Overview

This assignment corresponds to the second half of the needs assessment process for this project. You will create task scenarios, do an analysis of existing systems, and work out initial design ideas. These designs will form the basis of what you test in your low-fidelity prototypes in the next project assignment.

Task Scenarios

Using the task matrix that you created for the previous assignment, create a set of task scenarios that demonstrate the sequence of actions the personas will have to go through in order to achieve their practical goals. You will use these scenarios both to guide your designs and to assess your designs throughout the rest of the project. You should end up with 3 to 5 primary scenarios; more than this will make it difficult to focus.

You will have to make a judgement call about how many scenarios to create, and whether or not you will focus on central (typical) tasks or central tasks plus less common tasks. If your project is wide-ranging you may want the initial design to focus only on central tasks. If your project is more contained (for example, the main tasks for the personas all overlap pretty well) then you may be able to accomodate the less common tasks.

You will also have to make a judgement call about how detailed to make the task descriptions. You need to create a balance between taking into account the constraints of the environment in which they system will be used (at a stand-up kiosk, in a web browser, as a stand-alone GUI) but at the same time not tying it too much to the implementation, in order to allow for flexibility in the designs.

You might want to use affinity diagrams (card sorting), writing tasks components on cards and organizing them into groups. You might also try working in pairs or individually to get initial scenarios, and then combine them together as a group.

Revisions to Personas, Task Analysis

You may find that in the course of doing this assignment, you need to combine some of your personas, or ignore one or more of them. Use this section to record any such revisions you need to do.

Also, if you find that you need to update the task matrix based on new information, that is fine. If you need to do this, leave the original matrix in the old assignment and put the new one in this assignment.

If you don't need to make changes, then you don't need to put anything in this section.

Related Work / Comparative Analysis

Read papers about and find and analyze a set of existing systems that attempt to support at least some of your project goals. (We now use the term "comparative" rather than the old term, "competitive", as you should view existing ideas as something to learn from as well as improve on, but not necessarily something to compete against.) Explain the strengths and weaknesses relative to your personas' goals and tasks. Describe which aspects of existing systems you are likely (but not committed) to include in your design(s).

You are encouraged to borrow the best ideas, combining them in new and better ways. Keep in mind that good ideas might also come from systems that do things utterly different from your project goal. One reason we have a lot of reading in this class is to give you lots of ideas about potential designs.

Initial design ideas

Using the scenarios and the results of the competitive analysis, create two or three initial designs for the system. For each design, you should have a description of the main flow of interaction, and some sketches of screen layout. You can use whatever mechanism you want to describe this, some suggestions appear below. You should illustrate the movement through this flow using the scenarios created above, and explanatory narration to make this easy to understand.

One strategy is to create ideal design ideas for each persona separately, then look for ways that the ideas and persona needs can be logically combined, focusing on your primary persona.

One way to create different designs is to put different priorities on the scenarios. Emphasizing one scenario over another might end up creating a different organization to the interaction flow.

Initial ideas about graphical design is optional, and should not be done at the expense of doing the task flows and initial sketches.

You may also need to describe the main components of the system's architecture (e.g., the interface between the backend and the front end) but this is not required, and is project-dependent.

Examples from Previous Years' Projects

It might be helpful to study the following, especially for the well-done scenarios.

• Manis (Spring '04)
• Healthy Communities (Spring '04)
• BriefBank (Spring '02)

Suggested Tools for Interaction Flow Design

These are optional, and are only meant as suggestions.

• Jesse James Garrett's visual vocabulary (This is reproduced in the course reader.) Garrett explains how to use visio and other tools. You could also use this in combination with Denim, below.

• Denim. You can download and use Denim to sketch out the main components and use its storyboarding facility to show interaction flow. Some people find it very helpful, others find it too much work to use. Be sure to download the latest version.

• You can use paper and pencil for this and use a digital camera or scanner to enter in the results.

To turn in:

1. The scenarios, including which persona(s) they apply to (3 page maximum).
2. Revisions to personas and task analysis (if applicable).
3. Comparative analysis, including screenshots where available (3 page maximum, not including screenshots).
4. Initial design ideas. You should have either two or three main designs. These should include interaction flows, initial sketches and explanatory narrative. It optionally can include system architecture and initial graphic design ideas (7 page maximum, excluding graphic design).
5. Description of which team members did which part(s) of the work. (You might want to have a separate page for this table, which you update for each assignment. That way it is separate from the content of the project.)
6. Appendices (if applicable).