Assignment 2: Getting the Right Design

2a: Project Ideation

Optional Submission Due: Wednesday April 10, 8:00pm

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The goal of this milestone is to begin thinking about how to plan effective design research to inform your design process.

Generate 10 different ideas related to each of the following aspects of your project proposal:

Forms: types of technology on which a design might be developed (e.g., wearable sensors, watch/phone/tablet, desktop, appliances or other artifacts in the environment).
Data: types of data a design might track or utilize in some way.
Tasks: what a person might accomplish with a design.
Features: a specific capability a design might have.
Interaction scenarios: contexts where someone might interact with a design related to your proposal (e.g., physical environments, social settings, related activities they might be performing, etc.).

We will provide sheets of paper to help structure this brainstorm. Alternatively, here's the template in Word Doc form. 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 such directions, which you will do via design research. However, as we have previously discussed: high quality design research requires thoughtful planning and reflection on what you do and don't already know.

Reflecting on your ideas from the brainstorming activity AND the process of generating them, address the following questions (1-2 sentences per question) for each of the 5 brainstorming categories:

How difficult was it to come up with 10 distinct ideas in this category?
Are there ideas in this category that you're particularly excited about? What makes them exciting?
How confident are you that all your ideas in this category are "meaningful"? Are there specific ideas that you feel unsure about (e.g., tasks you're not sure a user would actually want to perform, features you aren't sure are actually useful, etc.)?
Based on your answers to the above: what specific topics does this suggest could be valuable to explore in your design research?

Submission and Grading

There is no required submission for this milestone.

However, you may complete this assignment and upload 1) a high-quality photo or scan of your five brainstorming pages AND 2) a 1-2 page PDF writeup of your answers to the reflection questions for 2EXP.

Upload your assignment here: Canvas – Assignment 2a (Optional)

EXtension Objectives

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What is this?

Design Ideation Mad Libs & Sketching (1EXP)

Note: Before starting this Extension Objective, make sure you 1) have fully completed the above ideation task, and 2) have taken a high-quality picture or scan of each brainstorming page.

The goal of this Extension Objective is to take your design ideation one step further by starting to conceptualize how different design elements might come together.

Note: this first step is optional, but makes the rest of the assignment work better. You'll see what I mean. -JM

First off, cut out each of the 10 design ideas on one of your Ideation sheets by cutting along the printed lines of the table. Repeat for all 5 sheets to produce 50 individual cards, keeping each sheet's set of 10 in its own pile. (Note: if using the colored sheets provided in class, these should be easy enough to group by category; if you reprinted the sheets yourself, you'll want to either mark your cards somehow or just be careful not to mix things up.)

Once you have your 5 sets of 10 cards, it's time to play some Mad Libs! Your goal here is to come up with 3 potential designs that each consist of:

1 Form
At least 1 type of Data
At least 2 Tasks
At least 2 Features
At least 1 Interaction Context

Optional (Recommended) Additional Constraints:

No card can be reused across multiple of your 3 designs
For at least 1 of your designs, try selecting at least 1 card at random from each of the categories.

Note that a random assortment of cards does NOT necessarily compose a design! Think critically about which cards you group together-- does this actually create a meaningful design? can these aspects coexist in a way that doesn't just create a Camel?

Once you have a set of cards to characterize a design, it's time to do your first design sketches of the quarter!

For each design, sketch out what the design looks like and how it works, being sure to highlight each of the elements described on the selected cards. (For User Tasks, consider labeling the parts of it that let a user accomplish their Task, such as highlighting the handle on a coffee mug to demonstrate the User Task of "carry coffee between locations")

Finally, once you've sketched your designs, briefly reflect on the following for each design:

What parts of this design do you like?
What are 2 questions this design raises that you might explore in your Design Research?

For example: would people actually be interested in using a [FORM, eg, wearable] in [CONTEXT, eg, shopping at the supermarket]?

Submission

Please compose a document that includes the following:

For each design:

The "prompt" you constructed (ie, the selected cards for that design), styled as a Mad Libs (fill in the blanks) in the following style:

Design [#]: A __FORM__ that utilizes __DATA__ to support users in __TASKS__ while in __CONTEXT__. It does this through __FEATURES__.

(Feel free to rework the sentence as desired, as long as it's still clear which parts fall in which categories.)

A high-quality image of your sketch.
The answers to the 2 reflection questions (1-2 sentences per question).

Please upload this to Canvas as an additional document in your 2a submission.

2b: Design Research Plan

Due: Thursday April 11, 3:00pm

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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. If other people are also likely impacted by a design, also describe these other stakeholders to consider. Among potential stakeholders, describe the participants you plan to pursue, including relevant details such as their background, and the reason you are choosing to them as your participants.

For example, your target participants should not be "doctors" but instead a specific group of doctors (e.g., Family Practitioners in the UW Roosevelt Clinic). Other stakeholders might include patients of the clinic, nurses in the clinic, or non-medical staff in the clinic.

Describe your recruitment plan in enough detail to convince us that you can find and engage with your target participants in the next week. Whether you intend to target participants that are relatively difficult to access (e.g., as with busy doctors) or more readily available (e.g., undergraduate students at the University of Washington), describe your planned recruitment activities, and when you will be conducting your design research, being as specific as possible. Additionally describe any steps you have already taken to recruit, and your plans to recover if recruitment is not initially successful in the necessary timeline.

