Assignment 4: Communicating Your Design

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Overview

You have identified a problem, explored a design space, selected a promising design, and iterated on that design. It is now time to focus on communicating your design and your design process. This group assignment communicates your design through a poster and a video prototype.

Milestones

This is a group assignment, consisting of six milestones.

Deliverables

4a: Initial Poster and Pitch

Due: Uploaded Monday, March 2, 2020.

The goal of this milestone is to create a poster and a pitch that communicate your design to a broad audience.

Create a poster that communicates your design and your design process. Present your work in a visual form that quickly conveys its most important aspects. Your poster should include:

  • Project Title
  • Logo
  • Your Names
  • Problem
  • Value Proposition
  • Key Functionality
  • Design Process and Iteration

Your poster should emphasize images and include limited amounts of text. For consistency and ease of display, it should be 32"x40" (i.e., portrait, vertical). A PowerPoint template is available here:

Cow Project PowerPoint template

You should heavily modify the template to be unique and represent your project.

During the final poster session, your team will give a one minute pitch to a small group of judges. Create a pitch that summarizes the problem and your design. This pitch should convince an audience that your problem was worth investigating and that your design suggests a compelling direction.

Samples from Prior Offerings

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:

Submission

Submit your poster via Canvas here:

https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1352267/assignments/5160403

Due to challenges that frequently arise in printing, submit both:

  • a PDF of your poster
  • the source file for your poster (e.g., PPT, PPTX)

In-Class Exercise: In addition to your submission, bring two 8.5"x11" printed copies of your poster to class (i.e., color prints on normal-sized paper). You will need these for in-class critique.

Contribution Statement

Submit a Contribution Statement as an additional separate PDF.

Grading

This milestone will be graded on a scale of 10 points:

  • Content: (5 points)
    • Includes all of the key content listed above
    • Key functionality of the design is clear
    • Gives insight into the design process
  • Clarity and Presentation: (5 points)
    • Appropriately large images that convey key aspects of the design
    • Text is minimal and appropriate, large and legible
    • Colors and fonts are a pleasing combination and easy to read

Your poster should be complete and will be evaluated as such. Later critique and refinement will help further improve it before a final version.

4b: Initial Video

Due: Uploaded Monday, March 9, 2020.

The goal of this milestone is to create a video that communicates your design to a broad audience.

Working from your prior storyboards or new storyboards, create a video that illustrates your proposed design. Be sure your video conveys all of:

  • the problem
  • the design
  • the context
  • the satisfaction

Refer to the examples provided in lecture, as well as videos from prior classes, for insights into creating an effective video.

Your video must not be more than 2 minutes long. It is critical that your video be short enough to remain engaging while delivering its content.

You are required to include appropriate captions for the accessibility of your video. The staff has prepared simple instructions on how to do that using a script of your video together with YouTube's captioning tools:

Be sure to check the quality of the resulting captions and correct them as necessary.

Samples from Prior Offerings

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:

Submission

Ensure your video is in a portable and standard format (e.g., H.264 in an MP4 container). Ensure your video is less than 100MB in size (e.g., using the open-source tool HandBrake to downsample and re-compress).

Submit via Canvas here:

https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1352267/assignments/5160404

Contribution Statement

Submit a Contribution Statement as an additional separate PDF.

Grading

This milestone will be graded on a scale of 10 points:

  • Content: (5 points)
    • Conveys the problem addressed by the design
    • Conveys the design itself
    • Conveys the context of interaction
    • Conveys the satisfaction of the design
  • Clarity and Presentation: (5 points)
    • Reasonable level of production value
    • Appropriate editing, timing, and pace
    • Appropriately captioned for accessibility

Your video should be complete and will be evaluated as such. Later critique and refinement will help further improve it before a final version.

In-Class Exercise: Videos will be shown in class.

4c: Final Poster and Pitch

Due: Uploaded Monday, March 9, 2020.

Appropriately revise your poster according to feedback.

If you are unsure what revisions are appropriate, communicate with the course staff well before the due date.

During the final poster session, your team will give a one minute pitch to a small group of judges. Rehearse a pitch that summarizes the problem and your design. This pitch should convince an audience that your problem was worth investigating and that your design suggests a compelling direction.

Samples from Prior Offerings

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:

Submission

Submit your poster via Canvas here:

https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1352267/assignments/5160417

Due to challenges that frequently arise in printing, submit both:

  • a PDF of your poster
  • the source file for your poster (e.g., PPT, PPTX)

We will then coordinate with you for proofreading and printing.

Contribution Statement

Submit a Contribution Statement as an additional separate PDF.

Grading

This milestone will be graded on a scale of 10 points:

  • Content: (5 points)
    • Includes all of the key content listed above
    • Key functionality of the design is clear
    • Gives insight into the design process
  • Clarity and Presentation: (5 points)
    • Appropriately large images that convey key aspects of the design
    • Test is minimal and appropriate, large and legible
    • Colors and fonts are a pleasing combination and easy to read

Your poster should be complete and will be evaluated as such. Later critique and refinement will help further improve it before a final version.

4d: Final Video

Due: Uploaded Friday, March 13, 2020.

Appropriately revise your poster according to feedback.

If you are unsure what revisions are appropriate, communicate with the course staff well before the due date.

If you complete revision of your video before the due date, inform the course staff so we can post the updated version to the course website for your project.

Samples from Prior Offerings

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:

Submission

Ensure your video is in a portable and standard format (e.g., H.264 in an MP4 container). Ensure your video is less than 100MB in size (e.g., using the open-source tool HandBrake to downsample and re-compress).

Submit via Canvas here:

https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1352267/assignments/5160422

Contribution Statement

Submit a Contribution Statement as an additional separate PDF.

Grading

This milestone will be graded on a scale of 10 points:

  • Content: (5 points)
    • Conveys the problem addressed by the design
    • Conveys the design itself
    • Conveys the context of interaction
    • Conveys the satisfaction of the design
  • Clarity and Presentation: (5 points)
    • Reasonable level of production value
    • Appropriate editing, timing, and pace
    • Appropriately captioned for accessibility

Your video should be complete and will be evaluated as such. Later critique and refinement will help further improve it before a final version.

4p: Poster Session

Due: Attend 11:30-12:50, Thursday, March 12, 2020.

Come to the poster session to show off your work and engage with your classmates. Present your pitch to a team of judges, and take the opportunity to discuss your work with classmates and visitors while reflecting on a busy and productive quarter.

Grading

The poster session will be graded as part of participation. We intentionally will not conduct any evaluation at the poster session itself.