CSE 403 project: Proposal

Overview

Now that you have your project groups, it’s time to take your pitch and work it into a proposal video for our venture capitalists (the TAs)! They want to know who your users are, what they want to accomplish, and how they’ll use your project to do it.

Identify the three most important features of your app. Thinking in terms of use cases and user personas from the lecture “Requirements and use cases”, create a two minute video showcasing mockups of your interface and how users will use that interface to achieve their goals.

Instructions

Your video should run for about two minutes. It should clearly identify who your target users are and what problem they are trying to solve. It should also clearly show mockups of the user interface and how users would use that interface to achieve a goal. If the pitch focused on telling us what your project is, think of this assignment as your chance to show us a more polished pitch of how your project could be used.

1. Target audience (Who) (20%)

Your video should clearly describe who your users are. We want to know: * What are their backgrounds? * What is your users’ experience with what they are trying to do? * Why do your users want to do what they are trying to do?

2. Problem statement (Why) (20%)

Your video should also clearly describe the problem your users are facing: * What are your users’ trying to do and why? * Why might other solutions be inadequate for what they’re trying to do? * What are your users’ pain points if they didn’t have your project?

3. User interface mockup (How) (40%)

Your video should show how your project will be used by users. This is the part of your video we are most keen to see. You should narrate and describe a mockup of the user interface. Make sure to highlight the three key features your app will have to help a user achieve their goals. * What buttons will users click? * How will pages be laid out? * What steps will users need to take? * Does your app guide users towards certain actions? * What design decisions do you prioritize?

4. Solution (What) (20%)

Finally, your video should clearly identify how your project could help a user achieve their goals: * What do other solutions to this problem look like? * What does this project do differently or better than other options?

Clarifications and FAQs

How thorough does the video need to be?

The goal of the video is to visually demonstrate your thinking for what the core features of your project are and how a user might interact with those features for a given use case. We are not expecting or asking for perfection for mocked up UI - we want to see the thinking. For example, you could do a voiceover of a Figma design or a slideshow with annotated renders of pages.

What tools should we use to mock up our UI?

You are free to use whatever tools you think will be most helpful for demonstrating your project’s interface and how that interface supports user’s goals. Feel free to use tools like Figma to create mockups of your UI and its interactive components. With care, AI assistant tools can also supplement but not supplant the mockup design process as well. Your mockup can be static images or interactive, but the better you demonstrate your thinking and understanding of the user, the better.

How should we structure our video?

You can structure your video any way that makes sense. One way would be to introduce your users and their problems. Then, showcase your UI mockups and explain how your users could use that interface (and three key features of your project) to solve their problem. Make sure to explicitly show the interface, the buttons users will click, the layout of pages, etc. You could close with a brief discussion about why you made the decisions you did for your interface.

Does everyone need to speak in the video?

We would recommend that everyone speaks in the video as it’s an easy way to show that everyone in your group participated in the assignment. If another arrangement works better for your group, we recommend a short credits card at the end outlining what and how each member contributed.