Project 3 : Specification
Due Saturday at 5:00 PM MST
This week we will complete the design phase of our project.
The deliverables for this week consist of three things: your design iterations, your prototype, and the specification.
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.
Prototype
The prototype often goes hand-in-hand with scenario writing because the prototype can be thought of as the computer's part of the scenario. While we include drawings of the design, we are not committed to any visuals or even functionality at this point. This is an abstraction of all the key components of the final design. Please include:
- One drawing for each step in the user's interaction with the product. These could be photocopies of a single drawing if large parts do not change significantly
- Each drawing has all the key components of the final design
- Each step needs a short textual description of what the user is doing and how the software is responding
Note that your prototype could be strictly paper, completely electronic, or any combination that works for you.
Specification
The spec needs to have the following components:
- Executive Summary: Previously mentioned...
- Criteria: How do we measure success? Bring the criteria from Project 2 but not the rubric.
- Persona: A concise version of the persona from Project 2. Just a few sentences covering the essence of the persona.
- Scenario: A concise version of the scenario from Project 2. Again just a few sentences will do.
- Representative screen-shot: Your design iterations and full prototype have no place in the spec. However, you will need to bring in one or two drawings that are “representative” of the whole design. These can be a panel or two from your storyboard, a screen-shot from your interactive mock-up, or a picture of your paper prototype.
- Detailed Design: A breakdown of the various UI components and how they behave. As a general rule of thumb, this should be detailed enough that any developer should build the same product from the spec. In other words, if this spec was handed to 10 developers, you would get back 10 nearly identical products. You should include:
- All the states of all the controls
- What accepts input and what will be the result
- Drawings of all the key components
Note that though we include visuals, it is understood that they will change.
Assignment
In summary, please include the following separate documents:
- A copy of your design iterations.
- Your full prototype: either a storyboard, a paper prototype, or an interactive mockup.
- Specification. This should be about ten pages, but you are not graded on length. You are, however, graded on completeness and clarity.
Turning it in
Please submit your design iterations.
- If you are in an online section, please scan or take one or more high-quality pictures of your drawings and submit them as a PDF.
- If you are a campus student, you can either submit a PDF or manually place in in your instructor's inbox by his/her office door.
Please submit your prototype.
- If you created a storyboard, then you can either take a high-quality picture of your prototype and submit it in I-Learn as a PDF. Campus students have the option of turning in a physical copy of their storyboard in your instructor's inbox by his/her office door.
- Online students who created a paper prototype can submit a video of a user interacting with the prototype. Post this video on a video sharing service and submit a link. Campus students can either post a video or turn in a physical copy in your instructor's inbox by his/her office door.
- If you created an interactive mockup, then create a video of your interaction with the prototype. Post this video on a video sharing service and submit a link.
Please create a single PDF of your specification. This is to be submitted through I-Learn.
Grading
| Exceptional 100% |
Good 90% |
Acceptable 70% |
Developing 50% |
Missing 0% |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design Process 10% |
The design process shows creativity, structure, and introspection. Following this method, a high quality product will likely result every time | Evidence of broad thinking (breadth-first search), and systematic refinement (depth-first search) exists | It is clear that the design when through multiple iterations, each of which improving the quality of the design | More than one version of the design is present | Only one design is present |
| Prototype 20% |
The prototype unambiguously describes how each aspect of the design works. | All the features in the design are described to some degree | Prototype capture the key design features but minor details are missing | Flaws in the prototype seriously undermine its effectiveness | Prototype missing |
| Design Quality 20% |
All the priority 1 criteria are met and most of the priority 2 criteria are met | The target user is likely to be “pleased” with the design and all their needs will be met | Minor flaws exist but none are likely to present serious usability issues | Flaws in the design exist that seriously undermine how the user will accept the final product | It is better to start from scratch; few parts of the design can be salvaged |
| Specification: Page 1 20% |
The “page 1” part of the spec completely and concisely capture all aspects of the design | All parts of the “page 1” part of the spec are well executed | One or more component has a minor flaw but the essence of the design is communicated | Everything is present but a serious flaw exists in one or more component seriously undermine its effectiveness | One or more components of the specification is missing |
| Specification: Detailed Design 30% |
Design is so clear and precise that there is no room for interpretation or confusion | Every detail has been worked out and is described in the spec | All the design components are described in the spec to some degree | One important aspect of the design is not completely hashed out | No features are described to any degree of detail |
In addition to the above criteria, a penalty will be added for write-ups that suffer from usability issues: grammar or spelling errors, overly verbose, poor formatting choice, etc.