Even for a well-understood, well-motivated problem, choosing a design to invest time into is a difficult and laborious process. This group assignment, spanning multiple weeks of the course, tackles the problem of selecting the right design through design research, task development, generating multiple potential designs, and finally selecting a design to pursue.
This assignment is worth 21% of your overall course grade:
The content of
Your delivery of a presentation this quarter is worth 2% of your overall course grade.
This is a group assignment, consisting of nine milestones.
In this assignment, you will brainstorm a large set of possible tasks and design ideas for your project. You will then conduct design research to learn more about your problem and the current practices of people who might use your design. You will draw upon the ideas developed in your brainstorming and the observations made in your design research to help develop a set of potential tasks your design might support. You will next sketch how a set of initial designs might support those tasks. You will choose a design to pursue in the remainder of the course and storyboard the details of your design in the context of important tasks. Finally, you will present your design process in a report and presentation.
More specifically, you will do the following:
Generate ideas for potential problems, tasks, features, and interactions using a group ideation exercise.
Conduct design research (e.g., contextual inquiry, interviews, observations) to learn from at least three people who might use your design.
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Develop six tasks that might be performed with your design.
Select these to capture the important aspects of the problem you are solving and to provide coverage of the designs you will explore. Create these based on your observations and analyses of existing tasks as well as your vision for new tasks enabled by potential designs. Remember that tasks say what is accomplished, while leaving open how to accomplish it.
As you progress through your project, you can and should consider revising your tasks. Expect to refine or change your tasks as your understanding of the problem matures or according to feedback you receive. The tasks you report in this assignment therefore must be appropriate but are not necessarily final.
Brainstorm and sketch three very different initial designs for your interface. Each design should support four of your tasks.
Do not illustrate the entire design, but instead sketch key aspects needed to illustrate the functionality. These should be rough sketches on paper (i.e., not digital mockups), including illustrations of their relations (e.g., arrows showing transitions and relationships).
The purpose of these sketches is to explore the design space before you lock yourself into a single design. They must demonstrate significant consideration of substantially different approaches to your problem.
From your sketches, select one design to pursue for the remainder of the quarter and two tasks that emphasize critical functionality of your design. These tasks should be non-trivial, critical to solving your problem, and should emphasize long-lived or repeated activities. In contrast, a one-time login screen for a social networking application is not worth being the focus of your project, does not define your project functionality, and is not sufficiently interesting.
Storyboard your chosen design for your chosen tasks, illustrating how the tasks are accomplished in your design.
Summarize your design process in a report and presentation.
The goal of this milestone is to begin thinking about how to plan effective design research to inform your design process.
Generate 5 to 10 different ideas related to each of the following aspects of your project proposal:
We will provide large sheets of paper. Divide a large sheet of paper into 32 squares, each approximately 2in by 2in. Sketch your ideas, one in each square. Each idea should be either a quick doodle with a caption or a one-sentence idea. A person familiar with your project but not in your group should be able to understand the idea each sketch conveys.
The goal is to begin exploring the space of possibilities, not attempting to polish some individual possibility. Focus on the quantity of ideas, not the quality of any one idea. You may include ideas from existing products. No two ideas should be alike. When you get stuck, find a context to inspire new ideas.
Given a space of possible directions, your project needs to begin to gather information on how to generate and consider ideas. Following up on the above, additionally brainstorm:
At the end of section, capture and submit an image of your brainstorm.
Submit via Canvas here:
You will be able to take your paper with you, and you should continue brainstorming throughout your project.
This submission does not require a team contribution statement.
This milestone will be graded on a scale of 3 points based on participation in generating ideas during the brainstorming exercise.
The goal of this milestone is to develop an initial plan for your design research.
In one paragraph, describe the people who might use your design and other stakeholders to consider in your design. Among potential stakeholders, describe the participants you plan to pursue, including such details as their background and the environment where you will examine their current practices. Give enough information to convince us that you can actually find and engage with your target participants in the next week.
In another paragraph, describe the specific design research methods you will use to engage with and learn from these people. The most common method used is contextual inquiry with three participants. However, we encourage you to propose alternative or additional design research methods according to your needs. Please be as specific as possible, providing relevant details for you proposed methods. For example:
On a second page, provide more detail regarding your primary proposed method. For example:
If you propose contextual inquiries, enumerate what activities you intend to observe, what focus you intend to bring to observation of each activity, how you will approach the development of partnership, and any other strategies you intend to pursue for gaining insight through your observations.
If you propose interviews, give an example set of talking points, such as these (note these are all longer than a page, but intended to illustrate a thorough script):
If you propose a diary study, give details of what and how you will ask participants to diary.
The request for a second page of more detail regarding the proposed primary method was new in the Autumn 2017 offering. It does not appear in prior samples.