In another paragraph, describe the specific design research method(s) you will use to engage with and learn from these people and your rationale for choosing these method(s). Commonly used methods include Contextual Inquiry, Interviews, and Diary Studies. (See Week 2's Lecture on Design Research for more guidance on which methods might be best for your project.) However, we encourage you to propose alternative or additional design research methods according to your needs (e.g., you are welcome but not required to propose to combine multiple methods). Please be as specific as possible, providing relevant details for you proposed methods. For example:

If you propose interviews, discuss the desired length of the interview, the environment you plan to set up for the interview, structure of the interview (e.g., is it structured, semi-structured, a debrief, a group interview, is there an activity...), and the types of questions you plan to explore.
If you propose contextual inquiries, discuss current behaviors you want to observe and your planned focus.
If you propose a diary study, discuss what type of data you plan to ask participants to bring or collect and how and when you would ask the participants to record the data.

On a second page, provide more detail regarding your primary proposed method. For example:

If you propose interviews, give us an interview script including the key questions you plan to ask your participants and any additional talking points.
If you propose contextual inquiries, enumerate what activities you intend to observe, what focus you intend to bring to observation of each activity, and any strategies you intend to pursue for gaining insight through your observations.
If you propose a diary study, give details of what and how you will ask participants to diary (i.e., the set of instructions you plan to share with participants).
If you propose a survey, give us a complete list of survey questions.

If you want to propose an "uncommon" method (i.e., something other than CI/Interview/Survey/Diary Study/Fly on the Wall), check out the following Extension Objective:

EXtension Objectives

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What is this?

An Uncommon Method (1EXP)

Note: Before starting this Extension Objective, make sure you have fully completed the core portion of 2b.

The goal of this Extension Objective is to consider how to apply uncommon Design Research Methods that you might not have previously encountered.

To complete this Objective, you must:

Reflect on the limitations of your initially proposed methods
Propose an additional Design Research session that uses an "Uncommon Method" (details below).
Reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of your newly proposed method.

Part 1: Framing Questions

Having proposed your "primary methods" for the core of your 2b submission, answer the following questions:

What topics are you confident you will be able to get detailed insights on from your primary methods?
What topics are you hoping to learn about from your primary methods, but not quite confident you'll get deep insights on?
What are some topics related to your project focus that your primary methods don't meaningfully explore?

You might consider framing these "topics" as questions you're looking to get answers for, such as "what parts of [a specific process we're exploring] create problems for users?" or "how do people feel about current solutions in this space?". Alternatively, you can frame them as specific concepts you hope to gain insight on, such as "pain points in [specific process]" and "limitations of current solutions".

Part 2: Proposed Method

Primarily considering your answers to Framing Questions 2 and 3, you will now set out to design a Design Research method that explores these "gaps" using an uncommon method.

To get a sense of what methods are at your disposal, we'd encourage you to check out the back half of Week 2's Design Research Lecture (Slides / Panopto Recording (Canvas)) or look at some of the methods listed in Martin & Hanington's Universal Methods of Design (Canvas).

The "common" methods you CANNOT select here are:

A simple* Interview

Note: There ARE interview-based methods that can still count as 'uncommon', but a standard Q&A-style 1-on-1, Pair/Group Interview, or Debrief Interview (defined in L04) isn't allowed here.

Contextual Inquiry
Survey
Fly-on-the-Wall Observation / Shadowing
Diary Study

When choosing your method, really focus on what type of information you'll be able to obtain through a study session using that method. Will this information help fill some of the gaps highlighted in Framing Questions 2 & 3? Consider at least 3 different methods before selecting one.

Once you've selected a method, describe how you would apply the method, including specific details of how you would tailor it to your specific design focus (i.e., project topic). For example: if you propose a Card Sorting method, describe what content you'd put on the cards; if you propose a Personal Inventory method, describe what content you would inventory and how you would analyze it; etc etc.

Part 3: Reflection Questions

Once you've selected your method, answer the following questions:

What "gaps" from Framing Questions 2 & 3 do you hope this method can fill in? (i.e., What topics would you hope to get insight on from this method?) (1-2 sentences)
What gaps still exist? How might you account for these gaps in your Design Research as you move forward in the design process? (2-3 sentences)
What are 2 other uncommon methods you considered? Why did you ultimately choose this method over the others? (1 paragraph)

Submission

Submit a 1-2 page PDF that contains:

Your responses to the Framing Questions (1-2 sentences each).
The description of your proposed method (1-2 paragraphs).
Your responses to the Reflection Questions (lengths vary).

Please upload this to Canvas as an additional document in your 2b submission.

Tips & Advice

There are a LOT of different methods you can choose from, so don't just go with your first idea! Consider the tradeoffs and differing benefits of each different method.

If consulting Universal Methods, you'll mostly want to check out the methods listed as covering "Phase 2" in the Table of Contents.

Here are some reasons you might consider picking a particular method (# from Universal Methods in paren.):

Understanding Users' View of a System

Card Sorting (10)
Mind Mapping (56)

Recounting Experiences

Cultural Probe (24)
Directed Storytelling (31)

Finding Meaning in Byproducts of a System

Artifact Analysis (4)
Personal Inventory (62)

Analyzing a Physical Space

Behavioral Mapping (6)
Touchstone Tour (89)
Graffiti Wall (45)

Creative/Artistic Output

Love Letter / Breakup Letter (54)
Collage (14)
Image Board (47)

Submission Details

No more than two pages of text in PDF format.

