(Week: 4) Design Proposal (Group)

Last revised date: 5/9/2026

Overview

Present your design concept based on your AEIOU analysis and project research

Required Competencies

When you turn in this homework, also turn in these competencies

• Inclusive Person Centered Design
• Accessible Communication
• Design/Disability Justice

Assignment Details

• Write up a Design Proposal
  • Explain the need
  • Describe the overall design Concept
  • Provide walkthroughs illustrating 2 primary task scenarios.
• Handin
  • Team Contribution & AI use Statement
  • Competencies

Write up a Design Proposal

Your design proposal should not exceed 1000 words (+ images)

Explain the need

• As a group, discuss the first person accounts you found. You may want to add or remove some at this stage
• Describe the general need (including who the user is, what activity they are doing, what environment they are in, what their goal/need is)
• Answer the questions in the Inclusive Person-Centered Design Rubric

Describe the overall design Concept

Describe your concept as a response to the need just identified (what is the general concept? What are the input/output elements? How does it fulfill the need you identified?)

Describe how your design responds to each part of your AEIOU Analysis

• For each of the five parts, answer the question: How does your proposed design engage with this?
• Overall, what did you learn by using the AEIOU framework?

Answer the questions in the Design / Disability Justice Rubric

Provide walkthroughs illustrating 2 primary task scenarios.

A scenario demonstrates how an instance of a task is accomplished with a design.

• Describe the task and provide a simple story conveying context and details for accomplishing that task.
  • Each scenario must not exceed 100 words.
  • In one sentence, describe the task (i.e., what is accomplished).
  • In one paragraph, provide a simple story conveying context and details to support illustrating the accomplishment of an instance of the task.
• Use images to provide a step-by-step walkthrough illustratting the scenario.
  • Convey each key step in accomplishing the task with your design. These can be sketches, mockups, or other illustrations of how a person will experience the scenario.
  • Convey the walkthrough in enough detail that course staff can understand step-by-step interaction with your design. We expect each scenario will include multiple images (e.g., 6 images conveying step-by-step interaction in a scenario).
  • In the next formative research assignment, you will use these scenarios as part of describing your design and seeking feedback from formative research participants.
  • Any text used to provide image captions in the walkthrough does not count against word limits.
• Describe your initial consideration and exploration of language model support needed in the proposed interaction.
  • This consideration in each scenario must not exceed 100 words.
  • Consider when and how your design will invoke a language model throughout the scenario. Consider the expected input and output for these language model invocations. Consider exploring specific prompts, such as by using conversational AI tools or Python notebooks to probe the capabilities needed in your scenario. Summarize key activities and learnings in your initial exploration of language model support.
  • If understanding those requires additional supporting documentation, provide that in the same folder in a human-readable format (e.g., another document, PDFs). Appropriately reference this supporting documentation in your description. We do not intend this to be a burden, so you may decide whether you feel such documentation is necessary for engaging with course staff around your design.

Handin

Turn in your Design Spec of 1000 words or less

Team Contribution & AI use Statement

Submit a contribution statement and AI use along with each group submission (for all graded team assignments!). Include this contribution statement as an additional part of your submission, along with the names of your group members. Please note that we will not grade submissions where this statement is missing.

Competencies

You will also turn in the individual requirements for this competency

Inclusive Person Centered Design (rubric)

• A link to the first person account(s)
• A reflection answering the following questions
• What first person account(s) did you find and does it meet the requirements for a first person account described above
• How do their intersecting identities (e.g., race, gender, socioeconomic status) shape their experiences of disability? Are there any groups or identities missing from the accounts you found, and what impact might that have on your understanding of the problem?
• How can your project goals address barriers that arise from multiple intersecting systems of oppression (e.g., racism, ableism, sexism)?
• What insights or lessons did you learn from them, and how would you define your project goals based on them?
• How would you define success for this project, and how will you determine if it has positively impacted your target users? What measures will you take to avoid reinforcing existing biases or excluding certain identities?

Accessible Communication (rubric)

• Your document as required by the assignment. Note: do not submit a PDF. We expect your submission to be a Word or Google Doc in most cases.
• A list of images and the ALT text you wrote for each of them
• Which best practices are demonstrated in this document
• A screen shot showing the accessibility checker results for your document

Design/Disability Justice (rubric)

• Define and explain two disability justice principles. For each, explain how the subject fails or succeeds to meet that?
• Address the three additional points
• Analysis of potential harms and mitigation strategies
• [TODO: make more concrete or delete] Evidence of engagement with clients' whole selves intersectionally