The goal in soliciting this additional detail is to:
Samples from prior offerings include:
Note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so their reports may not map to the current project. Also note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work.
No more than two pages of text in PDF format. Submit via Canvas here:
Be prepared to discuss your design research with other teams and the course staff.
Your submission must also include a team contribution statement, as an additional page in your submission. This statement should indicate the name of each member of your team,
the percentage of effort in this specific assignment that each member contributed,
and the specific activities in this specific assignment that each member contributed. An example contribution statement is: This contribution statement is intended to support your own reflection as a team as well as the staff's awareness of your efforts.
You should therefore discuss and agree upon this statement of what each of you contributed and how much this contributed to the overall assignment.
The staff does not expect each person to contribute equally to each assignment, but you should work as a team to support each other, and we expect all members will contribute over the quarter.
The staff also understands that percentages are incomplete and subjective, so we gather them only as a summary indication and will not use them directly in any grade calculation.
This milestone will be graded on a scale of 10 points:
The goal of this milestone is to begin your design research, reflect on what you observe and learn, then update your plans for additional design research.
Complete design research with at least one participant prior to this check-in. You hopefully learned something about the needs of people who might use your design, but also about effectively conducting your design research.
Describe your first design research participant and your findings:
Discuss what remains to be pursued in your additional design research. We fully expect changes will be necessary, as design research can be difficult to get right and often important topics are left unresolved.
Samples from prior offerings include:
Note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so their reports may not map to the current project. Also note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work.
No more than one page of text in PDF format. Submit via Canvas here:
Names of participants should be replaced with pseudonyms in all documents. It is important to protect participant anonymity, even in the case that reporting seems harmless.
Be prepared to discuss your design research with other teams and the course staff.
Your submission must also include a team contribution statement, as an additional page in your submission. This statement should indicate the name of each member of your team,
the percentage of effort in this specific assignment that each member contributed,
and the specific activities in this specific assignment that each member contributed. An example contribution statement is: This contribution statement is intended to support your own reflection as a team as well as the staff's awareness of your efforts.
You should therefore discuss and agree upon this statement of what each of you contributed and how much this contributed to the overall assignment.
The staff does not expect each person to contribute equally to each assignment, but you should work as a team to support each other, and we expect all members will contribute over the quarter.
The staff also understands that percentages are incomplete and subjective, so we gather them only as a summary indication and will not use them directly in any grade calculation.
This milestone will be graded on a scale of 8 points:
The goal of this milestone is to reflect on what you observed and learned in your design research, organizing observations around themes to tasks to help inform your design.
Complete design research with a total of at least three participants. Discuss your process and what you learned:
Across your participants, we expect some emergence of common themes, problems, and practices.
If you are having trouble identifying high-level themes, problems, and practices, it may indicate a need to develop additional understanding through more design research. Because your findings at this point are critical to setting a foundation for your project, ensure your design research has provided you the insights and perspective you need to proceed.
Informed by your design research, provide brief answers to the following questions. These should help you begin to identify tasks essential to your design.
Samples from prior offerings include:
Note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so their reports may not map to the current project. Also note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work.
No more than four pages of text in PDF format:
Submit via Canvas here:
Names of participants should be replaced with pseudonyms in all documents. It is important to protect participant anonymity, even in the case that reporting seems harmless.
Be prepared to discuss your design research with other teams and the course staff.
Your submission must also include a team contribution statement, as an additional page in your submission. This statement should indicate the name of each member of your team,
the percentage of effort in this specific assignment that each member contributed,
and the specific activities in this specific assignment that each member contributed. An example contribution statement is: This contribution statement is intended to support your own reflection as a team as well as the staff's awareness of your efforts.
You should therefore discuss and agree upon this statement of what each of you contributed and how much this contributed to the overall assignment.
The staff does not expect each person to contribute equally to each assignment, but you should work as a team to support each other, and we expect all members will contribute over the quarter.
The staff also understands that percentages are incomplete and subjective, so we gather them only as a summary indication and will not use them directly in any grade calculation.
This milestone will be graded on a scale of 12 points:
The goal of this milestone is to develop a set of tasks that you will explore in a set of potential designs.
Building on what you learned in your design research, design six tasks that you believe are integral to your overall design goal:
Each task should be described in text. Tasks say what is accomplished, leaving open how to accomplish it. Be sure that your task conveys a problem and what is accomplished, rather than a step-by-step walkthrough of scenario with a specific design.
Samples from prior offerings include:
Note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so their reports may not map to the current project. Also note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work.
No more than two pages of text in PDF format:
Submit via Canvas here:
Be prepared to discuss your design research with other teams and the course staff.
Your submission must also include a team contribution statement, as an additional page in your submission. This statement should indicate the name of each member of your team,
the percentage of effort in this specific assignment that each member contributed,
and the specific activities in this specific assignment that each member contributed. An example contribution statement is: This contribution statement is intended to support your own reflection as a team as well as the staff's awareness of your efforts.