This is a group submission. Ensure your section and names of all group participants are appropriately clear.
Review and follow guidance on Clarity and Presentation.
All group members need to submit a Contribution Statement
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 via Canvas here: Canvas - Assignment 2b

In Class

Be prepared to discuss your design research plan.

Bring several printed copies of your submission (e.g., four), so that you can easily present them to peers for critique.

Grading

This milestone will be graded on a scale of 9 points:

Overall Feasibility and Specificity of People and Recruitment Plan: (3 points)

Describe stakeholders and participants.

Describe recruitment plan.

Describe any steps already taken and plans to recover if recruitment is not initially successful.
Overall Feasibility and Specificity of Design Research Methods: (2 points)

Describe your specific design research method(s) and your rationale for choosing these method(s).
Primary Method Details: (2 points)

Provide sufficient details of your primary method to support critique of those details.
Clarity and Presentation: (2 points)

2c: Design Research Check-in

Due: Monday April 15, 3:00pm

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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:

What did you do?
- Who you observed or interviewed, their relevant background or context.
What did you learn?
- List six specific findings based on what you observed or learned.
- For example, what specific tasks, problems, or opportunities did you uncover?

We expect findings will be short but concrete. For example, findings might be organized as a bulleted list, where each bullet starts with a bolded summary of the finding and then shares a participant quote or researcher observation that informed that finding.

Then 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.

Did you encounter any difficulties establishing rapport or getting the information you need?
What are your plans for the remaining participants?
How do you plan to change your design research plan based on what you learned with your first participant?

Submission Details

No more than one page of text in PDF format.

This is a group submission. Ensure your section and names of all group participants are appropriately clear.
Review and follow guidance on Clarity and Presentation.
All group members need to submit a Contribution Statement
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 via Canvas here: Canvas - Assignment 2c

In Class

Be prepared to discuss your design research.

Bring several printed copies of your submission (e.g., four), so that you can easily present them to peers for critique.

Grading

This milestone will be graded on a scale of 8 points:

Description of Participant: (1 point)
Specific Findings: (6 x .5 points)
Plan for Remaining Participants: (2 points)

Discuss what remains to be pursued, any challenges encountered, and your updated design research plan.
Clarity and Presentation: (2 points)

2d: Design Research Review

Due: Thursday April 18, 3:00pm

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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.

Identifying Themes

Complete design research with a total of at least three participants. Discuss your process and what you learned:

What did you do?
- Who you observed or interviewed, their relevant background or context.
What did you learn?
- List at least eight specific findings based on what you observed or learned.
- For example, what specific tasks, problems, or opportunities did you uncover?

Although you now have more participants, this milestone asks for relatively few additional findings. We expect you will curate your findings (e.g., to focus on those which are most interesting, to convey the range of things you learned, to emphasize key themes you have identified). Some of your specific findings therefore might also have been reported in Assignment 2c, but others will be new and the overall set will be curated with a focus on advancing your project.

Across your participants, we expect some emergence of common themes, problems, and practices.

Identify at least two themes or high-level insights that are suggested by your findings across multiple participants.
Do your findings, themes, and problems suggest tasks that are important to design for?

If you are having trouble identifying high-level themes, problems, and design opportunities, 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.

Task Analysis Questions

Informed by your design research, provide brief answers to the following questions. These should help you begin to identify tasks essential to your design.

Who is going to use the design?
What tasks do they now perform?
What tasks are desired?
How are the tasks learned?
Where are the tasks performed?
What is the relationship between the person and data?
What other tools does the person have?
How do people communicate with each other?
How often are the tasks performed?
What are the time constraints on the tasks?
What happens when things go wrong?

Submission Details

No more than four pages of text in PDF format, to include:

Summary of key findings or takeaways (one paragraph at beginning).
Design research participants (one or two paragraphs).
Eight specific design research findings (less than two pages).
Discussion of at least two themes or high-level insights distilled across findings (one or two paragraphs).
Task analysis questions (less than two pages).

Additional Details:

This is a group submission. Ensure your section and names of all group participants are appropriately clear.
Review and follow guidance on Clarity and Presentation.
All group members need to submit a Contribution Statement
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 via Canvas here: Canvas - Assignment 2d

EXtension Objectives

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What is this?

An Uncommon Method: Part II (1EXP)

Note: The requirements of this Extension Object vary slightly depending on whether your group completed 2b's Extension Objective.

The goal of this Extension Objective is to use an uncommon Design Research Method and reflect on how the insights you derive differ from more "traditional" methods.

To complete this Objective, you must:

Either:

If you did the 2b EXP ("An Uncommon Method"): Discuss the final design decisions made in applying your method.
If you did NOT do the 2b EXP: Propose your "Uncommon Method" (details below).

Conduct at least one Design Research Session using your Uncommon Method.
Answer the relevant reflection questions.

Part 1: Defining Your Uncommon Method

If you completed the 2b EXP and want to use that method:

Briefly re-describe your proposed method, and note any changes you have made to the method since you initially proposed it. Be sure to include specific details as relevant to the method (e.g., if doing Card Sorting: what cards? if doing a Personal Inventory: what are you inventorying? etc.).

