Students will launch the Winter Solstice Art & Astronomy project by engaging with real users to understand how people experience winter traditions, darkness, and night skies. Through structured interview practice and direct conversations, students will gather firsthand evidence about cultural celebrations, environmental observations, and personal connections to the solstice. They will synthesize findings into empathy maps that ground future design decisions in authentic user needs.

Students will synthesize their Winter Solstice user interviews and research into clear, evidence-based problem statements that define whose needs they are designing for and why. They will identify patterns across interviews, surface non-obvious insights about cultural traditions, astronomy understanding, and community engagement, and craft a focused How Might We question grounded in real user evidence to guide ideation in the next phase.

Students will generate a wide range of user-centered solution ideas for their Winter Solstice Art & Astronomy Walk installations, moving from divergent brainstorming to evidence-based selection. They will connect each concept to documented user needs, evaluate ideas using a decision matrix grounded in desirability, and produce annotated concept sketches that serve as blueprints for prototyping.

Students will build and refine low- and medium-fidelity prototypes of their Winter Solstice lanterns, constellation panels, and interactive astronomy models, using real user feedback to guide at least one documented iteration before the final exhibition phase.

Students will validate their refined Winter Solstice installations with a new user, document final feedback-driven adjustments, and present their Art & Astronomy Walk installations to an authentic audience, clearly tracing design decisions back to user research and iteration evidence.