You should therefore discuss and agree upon this statement of what each of you contributed and how much this contributed to the overall assignment.
The staff does not expect each person to contribute equally to each assignment, but you should work as a team to support each other, and we expect all members will contribute over the quarter.
The staff also understands that percentages are incomplete and subjective, so we gather them only as a summary indication and will not use them directly in any grade calculation.
This milestone will be graded on a scale of 8 points:
The goal of this milestone is to develop distinct design ideas that address your tasks.
You have identified and described six important tasks for your design problem. You will now brainstorm and sketch three very different initial designs for your interface:
The purpose of these sketches is to explore the design space before you lock yourself into a single design. They must demonstrate significant consideration of substantially different approaches to your problem.
Samples from prior offerings include:
Note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so their reports may not map to the current project. Also note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work.
No more than three pages of text in PDF format:
Images do not count against your page limit, and are therefore effectively free. You should embed images throughout your PDF, keeping them near the text that references them. The limit applies to the approximate amount of text you would have if all images were removed.
Submit via Canvas here:
Be prepared to discuss your designs with other teams and the course staff.
Your submission must also include a team contribution statement, as an additional page in your submission. This statement should indicate the name of each member of your team,
the percentage of effort in this specific assignment that each member contributed,
and the specific activities in this specific assignment that each member contributed. An example contribution statement is: This contribution statement is intended to support your own reflection as a team as well as the staff's awareness of your efforts.
You should therefore discuss and agree upon this statement of what each of you contributed and how much this contributed to the overall assignment.
The staff does not expect each person to contribute equally to each assignment, but you should work as a team to support each other, and we expect all members will contribute over the quarter.
The staff also understands that percentages are incomplete and subjective, so we gather them only as a summary indication and will not use them directly in any grade calculation.
This milestone will be graded on a scale of 10 points:
The goal of this milestone is to choose a design idea to pursue in the remainder of this course.
From your design sketches, select one design that you will refine in the remainder of this course. Then select two tasks that will be the focus of your design refinement. The selected tasks need to be representative of the experience of using your design.
Prepare one paragraph describing why you selected the design you did. Draw upon feedback from critiques and data from your design research.
Convey a strong understanding of which design you chose, which tasks you chose, and why you chose them.
Then create a storyboard of each task for your selected design. These should be done on paper, then scanned (i.e., do not create or recreate them in a drawing package). They should clearly indicate the functionality of the design and what the interface will be like, conveying the major aspects of the design in enough detail that a person not in your group can understand how the design supports each task. As needed, add descriptions that explicitly reference the storyboard, add more sketches, or annotate them in multiple colors.
Samples from prior offerings include:
Note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so their reports may not map to the current project. Also note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work.
No more than one page of text in PDF format:
Images do not count against your page limit, and are therefore effectively free. You should embed images throughout your PDF, keeping them near the text that references them. The limit applies to the approximate amount of text you would have if all images were removed.
Submit via Canvas here:
Be prepared to discuss your choices and storyboards with other teams and the course staff.
Your submission must also include a team contribution statement, as an additional page in your submission. This statement should indicate the name of each member of your team,
the percentage of effort in this specific assignment that each member contributed,
and the specific activities in this specific assignment that each member contributed. An example contribution statement is: This contribution statement is intended to support your own reflection as a team as well as the staff's awareness of your efforts.
You should therefore discuss and agree upon this statement of what each of you contributed and how much this contributed to the overall assignment.
The staff does not expect each person to contribute equally to each assignment, but you should work as a team to support each other, and we expect all members will contribute over the quarter.
The staff also understands that percentages are incomplete and subjective, so we gather them only as a summary indication and will not use them directly in any grade calculation.
This milestone will be graded on a scale of 8 points:
The goal of this milestone is to communicate the design research that motivates your design.
Prepare a report documenting your process of getting the right design. Your report should follow the outline below, and will be graded using the guidelines that follow. The provided page allocations are estimates, intended to help convey how to divide up the space.
If you completed all of your milestones above, you will have much of the content for this report. But it is critical that you revise and update that content. You have received extensive feedback throughout your design process, and evaluation of your report will include how you have addressed and incorporated that feedback to improve relative to your prior milestones.
Title
A short, creative, and marketable title capturing the key idea.
Each Team Member’s Name
Problem and Solution Overview: (1 paragraph)
A concise statement of the problem you are tackling and a brief synopsis of your proposed solution.
Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants: (1 page)
Describe your design research, including the participants, their background, and their environment.
Describe why you chose the specific methods and participants in your design research.
Design Research Results and Themes: (1 page)
Discuss common themes, problems, and practices that emerged in your design research.
