Master 2021/2022

Designing a Mobile Business: How to Design Mobile Products and Services

Type: Elective course (Electronic Business and Digital Innovations)

Area of studies: Business Informatics

Delivered by: Department of Business Informatics

Where: Graduate School of Business

When: 1 year, 4 module

Mode of studies: distance learning

Open to: students of one campus

Instructors: Mikhail M. Komarov

Master’s programme: Электронный бизнес и цифровые инновации

Language: English

ECTS credits: 5

Contact hours: 2

Course Syllabus

Abstract

Every mobile app gives you something. It could be not only something tangible like the pair of jeans you've ordered using the app but also a piece of work like waking you up in the morning. It could be a feeling, for instance, a feeling of enjoyment obtained from watching a video clip or a feeling of closeness flashed out after receiving an old photo from a loving person via some instant messenger. That "something" is actually the reason why you use the app, it is the heart of the product, and in this course we will not talk about it. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. There are always two sides of a coin. There should be a person who makes that "something" accessible. It is astonishingly important because the use of the product loses its meaning if users can’t get what they want.

Learning Objectives

• The main objective of the course is to teach you to shape mobile products and services for people’s use

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Design huge chunks of user interfaces in the case of adding a new feature to a product
• Improve designs by eliminating different kinds of interaction problems
• Redesign a complete app by a given set of functions (e.g., extending an existing product to a new platform)

Course Contents

• Mobile Interaction Design: An introduction
• User Research
• Usability Inspection Methods & Intro to Usability Evaluation
• Guerrilla Usability Testing & Field Visits
• The Process of Design Creation
• Accumulated Design Knowledge & Task Redesign
• Navigation Design & Design Rationale
• Intro to Visual Design

Assessment Elements

• Test-based Exam
  Examination with questions similar to the Coursera-based course and additional questions related to the content of the Coursera course.
• Interaction design report
  At the end students should present written report providing mockups (5-10) of the mobile applications (2 applications should be analyzed) which they use, or have developed with functional description of each mockup. Problems with interaction should be confirmed by the results of the survey of at least 40 participants. Recommendations to improve the interaction should be provided at the end.

Interim Assessment

• 2021/2022 4th module
  0.7 * Test-based Exam + 0.3 * Interaction design report

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Cooper, A., Reimann, R., Cronin, D., & Noessel, C. (2014). About Face : The Essentials of Interaction Design (Vol. Fourth edition Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, Christopher Noessel). Hoboken: Wiley. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=827342

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Steve Portigal. (2013). Interviewing Users : How to Uncover Compelling Insights. Rosenfeld Media.