from first, second, and third person empathy experiences. You will then distill this data into a series of needs, insights, and surprises that will drive creativity and innovation later in the process. At the same time, you will analyze the empathy data to identify patterns and connections within and among your observations. The methods described in this course are an efficient approach to problem definition with results that are powerful and authentic. The resulting model is rich with not only qualitative data such as user personas, but also quantitative results that can be reviewed and shared throughout the remainder of the process. The act of constructing this model can bring into sharp focus the defining features of your problem. The ideas and insights generated may in fact be provocative, and this is very appropriate at this stage in the design process. The courses Identifying and Framing a Challenge and Gathering User Emotions are required to be completed prior to starting this course.
In this course you will build on the extraction and interpretation of emotional data generated while unpacking observations. You will work through the personas that you previously defined and situate these in context diagrams that examine the relationships between individual users and the problem space. You will also use emotional relationship data maps and flow of thoughts to create capabilities diagrams that crystallize the needs your system must address. With an actionable model of your problem in place, you will engage in a series of brainstorming sessions that use as their core inspiration the personas, capabilities diagrams, and context diagrams. From this process you will gather ideas that will propel you toward the creative solutions in your problem space. The courses Identifying and Framing a Challenge , Gathering User Emotions , and Crafting User Narratives are required to be completed prior to starting this course.
In this course you will evolve a first design, called design zero , for your problem. Your design zero builds on all the prior work, including your capabilities diagrams and the brainstorming sessions you recently completed. You will create visualizations of your personas in action called persona concept sketches . You will use other modified systems engineering tools to document your product features. From this point, you will create rough prototypes and role play as end users who are working with these prototypes. From this process you will learn about your product's strengths and shortcomings. The courses Identifying and Framing a Challenge , Gathering User Emotions , Crafting User Narratives , and Generating User-Centered Solutions are required to be completed prior to starting this course.
In this course you will test your design zero , which is the culmination of the design process leading up to this point. In the testing process you will use tools similar to those used when gathering emotional data. In a similar way, you will end up collecting needs, insights, and surprises along with tensions, contradictions, and synergies. The purpose here is to hone in on a viable system that truly meets user needs. The gathering and analysis of user data will point you in the direction of a refinement of your design zero , which is referred to as design one . Your design one may look deeper into product details, and it may also lead to subtle refinements or radical changes. Your design one is the starting point for a subsequent round of testing, and in adopting this approach you will see how iterative development brings your system closer to the best possible product for your users. The courses Identifying and Framing a Challenge , Gathering User Emotions , Crafting User Narratives , Generating User-Centered Solutions , and Design Prototyping are required to be completed prior to starting this course.
In order to optimize your system, you first need to define it. In this course, you will learn how to use a tool called the Context Diagram to map the responsibilities and elements of your system and how those elements interact with each other. Then you will define the functionality of your system. By using case analysis, you will study the different scenarios that your system may need to accomplish in order to meet your project goals. You will learn not only how to define and analyze your system, but also how to visualize and communicate this information with stakeholders.
This course guides you through the process of deciding how your system should interact with all the elements in the context you identified. You will articulate what your system needs to do to successfully complete its use case using a tool called the Use Case Behavioral Diagram (UCBD). With the UCBD you will derive professional, functional requirements that describe what any valid solution must do throughout its use cases. Then you will develop the UCBD in a way that will meet your customers' needs, but not so prescriptive that it prevents your team from using all of your talent in service of making your project a success.
eCornell CESYS523Exploring Your System's Architecture0
In this course, you will bring together disparate system functions that have been described in isolation to show how they all might operate together. You will explore what different kinds of interactions might occur in a way that brings your whole team together to create a cohesive solution that truly meets the challenge's needs. Then you will interpret a flexible tool called the Functional Flow Block Diagram that will add value throughout your design-build-test process.
eCornell CESYS524Assessing Your System's Performance and Value0
Decision matrices are one of the most commonly used engineering tools. They are used to help rationalize why one option should be chosen over another, and you can find some form of them in just about every business, industry, and government. Decision matrices may not always be identified as such but can be used as part of a trade study, competitive analysis, or options review. As prevalent as these matrices are, they are also one of the most misused tools out there. In this course, you begin by developing performance metrics. These performance metrics will allow you to objectively determine the value of any potential solution to a challenge. You will then develop a decision matrix around these metrics by applying justifiable weights and tuning the metrics to account for the needs and priorities of specific customers. By learning how to create a superior decision matrix with these well-defined performance metrics, you can achieve tremendous influence on a project even if you do not have official authority.
eCornell CESYS525Implementing the Quality Function Deployment Method0
The quality function deployment (QFD) is one of the most effective methods for relating performance metrics that a customer cares about to technical criteria and engineering parameters and ultimately, the design targets a team needs to build their solution. You will learn that the QFD expresses this relationship in a way that allows you to compare your concepts to your competitors' and to understand the trade-offs between engineering parameters and their influence on performance criteria. This equips you to argue effectively that your design targets will lead your team to a winning solution. In this course, you will go through a detailed, step-by-step process to build a QFD for your own project. You will examine the interrelationship between different engineering characteristics. You will use all this information, along with factors such as cost and technical difficulty, to establish strong design targets and get an estimate of your final system's performance. The course Assessing Your System's Performance and Value is required to be completed prior to starting this course.
Interfaces are one of the most important parts of design and design implementation. However, they are often one of the most challenging aspects to identify and manage, and one of the most common points of failure of any system. As a result, there has been a multitude of software developed to aid in managing this process. However, without a strong understanding of the interfaces and how the subsystem teams work together, the use of the software packages is futile. They are only as good as the information put into them. In this course, you will explore a number of different tools including sequence diagrams and interface matrices to help tease out and formalize your interfaces and interface specifications. This formalization step will help your team to discuss the impact and the dependencies of these interfaces. You will then produce the details and record them as interface specifications so that your team can design and create a well-integrated credible system.
Everyone worries about risk. How do we identify risks? Is this issue more risky than another? Or even worse, "Sorry, but this project sounds too risky. We can't approve it." Wouldn't it be better if you could show an objective understanding of risks, how to plan to address them, and be able to justify the decisions behind those plans? In this course, you will learn how to assess risk with failure modes and effect analysis. You will evaluate different losses of functionality that your system could experience, and determine the possible effects and related causes. You will then develop objective ways of measuring the severity and likelihood of each of these causes, ultimately to develop a quantifiable measure of system risk. You will produce this analysis in a way that not only allows you to make decisions on how to handle these risks, but also justify your actions to others. This course equips you to recognize risk and reduce it.