Include any updated themes that emerged when considering your design research in your design process.
Answers to Task Analysis Questions: (2 pages)
Provide brief answers to the task analysis questions.
These should be updated according to your evolved understanding of the problem and your design.
Proposed Design Sketches - "3x4": (1 page)
Present scanned images of your three initial designs in the context of their four tasks.
Include one paragraph for each design, discussing how it supports your tasks.
Include one paragraph discussing your choice of design and tasks to further pursue.
Written Scenarios - "1x2": (1 page)
Convert your two tasks into written scenarios for your design. Scenarios include the steps a person will go through to accomplish the task, including references to your design.
Scenarios do not need to detail every little step, but should be realistic, should be dependent upon the design you have chosen, should appropriately reference elements of your design, and should communicate how a person will accomplish the task using your design.
Storyboards of the Selected Design
Include updated storyboards of your design. Reference these appropriately in your scenarios.
Ensure your report is appropriately clear and easy to read. This includes:
Be sure your presentation looks good:
Samples from prior offerings include:
Note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so their reports may not map to the current project. Also note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work.
No more than eight pages of text in PDF format, following the above outline.
Images do not count against your page limit, and are therefore effectively free. You should embed images throughout your PDF, keeping them near the text that references them. The limit applies to the approximate amount of text you would have if all images were removed.
Submit via Canvas here:
Names of participants should be replaced with pseudonyms in all documents. It is important to protect participant anonymity, even in the case that reporting seems harmless.
Your submission must also include a team contribution statement, as an additional page in your submission. This statement should indicate the name of each member of your team,
the percentage of effort in this specific assignment that each member contributed,
and the specific activities in this specific assignment that each member contributed. An example contribution statement is: This contribution statement is intended to support your own reflection as a team as well as the staff's awareness of your efforts.
You should therefore discuss and agree upon this statement of what each of you contributed and how much this contributed to the overall assignment.
The staff does not expect each person to contribute equally to each assignment, but you should work as a team to support each other, and we expect all members will contribute over the quarter.
The staff also understands that percentages are incomplete and subjective, so we gather them only as a summary indication and will not use them directly in any grade calculation.
This report will be graded on a scale of 25 points:
Prepare a presentation of your process in getting the right design. It should encompass all of your work in Assignment 2.
A suggested organization of this presentation is:
Title:
A short, creative, and marketable title capturing the key idea. Include team member names.
Overall Problem:
Tell this as a story, instead of simply reading the slide. Motivate your audience to be interested in your problem.
Design Research:
Include images that give your audience a feeling for your fieldwork. Convey that you have seen and understand the challenge.
6 Tasks:
At most one sentence per task. Convey the breadth of tasks you have considered.
3 Design Sketches:
Convey the breadth of designs you considered.
Selected Design Storyboards and Tasks:
Convey your rationale for choosing a design focus.
Present your storyboards, ensuring they effectively illustrate your selected design and tasks.
Summary:
Summarize the lessons learned in your design process.
We strongly recommend rehearsing your presentation beforehand. For example, arrange to practice together with another group or two, giving each other feedback on your presentations.
Note that we have not provided recommendations for the number of slides in each section of this presentation. You can deliver your presentation using as many or as few slides as you want, as long as you successfully address the above points and the presentation falls within the time restriction.
Samples from prior offerings include:
Note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so their reports may not map to the current project. Also note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work.
Your presentation may be in PPT, PPTX, or PDF format.
To minimize switching time, we will have all presentations on a single laptop running Microsoft Windows. You should optimize your presentation for portability (e.g., ensure any necessary fonts are embedded). If we detect any obvious formatting issues on the presentation machine, we may fix them or contact you to fix them. But you are ultimately responsible for your presentation.
Submit via Canvas here:
Names of participants should be replaced with pseudonyms in all documents. It is important to protect participant anonymity, even in the case that reporting seems harmless.
Your submission must also include a team contribution statement, as an additional page in your submission. This statement should indicate the name of each member of your team,
the percentage of effort in this specific assignment that each member contributed,
and the specific activities in this specific assignment that each member contributed. An example contribution statement is: This contribution statement is intended to support your own reflection as a team as well as the staff's awareness of your efforts.
You should therefore discuss and agree upon this statement of what each of you contributed and how much this contributed to the overall assignment.
The staff does not expect each person to contribute equally to each assignment, but you should work as a team to support each other, and we expect all members will contribute over the quarter.
The staff also understands that percentages are incomplete and subjective, so we gather them only as a summary indication and will not use them directly in any grade calculation.
The course staff will have a feedback form they keep during your presentation:
The content of this presentation will be graded on a scale of 10 points:
The delivery of this presentation will be graded on a scale of 4 points:
Submit peer feedback using the form distributed to the class by email.
Course staff will request a second round of team peer feedback at the end of the course.