Even when a problem is well-motivated, understanding that problem and choosing a design to pursue is a difficult 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 is a group assignment, consisting of nine milestones.
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, but no two ideas should be alike. When you get stuck, find a context to inspire new ideas.
After this brainstorming, you will have a broad space of possible directions. Your project will soon need to gather information on how to generate and consider ideas in these directions. Following up on the above, additionally brainstorm:
There is no submission for this milestone. It will be completed in section and graded as part of participation.
The goal of this milestone is to develop an initial plan for your design research, encouraging you to work through details of how you would conduct that research and improving those details through critique and peer feedback.
As part of Assignment 2, you are required to conduct design research (e.g., contextual inquiry, interviews, observations) to learn from at least three people who might use your design.
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. A typical expected method would be 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:
Note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Also note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so these samples may not completely correspond to the current project. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work. The Autumn 2017 offering added detail regarding the primary proposed method. Prior samples do not include that information. Samples from prior offerings include:Samples from Prior Offerings
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.
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.
Submit a
In-Class Exercise: In addition to your submission, bring two printed copies of your Design Research Plan to class. You will need these for in-class critique.
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.
Note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Also note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so these samples may not completely correspond to the current project. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work. Samples from prior offerings include:Samples from Prior Offerings
No more than one page of text in PDF format. Submit via Canvas here:
Be prepared to discuss your design research with other teams and the course staff.
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.
Submit a
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 and developing insights into tasks that can 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.
Note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Also note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so these samples may not completely correspond to the current project. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work. Samples from prior offerings include:Samples from Prior Offerings
No more than four pages of text in PDF format:
Submit via Canvas here:
Be prepared to discuss your design research with other teams and the course staff.
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.
Submit a
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 important to your design goal:
Each task should be described in text. 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.
As you progress in 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 develop in this milestone therefore must be appropriate but are not necessarily final.
Note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Also note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so these samples may not completely correspond to the current project. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work. Samples from prior offerings include:Samples from Prior Offerings
No more than two pages of text in PDF format:
Submit via Canvas here:
Be prepared to discuss your design research and tasks with other teams and the course staff.
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.
Submit a
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.
Note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Also note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so these samples may not completely correspond to the current project. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work. Samples from prior offerings include:Samples from Prior Offerings
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.
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.
Submit a
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. They 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.
Prepare one paragraph describing why you selected the design and tasks 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.
Note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Also note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so these samples may not completely correspond to the current project. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work. Samples from prior offerings include:Samples from Prior Offerings
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.
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.
Submit a
This milestone will be graded on a scale of 8 points:
The goal of this milestone is to effectively communicate your design research in a presentation.
Prepare a presentation of your process in getting the right design. It should encompass all of your work in Assignment 2.
Your presentation should include:
Title Slide:
A short, creative, and marketable title capturing the key idea.
Include team member names. Be clear which team members are presenting.
Overall Problem:
Convey that your problem is both important and appropriate for a design investigation.
Motivate your audience to be interested in your problem. Consider using data or statistics regarding importance of the problem. Consider using a scenario or story to convey an emotional or human perspective on the problem. Be sure to avoid simply reading slide bullets, as you need to develop a connection to your audience.
Design Research:
Convey what design research you conducted. This should include:
Consider including images that give your audience a feeling for your work.
6 Tasks:
Convey the breadth of tasks you have considered, in at most one sentence per task.
3 Design Sketches:
Convey the breadth of designs you considered.
Be clear what is the key idea or difference in each of your three designs.
Selected Design Storyboards and Tasks:
Present your storyboards, ensuring they effectively illustrate your selected design and tasks.
Convey your rationale for choosing this as a design focus.
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 set a required 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 your presentation successfully addresses the above points in the allowed time.
Note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Also note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so these samples may not completely correspond to the current project. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work. The Winter 2020 offering added detail to clarify information expected in presentations. Prior samples are more likely to be missing information that is expected in presentations. Samples from prior offerings include:Samples from Prior Offerings
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.
Submit a
The course staff will have a grading form they keep during your presentation:
The content of this presentation will be graded on a scale of 16 points:
The delivery of this presentation will be graded on a scale of 4 points:
The goal of this milestone is to effectively communicate your design research in a post appropriate for a web portfolio.
Prepare a post documenting your process of getting the right design. Your post will be integrated into the course website via a Projects page, used to both advertise the course poster session and to provide an archive of course projects. Your post should follow the outline below, and you will also need to provide: (1) a project title, (2) a project thumbnail, and (3) an image and preferred name for each member of the project team.
The outline and its description of what to include in each section is intended to help convey your design process. For example, you might begin your section on identified tasks by saying "We focused our design exploration around 6 tasks.", thus mirroring the outline's language regarding your overall design process. Each section suggests an organization that will often be effective, but you should adapt the section as appropriate to your specific design process.
