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Process Book (i.e. Final Report)

Assigned: February 18
Due: May 10 at 5pm

Overview
Your process book should serve as a stand alone description of your project and each step of the process that you went through along the way. It should therefore summarize some things you have presented in previous reports. It may also go into detail on a few new aspects of your project, particularly if you need to show previously unseen examples of your early work to illustrate the path by which you arrived at your final design.

We will be grading the overall report as a whole but place most emphasis on 1) the cohesiveness of the narrative from the beginning of your project to the end, 2) how your UI changed over the course of the project based on your evaluations, 3) which evaluation techniques were most effective and 4) the description of the final UI.

Grading:
This assignment is 15% of your overall grade, which has been broken down into 60 points for grading. The breakdown of points is discussed below.

What to Do:
In this assignment you will create a process book, which presents a narrative of your project from its early beginnings in your brainstorming sessions (and possibly individual project proposals) to your final design. As this will be your only chance to describe your final design, you should also describe your final design in some detail.

I strongly advise you to include many figures in your process book, including sketches of potential designs, images of your prototypes, etc. Several images illustrating changes in your design over time will be far more informative than text describing those changes. Instead, use text to describe the rationale behind the evolution of your design. This rationale will hopefully often be the result of discoveries made through your user studies.

Examples
Here are some examples of process books from other courses. Some of these are from design courses, and thus have more emphasis on typography and print layout than I expect to see in your process books.

What to Turn In:
You may author your process book directly on the Wiki or use other software (Word, InDesign, etc.) and upload a PDF of your document to the Wiki.

The following topics should be covered in your process book:

  • Each team member's name and roles over the course of the project (2 points)
  • Problem and solution overview (3 points)
  • Tasks (3 points)
    • The representative tasks that you focused on over the course of your design. If these tasks changed over the course of your project, be sure to describe how and why. (3 points)
  • Design Evolution (20 points)
    • How did your UI design change from sketches, low-fi prototype, interactive prototype, etc.?
    • Show what the major changes were and why they were made
    • Explain which evaluation technique was most valuable to your prototype's usability and why.
    • Provide clear and well-referenced images demonstrating the design evolution
  • Final Interface Design (25 points)
    • Describe the functionality
    • Describe the user interface design
    • Provide clear and well-referenced images showing key elements of the final user interface design
    • Describe what was left unimplemented and why. Clearly state if any wizard-of-oz simulation is needed for your implementation to work.

How to Turn In:
From your group page, create a new page for your Process Book assignment. You will probably want to call this page something like "<GroupName>ProcessBook" to ensure that the page is unique. Paste the text for your written report directly into your new page and embed any images and videos that you may have.

Finally, link this new page to the Process Book page. After adding an entry to the bulleted list on that page, link that entry to the unique name that you picked for your assignment page in the step above.