If you did NOT do the 2b EXP OR want to use a different method than what you proposed:

Since we won't have a chance to check everyone's methods in time, we're limiting this option to two methods: Personal Inventory and Card Sorting.

Read up on the details of these methods in Universal Methods of Design (Canvas) and select the one you feel will be a better fit for your design research.

Explain the details of your selected method and your rationale for choosing it.

Part 2: Applying the Method

Now, go out and run your Design Research Session! We do not require you to find a new participant for this Extension Objective, but we DO recommend that you conduct your Uncommon Method as a separate fourth session (i.e., you can "double count" a particular participant for two sessions, one with your "standard method" and one with your Uncommon Method). However, if you can easily find a new participant, that would certainly help broaden your design research!

You don't need to report anything here, but do pay attention to how the session runs relative to your other design research sessions, as you will later reflect on that difference.

Be sure to incorporate any design research insights you derive here into your core 2d submission!

Part 3: Reflection

Answer the following reflection questions:

Briefly describe the experience of conducting this method. How did the dynamic of this study session differ from ones using "traditional" methods? (2-3 sentences)
Describe 1-2 insights you derived from the session where you used this method that you did not find in other sessions. What about this method do you think helped reveal this new insight? (1-2 paragraphs)

If you really feel you didn't find anything unique by using this method: explain why you think this method did NOT help reveal new insights.

Knowing what you know now: suppose you had a chance to totally redo your design research. Would you choose to use this method again? Are there other Uncommon Methods you might opt to use?

Submission

Submit a 1-2 page PDF that contains:

Your description of your method (~1 paragraph).
Your responses to the Reflection Questions (lengths vary).

Please upload this to Canvas as an additional document in your 2d submission.

In Class

Be prepared to discuss your design research.

Bring several printed copies of your submission (e.g., four), so that you can easily present them to peers for critique.

Grading

This milestone will be graded on a scale of 13 points:

Description of Participants : (2 points)
Specific Findings : (8 x .5 points)
Quality of Themes Developed: (2 points)
Answers to Task Analysis Questions: (3 points)
Clarity and Presentation: (2 points)

2e: Task Review

Due: Monday April 22, 3:00pm

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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:

Remember that tasks say what is accomplished, while leaving open how to accomplish it.
Select tasks to capture the important aspects of the problem you are solving and to provide coverage of designs you will explore.
Create tasks based on your observations and analyses of existing tasks (i.e., tasks people already do) as well as your vision for new tasks (i.e., tasks that will be enabled by your potential designs).
These should be real world tasks that include details (e.g., instead of "programming a DVR", details like "programming a DVR to record Spongebob on Sundays"). Such details can then be explored in scenarios with the potential designs you will develop in later milestones.
Tasks should not have any specific relation to the potential designs you will develop in later milestones. Although it can be helpful to describe a task in the context of a specific scenario, the task itself should be more general and potentially achieved using multiple potential designs.
Your six tasks should span a wide range of functionality and difficulty.

Each task should be presented as a bolded sentence at the beginning of a paragraph, concisely conveying a problem and/or what is accomplished. The remainder of the paragraph should then present a potential senario that highlights specific constraints, user priorities, and other details derived from what you observed in your design research.

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.

Submission

No more than two pages of text in PDF format, to include:

Six task descriptions (one paragraph each).

Additional Details:

This is a group submission. Ensure your section and names of all group participants are appropriately clear.
Review and follow guidance on Clarity and Presentation.
All group members need to submit a Contribution Statement
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 via Canvas here: Canvas - Assignment 2e

In Class

Be prepared to discuss your design research and tasks.

Bring several printed copies of your submission (e.g., four), so that you can easily present them to peers for critique.

Grading

This milestone will be graded on a scale of 8 points:

Each of 6 Tasks: (6 x 1 points)
Clarity and Presentation: (2 points)

2f: Design Check-in (3x4)

Due: Wednesday April 24, 3:00pm

Revision Due: Thursday April 25, 8:00pm

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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:

Each design should support four of your tasks, but they do not necessarily need to all support the same four tasks.
Sketch key aspects needed to illustrate the functionality in your four tasks. A design may imply additional tasks, but do not illustrate the entire design.
These should be rough sketches (i.e., not digital mockups), including illustrations of their relations (e.g., arrows showing transitions and relationships).

We recommend you do these on paper, then capture a high-quality image (e.g., avoid shadows). You may alternatively use an informal drawing tool, but be sure you do not adopt a tool that will start to embed unnecessary assumptions or decisions in your design process.

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.

After receiving critique on Thursday, update your designs ahead of additional critique on Friday.

EXtension Objective 1: More Design Reflection (2EXP)

Due: Before you submit 2g

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What is this?

440's Next Top Model[ed User] (2EXP)

Didn't Get the Reference? Wikipedia: "America's Next Top Model". Puns I didn't go with: something about "Persona V" or "Persona non grata"

Note: If you're doing both EXP Options for this assignment, I'd recommend doing this one first.

The goal of this Extension Objective is to do some deeper analysis of your design research, in pursuit of developing a stronger understanding of who might potentially use your design.