Your prior milestones provide significant content you can draw upon in this post, but this post is intended for an audience of future readers reviewing your design work. Not all of the content from prior milestones is included (e.g., the Task Analysis is not included), you should update your prior work based on feedback received throughout your design process, and you may choose to omit elements of your work that were ultimately less relevant to your design process.
Title
A short, creative, and marketable title capturing the key idea.
Problem and Solution Overview:
A concise statement of the problem you are addressing and a brief introduction of your proposed solution.
This could be organized as two short paragraphs: one introducing the problem and one introducing your solution.
Design Research Goals, Methods, and Participants:
Describe the goals of your design research (i.e., your focus, your primary need for additional understanding), the methods you applied in your design research toward these goals, and the participants you engaged in your design research. Describe why you chose your specific methods and participants.
This could be a chronological account of your design research, explaining how you combined multiple methods over time (e.g., a survey and then follow-up interviews) or how your design research goals evolved across participants (e.g., a major pivot after an interview).
Minimize how much this section reveals about your results, including only what may be necessary to explain your methods and participants.
Design Research Results and Themes:
Discuss the key insights and themes that emerged in your design research (e.g., common needs, common practices, critical breakdowns, identified opportunities). Use specific evidence whenever possible (e.g., quotes or stories from participants, pictures captured during observations), so that readers know that insights and themes are based in design research data.
This could be organized as a short introduction followed by a paragraph for each insight or theme. Each paragraph could begin with a single bolded sentence summarizing the insight or theme, then several sentences explaining the specific evidence or other design research data supporting the insight or theme.
Identified Tasks:
Present 6 tasks around which you decided to focus your design exploration. Provide brief justification for each task, based in your design research.
This could be organized as a short introduction followed by a short paragraph for each task. Each paragraph could begin with a single bolded sentence summarizing the task, then another sentence explaining the specific evidence or other design research data supporting the task. For example, the latter sentence might explain that an existing task was commonly described by participants, might explain how a critical breakdown identified by a participant motivates importance of the task, or might describe how a theme identified in design research suggests a new task.
Remember tasks describe design-agnostic objectives that people accomplish. Although you may have also developed detailed scenarios or personas, tasks in this section should be relatively brief and focused on what people need or want to accomplish in the space your designs will address.
Proposed Design Sketches:
Present 3 distinct designs that each take a different approach to your problem and are each motivated by your design research. Explain the key ideas in each design and include one or more images of your sketches for each design. Be sure your explanation and images are sufficient for understanding each design and for also understanding how the designs are distinct from each other.
This could be organized as a short introduction that names each design followed by a paragraph for each design. Each paragraph could include one or more images of your sketches for that design.
Selected Design and Storyboards:
Present: (1) the design you will develop in the remainder of the course, (2) a justification for why you chose that design based on your design research, and (3) images of your storyboards illustrating 2 tasks with your design. Be sure your storyboards appropriately illustrate key elements of your design and communicate how a person will accomplish the task using your design.
This could be organized as an introductory paragraph justifying a selected design, or could instead justify a decision to take key elements from multiple designs in a new design. Storyboards could be presented together with written scenarios describing steps a person will go through to accomplish the tasks using your design, thus providing additional detail necessary for interpreting and understanding your storyboards.
Ensure your post is appropriately clear and easy to read. This includes:
Note these samples are intended to illustrate a variety of approaches, none of which is intended to be ideal or exemplary. Also note that details of assignments may have changed since prior offerings, so these samples may not completely correspond to the current project. Be sure to understand and carefully consider project requirements and feedback from the course staff in the context of your own work. The Winter 2020 introduced the use of a post appropriate for a web portfolio. Prior samples instead required a summary report: Prior samples of project thumbnails can be found on Project pages of prior course offerings: Prior offerings with different instructors have used Medium posts, but these lacked the structure of your required post and are therefore not good models of your post:Samples from Prior Offerings
Evidence suggests that effective posts can be read in approximately 7 minutes:
Author your post such that it conveys the necessary content while remaining easy to skim and read within approximately 7 minutes. We estimate posts will be between 1500 and 2000 words in length.
You post must be a plain text file, formatted in Markdown syntax:
Name the file designresearch.md. In addition to your Markdown file, you will also need to provide:
A Project Thumbnail:
A 150x150 image appropriate as a thumbnail for your project, named project_thumb.png.
An image and preferred name for each member of the project team:
Similar to the images of the course staff on the overall course website, these will be included in the pages generated for your project.
Provide a file names.txt that includes how you want your names presented on the course website.
Then provide an appropriately named image for each member of the project team (e.g., james.png).
All images referenced by your Markdown file:
These will be placed in the same directory as your rendered Markdown file.
Instead of Markdown's image syntax, consider incorporating img tags directly in your Markdown,
thus allowing you to specify the rendering size of the image.
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.
Submit a
Your post should be complete and will be evaluated as such. But you will also be able to make later modifications as we integrate your post into the course website (e.g., to correct any formatting issues) or as your project evolves (e.g., if your project title later changes).
The content for this post will be graded on a scale of 24 points: