The argument
Waiting is not a failure of a system, it is a designed component of it; the design is almost always about managing the person rather than the delay; and who is made to wait, for how long, and what they are told while waiting, is never neutral.
- T1
Waiting is not a failure of a system, it is a designed component of it
- T2
the design is almost always about managing the person rather than the delay
- T3
and who is made to wait, for how long, and what they are told while waiting, is never neutral
What you will do
You log a week of your own waits and find out that the clock and the feeling disagree. You take one shipped wait apart and work out which of the things it measures, shows and claims is actually holding it up. Then you redesign a wait you are not allowed to make shorter, and say out loud who your redesign is managing.
Nothing in this course asks you to make anything faster. The duration stays where it is in every exercise, which leaves you the techniques and the argument about who they are pointed at.
Who it is for
Second year and above, in interaction design, service design or software. You need to be able to build or prototype an interface well enough that somebody else can use it, and to sit with an argument that does not resolve. No statistics background is assumed, although you will read papers that have some in them.
If you want a course on performance optimisation, this is the wrong one.