To complete this Objective, you must:

Develop and describe three distinct User Personas
Complete a 3x3 Compatability Analysis of Persona X Design

Part 1: Modeling the User

Need a refresher on Personas? Check out the L07 Slides / start of the L08 Recording.

Your first goal is to develop three distinct User Personas based on your previously completed Design Research.

Developing Personas from Design Research is not a trivial task! As you reflect on your Design Research, consider the following questions:

Were there any strongly-held values that were NOT universal? (e.g., maybe there was one participant who was especially concerned about Privacy)
Did any participants have a particular role or experience that strongly informed their responses? (e.g., did one participant talk about how being a Parent really affects how they interact with the system?)
Did participants describe different contexts that informed their interactions? (e.g., did they interact differently when they were in a rush? had a car? were traveling? etc.)

If you're struggling to come up with defining characteristics of your users, consider doing some lightweight affinity diagramming or using some of the modeling techniques we discussed in L07 - Task Analysis.

From this reflection, generate your three distinct Personas and briefly describe them. Your Persona description may include details such as:

Objectives & Priorities: What is this User "optimizing for" in their interaction?
Preferences & Values: What are the "second order" objectives in this User's interaction? What does this user consider "nice but not strictly necessary"?
Background: What prior experiences has this User had that inform their interaction?
Resources: What specific resources does this User have at their disposal?

Once you've completed your descriptions, give each Persona a Descriptor or Nickname that relates to a defining characteristic, such as "the Scheduler" or "Privacy-Focused".

Finally, in a few bullet points or short sentences, briefly note what details from your Design Research inspired details of this Persona.

Part 2: Persona-l Preferences?

Once you have your three Personas, it's time to do some Design Analysis! You'll be doing a 3x3 analysis of "Persona X Design", using your three Personas and your three Designs from the core of this assignment.

Create a list of your 9 unique combinations of Persona X Design (i.e., Persona A X Design 1; Persona A X Design 2; ... Persona C X Design 3).

For each combination of Persona and Design, answer the following questions:

What about this Design aligns with / is compatible with this Persona? (e.g., does the Persona have a particular Resource that works well with this Design? Does the Design account for a particular Value this Persona has?)
What conflicts or friction exist between this Design and this Persona? (e.g., does the Persona have past negative experiences with this type of Design? does the Design not properly consider the Persona's Values?)

Submission

Submit a PDF that contains:

For each Persona:

The Descriptor/Nickname of the Persona (e.g., "The Athlete").
Your description of the Persona, including details such as objectives, preferences, background, and resources. (1 paragraph)
A brief summary of what in Design Research inspired details in the Persona (a few sentences or bullet points)

Your 3x3 User X Design analysis. (2-4 sentences for each of the 9 combinations)

Please upload this to Canvas as an additional document in your 2f_rev submission.

If you end up submitting this after the 2f_rev deadline, make sure to email the course staff to let us know!

EXtension Objective 2: More Sketching

Due: Thursday April 25, 8:00pm

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What is this?

"Sketchy" is NOT a Four-Letter Word! (1EXP)

Didn't Get the Reference? Wikipedia: "A four-letter word"

Note: Make sure you've completed the core of 2f before starting on this Extension. If you're planning to do both EXP Options, I'd recommend doing this one second.

The goal of this Extension Objective is to dive a little deeper into the process of sketching a design, including the many choices and tradeoffs that go into how to present an idea.

To complete this Objective, you must:

For each Design Idea:

Propose a Sketch Objective
Produce at least 2 additional sketches that support your Sketch Objective.

Answer the Reflection Questions

Part 1: Sketching Out a Goal

Note: If you need a refresher on the properties and objectives of Sketches, check out L05: Design Diamond (Slides | Canvas - Panopto Recording)

As we discussed in lecture, sketches can serve a variety of purposes and are often most effective when put in conversation with other sketches. For this first section, your goal will be to identify a "Sketch Objective" for each of your three proposed designs.

Reflect on each of your proposed designs and consider a facet of that design you would like to develop further. The term "facet" is intentionally ambiguous here, and we encourage you to think critically about the many design choices that ultimately composed your proposed design; however, as a starting point, you might consider the categories you explored in Assignment 2a: Design Ideation: Form, Data, Features, and Interaction Contexts. You might also consider whether you want to explore for "Depth" (i.e., really develop an aspect of your design that you've already settled on) or explore for "Breadth" (i.e., consider alternatives to a currently proposed design choice).

For instance, you might choose any of the following as a Sketch Objective:

Depth Exploration of potential forms of a Wearable [or whatever Form you have currently chosen] for this design
Breadth Exploration of different possible Forms for this design
Breadth Exploration of how people might interact with this design in different Interaction Contexts
Depth Exploration of the many ways a particular type of user might interact with this design

Your proposed Sketch Objectives may be the same or different across your designs, but you should be able to succinctly explain why you chose your Sketch Objective for each design.

Part 2: A Very Sketchy Sketch

With your Sketch Objectives in hand, now comes the fun part: making more sketches!

For each of your 3 designs, you will now generate at least two additional sketches to complement your original sketch (what you submitted for the core of this assignment) in pursuit of your Sketch Objective.

Given that these sketches are meant to be complements focused on a specific objective, you don't need to worry about communicating every detail of your design in the additional sketches. Instead, focus on communicating what's different in the additional sketches: if you're exploring different forms, really focus in on the specific details of the form; if you're exploring interaction contexts or different user groups, highlight how the change in context or audience affects how the design operates.

