Big Data Science & the Urban Experience Challenge

Big Data Science & the Urban Experience Challenge

Developing Insights from Open Government Data Sets that Inspire Citizenship and Solutions to Human Needs in the Urban Environment

Fall 2016: Illinois Institute of Technology

Course overview

This course fulfills the IPRO course learning objectives through teaching a user-centered, methods-driven process for designing and developing products. Students will work in small, interdisciplinary teams to apply innovative, data driven solutions to help solve, correct, or inform the public and policy makers on positive approaches to address many of our greatest challenges in Chicago and beyond. The application of the new technologies, tools, and techniques largely associated with big data has the potential to do substantial social good. Further, applying design thinking, ideation, and human centered design approaches to these challenges in conjunction with what is often strictly the domain of engineering and data science holds the potential for disruptive innovation.

Tools will be introduced to access and work with associated data sets. Data resources will be introduced and teams will be encouraged to do exploratory research. Teams will be asked to focus on solutions that will effect positive social change. The nature of the solutions may be communicative in nature, or new application development, and/or hardware development.

Projects

The projects in this class will be student driven: it will be up to you and your team to identify a need and then develop a concept and even a product, service, or tool that addresses that need. The final deliverable will be a prototype of your concept that demonstrates the benefits of your solution. You will also be responsible for developing a preliminary business / development plan for the concept. We will provide the guidance and tools for identifying and developing your product, but we have found that these projects are more successful when they are based on student