COURSE NUMBER: MBA247.1

This course is cross-listed with the School of Information.

 

This is an Applied Innovation elective and has a co-requisite core course: MBA200P Problem-Finding, Problem Solving. If you enroll and have not completed MBA200P, PFPS will be added to your schedule after the Add/Drop period.

 

COURSE TITLE: Design and Development of Web Based Products and Services

 

UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 Units

 

INSTRUCTOR: Thomas Lee

 

EMAIL ADDRESS: thomasyl@haas.berkeley.edu

 

PREREQUISITE(S): NONE- This is an introductory, experiential learning class most appropriate for students who have not already taken New Product Development.

 

CLASS FORMAT: Lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises

 

REQUIRED READINGS: Readings are drawn from various online sources.  In lieu of a reader, students should expect to spend an equivalent dollar amount on software such as online advertising.

 

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Attendance, in-class participation, individual exercises, team project milestones, and final team project

 

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: This is an introductory course on design, problem solving and innovation.  While the principles generalize to any context, this course focuses on solutions that take the form of digital goods and services.  

 

This is a team-based, experiential learning course.  Students who take this course should expect to:

·         Work with a team that includes different backgrounds, interests, and personal motivations.  As a cross-listed course, teams may or may not include students from different schools across the University (depending upon enrollment).

·         Experience a process for identifying and prioritizing opportunities to innovate.  The process scales from an entrepreneur working alone to Fortune 500 firms managing an innovation portfolio.

·         Practice applying qualitative processes (including customer interviews, paper prototyping, and remote user-testing) to characterize the "job to be done," isolate a "minimum viable problem," and iterate your design prototypes.

·         Practice applying quantitative processes (including analysis of keyword searches, digital ad campaigns, and funnel analysis) to characterize the "job to be done," isolate a "minimum viable problem," and iterate your design prototypes.  

·         Formulate hypotheses and then design and execute experiments in a Lean cycle of build, measure and learn.

 

Teams will learn general principles of product/service design in the context of tools, methods, and concepts specific to the Web-based environment.  Both desktop and mobile products and services are prototyped in the Web context to leverage common development and testing resources.  For purposes of the course, the product or service should be aimed at consumers in the range 25 - 45.  We define this target audience so that we can use classmates as preliminary subjects of interviews, testing, and surveys.  For the purposes of this course, the product or service need not have a compelling business model. The focus is on creating a product or service that solves a real problem, not necessarily creating a new business.

 

This course teaches a process-oriented approach to product and service design with heavy emphasis on user experience design.  Students interested in design aesthetics, semiotics and cognitive psychology should look elsewhere.  Neither is this a class about technology.  The course syllabus does not include tutorials on specific software packages.  Students interested in technical questions such as platform selection and scaling should look elsewhere.  

 

MODIFICATIONS TO COURSE FROM ITS MOST RECENT OFFERING: This is now a three-unit course (rather than two units) to better reflect the workload.  The class meets two times per week for 1.5 hours per session.  In general, the first session of each week covers a principle or practice and includes in-class application exercises.  The second session of each week is a "lab-session" for intra-team collaborative work, intra-team testing and evaluation, one-on-one meetings with course staff and/or team mentors.

 

CAREER FIELD: Entrepreneurship, Product Management, Product Design.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Thomas Lee is Associate Adjunct Professor of Operations and Information Technology Management and Research Scientist at the Institute for Business Innovation.  His research applies data analytics to identify and select opportunities for product and service innovation, marketing, and design.  This summer, he was a Data Science Research Fellow at frog Design studying the intersection of Data Science and Design.  He was previously assistant professor of Operations and Information Management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.