If you have trouble coming up with sketch ideas for a particular Sketch Objective you came up with, feel free to iterate on your Objectives as you see fit.

Part 3: Reflection

Answer the following reflection questions:

For each Design:

Why did you choose your selected Sketch Objective for this Design? (1-2 sentences)
Reflecting on your new Sketches for this design: What is one new design insight you identified through this process? (1-2 sentences)

If you chose the same Sketch Objective for all your Designs:

How did your exploration differ across your various Designs? (3-5 sentences)
Discuss one Design where exploring this Objective that produced particularly unique insights. (2-3 sentences)

If you chose multiple Sketch Objectives across your Designs:

How did your exploration differ across your various Sketch Objectives?(3-5 sentences)
Pick one of your Objectives. What did you learn through exploring that Objective that differed from what you learned through exploring the other Objective(s)? (3-5 sentences)

Submission

Submit a PDF that contains:

For each Design:

The Name/Identifier of your Design (from the Core of this assignment).
The Sketch Objective you decided to explore.
Your original sketch for that Design (from the Core of this assignment).
Your additional Sketches for that Design.

Your responses to the Reflection Questions.

Please upload this to Canvas as an additional document in your 2f_rev submission.

Submission

No more than three pages of text in PDF format, to include:

Six task descriptions (one paragraph each, updated as needed from prior assignment). These should be updated according to feedback and any evolution in your understanding.
For each of three initial designs:
- The high-level idea of the design (one paragraph).
- Images of the design (sketches, not digital mockups).
- How to complete each of the four sketched tasks (e.g., a list of steps, one or two sentences per task).

Additional Details:

This is a group submission. Ensure your section and names of all group participants are appropriately clear.
Review and follow guidance on Clarity and Presentation.
All group members need to submit a Contribution Statement
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.
After receiving critique on Thursday, submit an updated version. Also provide a brief explanation of revisions (e.g., one paragraph on what you revised, why you revised it).

Submit via Canvas here: Canvas - Assignment 2f

After receiving critique on Thursday, submit an updated version via Canvas here:Canvas - Assignment 2f_rev

In Class

Be prepared to discuss your designs.

Bring several printed copies of your submission (e.g., four), so that you can easily present them to peers for critique.

Grading

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

Six Task Descriptions: (2 points)

These should be updated according to feedback and any evolution in your understanding.
Each Design is Substantially Different and Clearly Communicated: (3 x 2 points)
Clarity and Presentation: (2 points)

2g: Design Review (1x2)

Due: Monday April 29, 3:00pm

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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 why you selected the tasks you did. Draw upon feedback from critiques and data from your design research.

Why this design and these tasks?
What makes the design better suited to the people for whom you are targeting your design?
Why are these tasks more compelling than the others?

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. Storyboards should clearly indicate the functionality of the design and what it 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. They should establish motivation and satisfaction, should show insight into the task and design, and should include one or more characters and settings. To ensure clarity of your story, storyboards should not include any unneeded frames or unnecessary details across multiple frames. As needed, ensure clarity of your story through captions, other brief descriptions, selective use of color, or other techniques.

Submission

No more than one page of text in PDF format, to include:

Discussion of your design and task choices (one paragraph).
Images of your storyboards and associated captions or descriptions.

Additional Details:

This is a group submission. Ensure your section and names of all group participants are appropriately clear.
Review and follow guidance on Clarity and Presentation.
All group members need to submit a Contribution Statement
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 via Canvas here: Canvas - Assignment 2g

In Class

Be prepared to discuss your chosen design and storyboards.

Bring several printed copies of your submission (e.g., four), so that you can easily present them to peers for critique.

Grading

This milestone will be graded on a scale of 8 points:

Rationale for Choosing a Design Focus and Tasks: (2 points)
Each of 2 Storyboards: (2 x 2 points)
Clarity and Presentation: (2 points)

2p: Presentation

Due: Wednesday May 1, 11:59pm

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Overview

The goal of this milestone is to effectively communicate your design research. Prepare a presentation or writeup of your process in "Getting the Right Design." It should encompass all of your work in Assignment 2.

You may present your work in any of the following formats (format-specific details below):

A live, in-person slide-based presentation
A prerecorded slide-based presentation
An article-style writeup

Regardless of your selected format, your presentation should include:

Title & Authors:

A short, creative, and marketable title capturing the key idea.

Include team member names. If doing a slide-based presentation, 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.
Design Research:

Convey what design research you conducted. This should include:
- Your methods (i.e., what design research did you do).
- Your participants (i.e., what participants did you engage).
- Your key findings (i.e., what key things did you learn that will inform your design).
Consider including images that give your audience a feeling for your work.
6 Tasks:

Convey the breadth of tasks you have considered, with a succinct summary of each of your tasks. (1 sentence in slide presentation format, 1-3 sentences in article format.)
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.

