Project 3a : Design

Finish by Saturday

There are two phases of the design phase of a project: coming up with the design and presenting the design to others.

1. Design
2. Specification

This week, we will be working on the design. There are no deliverables this week; just try to get your project to this level of completion this week.

Writing software without a spec is like building a house without a plan. Sure, something will eventually get built, but what? This project is about formulating that plan so we can know the end from the beginning.

Executive Summary

The executive summary is the 1-2 sentence description of what the project is all about. Think of this as the “elevator discussion.” Imagine President Gilbert stepped into the elevator with you and you had two floors to describe what the project is all about. Will he walk away from that brief discussion with a clear picture in his mind what you are trying to accomplish?

Design

Designing is a multi-step process where ideas are tried, evaluated, and adapted. At every step, you should have a small number (4-5) of drafts. Evaluate these, discard the bad ones, and iterate on the ideas that show promise. With each step, your drafts should be more refined. The best results come from a combination of a breadth-first and depth-first search through the design space.

The first part of this project is to follow the iterative design process to come up with the best possible design for your project. The rubric you developed in Project 2 should come in handy here.

Submission

Next week will use the design we created this week to create a prototype and write the specification. We will not turn anything in this week, but you should get half of the work done now.