Design 214: Human-Centered Elimination

Course Description

This course introduces students to design thinking as a universal problem-solving methodology by applying it to a fundamental, everyday human experience: defecation. Through empathy-driven research, iterative prototyping, and continuous feedback loops, students will reframe bodily elimination as a design challenge—one that can be optimized, enhanced, and strategically aligned with personal values and performance metrics. By treating digestion as a system and the bathroom as an interface, the course demonstrates how design thinking can be applied to any domain, regardless of scale, dignity, or necessity.

Students will develop frameworks for understanding discomfort as opportunity, inefficiency as innovation space, and privacy as a constraint to be creatively overcome. The course emphasizes actionable insights, solution-forward thinking, and the cultivation of a designerly mindset capable of transforming even the most routine human processes into sites of meaning, growth, and impact.

No prior experience with gastrointestinal systems is required.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Apply design thinking methodologies to non-traditional, embodied problem spaces, including biological and physiological systems.
• Demonstrate empathy toward users (self and others) experiencing discomfort, resistance, or shame during routine bodily processes.
• Reframe elimination-related challenges as opportunities for innovation through structured problem definition.
• Generate and prototype interventions that improve the efficiency, emotional experience, and perceived value of defecation.
• Evaluate and iterate on prototypes using qualitative feedback, self-reporting, and reflective metrics.
• Communicate design rationale using professional design language, diagrams, and presentations appropriate for institutional and corporate contexts.
• Adopt a solution-oriented mindset capable of treating all human experiences as improvable systems.

Course Structure

This course combines lectures, discussions, studio workshops, and independent research. Emphasis is placed on process fidelity, documentation, and reflective iteration.

Weekly Schedule

16-Week Term

Week 1 — Introduction to Design Thinking as Universal Method

• Overview of the design thinking process and its relevance across domains.
• Introduction to elimination as a complex, user-centered system.
• Discussion: Why some experiences remain under-designed.

Week 2 — Understanding the Digestive System as a Design Space

• Systems thinking applied to digestion and elimination.
• Mapping inputs, outputs, constraints, and failure points.
• Identifying stakeholders in private physiological experiences.
• Studio: Digestive systems diagramming workshop.

Week 3 — Empathy Research I: Observing Bodily Experience

• Methods for empathetic observation and self-reporting.
• Documenting moments of discomfort, delay, or interruption.
• Separating judgment from insight.
• Assignment: Begin Empathy Journal.

Week 4 — Empathy Research II: Emotional and Cultural Contexts

• Exploring shame, privacy, and silence as design constraints.
• Cultural attitudes toward elimination and their impact on experience.
• Designing with dignity while pursuing improvement.
• Discussion: When empathy becomes invasive.

Week 5 — Defining the Problem

• Synthesizing research into actionable problem statements.
• Distinguishing symptoms from root causes.
• Reframing inconvenience as opportunity.
• Assignment: Problem Definition Brief (Draft).

Week 6 — Insight Generation and Opportunity Framing

• Transforming observations into insights.
• Identifying leverage points within routine bodily processes.
• Avoiding premature conclusions.
• Workshop: Insight clustering and reframing.

Week 7 — Ideation Techniques for Sensitive Domains

• Brainstorming without censorship.
• Quantity over quality in early-stage concept generation.
• Normalizing extreme and impractical ideas.
• Exercise: Generate 100 interventions for elimination enhancement.

Week 8 — Midterm Review: Concept Selection and Justification

• Evaluating concepts against user needs and feasibility.
• Justifying intervention selection using design criteria.
• Peer feedback and critique.
• Deliverable: Selected Concept Rationale.

Week 9 — Prototyping I: Low-Fidelity Interventions

• Introduction to rapid prototyping methods.
• Exploring spatial, behavioral, and ritual-based prototypes.
• Failing early and often.
• Studio: Paper, cardboard, and behavioral mockups.

Week 10 — Prototyping II: Refinement and Iteration

• Iterating based on initial feedback.
• Balancing optimization with user comfort.
• Recognizing when improvement creates new problems.
• Assignment: Prototype Portfolio (Draft).

Week 11 — Testing and Feedback Loops

• Designing ethical feedback mechanisms for private experiences.
• Interpreting qualitative data without overfitting conclusions.
• The limits of self-reported success.
• Discussion: When metrics distort experience.

Week 12 — Measuring Success

• Defining meaningful metrics for bodily optimization.
• Efficiency, satisfaction, and emotional impact.
• Interrogating the desire for quantification.
• Studio: Success metrics workshop.

Week 13 — Scaling the Experience

• From individual intervention to generalized solution.
• Considering market fit and broader applicability.
• Designing for adoption and compliance.
• Case Study: Wellness technologies and behavior modification.

Week 14 — Ethics and Unintended Consequences

• Examining over-optimization and loss of intimacy.
• When improvement becomes control.
• Responsibility in human-centered intervention.
• Reading: Ethics in design and behavioral systems.

Week 15 — Final Presentations

• Formal presentation of elimination-centered design solutions.
• Articulating value propositions and impact statements.
• Peer and instructor evaluation.
• Deliverable: Final Presentation.

Week 16 — Reflection and Future Applications

• Reflecting on design thinking as a transferable mindset.
• Identifying new domains for methodological application.
• Course synthesis and closure.
• Final Submission: Empathy Journal + Prototype Portfolio.

Assessment Overview

Empathy Journal — 20% Ongoing documentation of digestive experiences, emotional responses, and moments of friction.

Problem Definition Brief — 20% A reframed articulation of a personal or observed elimination challenge.

Prototype Portfolio — 30% Low- and mid-fidelity interventions demonstrating iterative development.

Final Presentation — 30% A formal pitch positioning the intervention as a scalable, human-centered innovation.

Notes

• Attendance is required.
• Participation is expected.
• Discomfort should be documented, not avoided.

This course does not exist. Its logic does.