Format-Specific Details

Depending which format you choose to present your work, please follow the relevant guidelines below:

In-Person Presentation

Prepare a 7-minute slide-based presentation. There is no specific number of slides required; your slide deck may be as long or as short as you need to effectively communicate the above content.
Presentations should not have an outline slide. They are short enough to be told as a story of your process, and your outline is the same as every other presentation. Instead use that time to tell us about your project.
Only two members of your group need to be involved in delivering your presentation. Regardless of how many group members you choose to have present (but especially if you opt for more than two), make sure you practice as a group beforehand to ensure the presentation flows smoothly.
Make sure you adhere to the following presentation quality & accessibility guidelines:

The 'Read Everything' Rule. If there is text on a slide, make sure you orally address it (i.e., directly read it or paraphrase/summarize it in what you say).
The 'Follow Along' Rule. Throughout the talk, your narration should consistently tie into a relevant on-screen element, such as bullet points, images, accent text, or other visual slide components.
The 'What's the Point?' Rule. If there is an image, figure, or other meaningful visual detail on your slide (excluding purely decorative graphics), make sure you orally describe it and what you want the audience to take away from it.
The 'Keep It Simple' Rule. Avoid jargon and unnecessarily complex language as much as possible, and define any jargon you do use.
The 'Consider the Audience' Rule. Respect our class's Content Requests:

Refrain from including any rapid animations or transitions, including on-slide content (e.g., looping GIFs)
Be mindful of how you address any of the following Sensitive Topics: discrimination/bigotry/hate & hate speech; S.A. and sexual harassment.
If your talk necessitates discussion of sensitive topics, provide a meaningful content warning at the top of the talk AND immediately before presenting the content.

Submission: In-Person Presentation

Upload the following to Canvas:

Your slides, in PPTX or PDF format or as a link to Google Slides.

Note: You will be presenting from my (Jesse's) Macbook, so PDF or Google Slides is the best way to ensure everything stays properly formatted.
If you submit a Google Slides link, don't make meaningful edits to it after the deadline (fixing typos/formatting is allowed).

Prerecorded Presentation

Prepare a 7-minute slide-based presentation. There is no specific number of slides required; your slide deck may be as long or as short as you need to effectively communicate the above content.
Presentations should not have an outline slide. They are short enough to be told as a story of your process, and your outline is the same as every other presentation. Instead use that time to tell us about your project.
Only two members of your group need to be involved in delivering your presentation, but more than two speakers is also allowed.
Your video should provide a clear view of your slides AND a video of the speaker throughout the talk.

If using PowerPoint, you might consider using the Cameo feature, but ensure that your video does not obscure on-screen content! And here's a Guide on Recording directly in PowerPoint.
You may also consider delivering your presentation on a recorded Zoom call in Speaker View with slides shown via Screen Share.

You are responsible for providing captions for your video.

If using PowerPoint, you can directly add real-time captions to your presentation.
If using Google Slides, you can also directly add real-time captions ot your presentation.
If recording via Zoom... you can enable captions and save the captions as a .VTT file when you finish the recording, but it takes additional work to actually integrate those captions into the video file. I'd recommend one of the above options instead, but here's a guide on how to use VLC to add VTT captions to an MP4 video. It kinda sucks, but it gets the job done. (This is why we need more accessibility in computer science...)

Make sure you adhere to the following presentation quality & accessibility guidelines:

The 'Read Everything' Rule. If there is text on a slide, make sure you orally address it (i.e., directly read it or paraphrase/summarize it in what you say).
The 'Follow Along' Rule. Throughout the talk, your narration should consistently tie into a relevant on-screen element, such as bullet points, images, accent text, or other visual slide components.
The 'What's the Point?' Rule. If there is an image, figure, or other meaningful visual detail on your slide (excluding purely decorative graphics), make sure you orally describe it and what you want the audience to take away from it.
The 'Keep It Simple' Rule. Avoid jargon and unnecessarily complex language as much as possible, and define any jargon you do use.
The 'Consider the Audience' Rule. Respect our class's Content Requests:

Refrain from including any rapid animations or transitions, including on-slide content (e.g., looping GIFs)
Be mindful of how you address any of the following Sensitive Topics: discrimination/bigotry/hate & hate speech; S.A. and sexual harassment.
If your talk necessitates discussion of sensitive topics, provide a meaningful content warning at the top of the talk AND immediately before presenting the content.

Submission: Video Presentation

Upload the following to Canvas:

Your recorded presentation, either as a file in a common video format (MP4 or MOV) or as a link to an uploaded video (e.g., on Google Drive or YouTube)
Your slides, in PPTX or PDF format

Article Writeup

Prepare a roughly 1500-2000 word article (about a 7 minute read) that communicates the above specified components of your design and design process.
You should include a title that both names your design and succinctly tells the reader what topic you're exploring (e.g., "2HOTTOGO: Designing a weather-sensitive route planner for new runners.")
Organization: Your article should be structured corresponding to the categories in provided in the Overview (i.e., you should have a clear Section for each of the following: Overall Problem/Motivation, Design Research, Tasks, Initial Designs & Sketches, and Selected Design & Storyboards).
Structure: This is not an essay; your article should be written to be easily digestible with generous use of headers, paragraph breaks, images, and other elements that break up text.
Tone: Your article should be conversational, but not informal. You are welcome to speak directly to the reader (i.e., you can say the word "you"; for instance "suppose you've got this horrible problem, but you don't know how to solve it.") and can use the first person plural (i.e., "we"/"our") to refer to your design team (e.g., "we addressed this by..." or "our goal was to...").
Make sure you adhere to the following presentation quality & accessibility guidelines:

The 'What's the Point?' Rule. If there is an image in your article (excluding purely decorative graphics), 1) provide alt text, and 2) either provide a caption or address it in the article body in a way that explicitly communicates what you want the audience to take away from it.
The 'Keep It Simple' Rule. Avoid jargon and unnecessarily complex language as much as possible, and define any jargon you do use.
The 'Consider the Audience' Rule. Respect our class's Content Requests:

Refrain from including any images or embedded video that includes rapid animations or shaky movement (e.g., looping GIFs)
Be mindful of how you address any of the following Sensitive Topics: discrimination/bigotry/hate & hate speech; S.A. and sexual harassment.
If your talk necessitates discussion of sensitive topics, provide a meaningful content warning at the top of the article AND immediately before presenting the content.

