Objectives To develop the conceptual design of your project, learning some
design methods in the process. What to do I will be flexible about what design method you use. However,
you need to convince me that the methods you choose are appropriate,
and that you are genuinely exploring and evaluating alternative
conceptual designs before rushing into physical design and implementation.
1. Include at least one of the Following from Usage-Centered
or Scenario-based Design
All projects should do at least one of the
following two methods. Individual projects need only do one of
them. Exceptions: If you can make a strong case that neither
of these fit your project, contact me ASAP with your argument
and proposed alternative.
a. Content Model, as practiced in Usage-Centered Design.
If you did not make essential use cases in the requiremnts phase,
do it now. Map your use cases to contexts, trying to minimize
the number of contexts while not making them too complex. Give
a navigation map if there is more than one context. Show the
content model to users to verify that they make sense. UCD methods
are described in the papers I assigned to you (see resource listing
in disCourse).
b. Activity Scenarios, as practiced
in Scenario-Based Design. Write stories about fictional
users engaging in their activity (work, play or learning task)
with the support of your system. The stories will envision
what their activity will be like, but not get into details
of physical design such as information displays or widgets
that they interact with. Discuss the stories with users to
get feedback. There should be several stories that explore
alternatives, and they should be accompanied by a Claims Analysis
indicating what you learned from the stories.
I have not yet found a good introductory paper on SBD, but see http://ldt.stanford.edu/~gimiller/Scenario-Based/scenarioIndex2.htm
Note: some good examples of both of these are in this student
project from ICS 667:
http://www.willwork.org/ics667/project.asp
2. Group Projects: Use at least one other method
Groups of two or more should include the other method from
the above pair. For groups of three
striving for an "A" level of performance, either do a very thorough
job of the above, or try adding a method from Contextual
Design.
Unfortunately I could not find a good enough cost-free description
of how to do Contextual Design, although you could look at http://www.incent.com/pubs/requirements.html and http://www.incent.com/cd/cdp.html.
There are many other methods for conceptual design. I am open
to alternatives as long as you research (read about) those alternatives
and use them to explore alternative visual and interaction designs
before settling on implementation details. Email me if you have
a proposal.
3. In all cases, evaluate your conceptual designs
according to the requirements that you did for Assignment
6. What to turn in As usual:
- Add a summary of your conceptual design activities to your
project web site. There should be a single web page giving an
overview
of the conceptual design
phase
of your project, with links to detail web pages as needed.
Include your evaluation with respect to the requirements.
- Submit the URL of this conceptual design
page (NOT the project home page) as your assignment.
Due 3/24 (although we'll look at preliminary results 3/21)
Pau |