Submission: Article

Upload the following to Canvas:

A PDF of your completed article. Please check your PDF before uploading to ensure your Article is formatted how you want it!

EXtension Objective 1: A Public Post (1EXP)

Due: TBD, at least a few weeks past 2p Deadline

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What is this?

First 440, then... The World! (1EXP)

The goal of this Extension Objective is to prepare your submission to share beyond this class!

To complete this Objective, you must:

Handle the logistics of getting your submission integrated into the course website
...no, seriously, that's it.

Hot Glue and Duct Tape

Look, I'll level with you– this course website is lowkey a hot mess. I've got a Projects page set up for all the groups to add their projects communications to, but actually getting the pages set up for each project with everyone's team names and info and whatnot is beyond what the course staff has bandwidth for right now. So here's the deal: if you're 1) interested in sharing your project communication publicly, and 2) down to wrangle HTML/CSS and Git to create the relevant pages and embed your presentation into the webpage, you can do so for 1EXP!

Here's what needs to make it onto your group's page:

All Groups:

A page title including your project name and tagline (if you have one)
A teaser sentence that describes what your project is/does
Photos & Names of all group members (feel free to include links to socials)

Groups that did a Slide Presentation (In-Person or Video):

A cleanly embedded video of your presentation, including slides, speaker video, and captions
An embed of an accessible version of your slides

Groups that did an Article Writeup:

Your article translated into appropriate HTML

Submission

This is where things get fuzzy. After presentations happen on Thursday and I get all the live presenters their recordings, we'll start a process of managing Git requests for the website. For now, if you're interested in doing this EXP, please send an email to the course staff alias with the subject "TEAMNAME: 2p EXP Web Upload" to let us know to coordinate with you.

EXtension Objective 2: Another Format (2EXP)

Due: TBD, at least a few weeks past 2p Deadline

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What is this?

There's More than One Way to [Communicate] a [Design]!

Didn't Get the Reference? Wikipedia: "There's more than one way to..."

The goal of this Extension Objective is to broaden the potential audience of your communication by presenting your work in a second format.

To complete this Objective, you must:

Complete this assignment using the OTHER communication style
If you're also doing Objective 1: Handle the logistics of getting your submission integrated into the course website

Complementary Communication

Communicating your work in multiple ways has many benefits, including making your work more accessible and approachable to a broader audience AND helping you better understand how to discuss your own work!

This objective is pretty straightforward: if you chose to do a Slide-style presentation for the core of this assignment, you need to create an Article-style writeup following the spec above. If you chose to do an Article-style writeup, you need to create and record a Slide-style presentation, also following the above spec. In either case, you are welcome but not required to add ~3-5 minutes of content to this second version (i.e., your slide video can be up to 10-12 minutes, and your article can be up to ~3000 words) if you'd like to go deeper into some of your content.

Your second presentation can (and should!) cover similar content / have a similar narrative, but do consider what the new medium might let you highlight that your original medium didn't. For instance, if you started with an Article, are there meaningful visual communication techniques you could use (e.g., progressively stepping through parts of a sketch or adding annotations to an image)? If you started with a presentation: is there something you'd really like to break down in your design that was too complex to include in a short presentation?

We won't be grading this second version or giving feedback the same way, so this is primarily for your own benefit– having a high-quality writeup AND presentation to share of design work you've done is a very useful tool to be able to share with potential employers, peers you want to show off to, distant relatives who always ask what you're up to in college... If you choose to upload it to the course website (see EXP Objective 1), this will also continue to exist into the future as a publicly accessible page you can point people to!

Submission

Since you can submit this well past the 2p deadline, Canvas doesn't work for submission here. Instead, just send an email to the course staff alias with the subject "TEAMNAME: 2p EXP Alternate Presentation" and include the relevant files or links there.

Submission Notes & Grading

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 via Canvas here: Canvas - Assignment 2p

The course staff will have a grading form they keep during your presentation: 2p Presentation Grading Rubric

The content of this presentation will be graded on a scale of 18 points:

The problem should be presented in a manner that is compelling and achievable.
Design research should be carried out and presented in an appropriate manner. This should include methods, participants, and key findings.
Tasks should provide coverage of envisioned functionality and be motivated by the design research.
Design ideas should be distinct and have a connection to results of design research.
The selected design and task storyboards should be compelling and have a connection to results of design research.
Presentations should show appropriate preparation, with slides that are legible and slide/article content that is effective, accessible, properly prepared, and properly employed.
Presentations should cover the required scope within the allowed time/word limit.