i213 - User Interface Design and Development

Final Project

Assigned: February 26th, 2008

Objective: In this assignment, you will use the design methods that you have learned to motivate, design, implement and evaluate a prototype user interface for a set of tasks that are important to a defined set of users. You are encouraged to build upon your work from Assignments 1 and 2, but addressing the exact same problem is not strictly required. It is understood that the goals and emphasis of your project may have changed as you became more familiar with your user group's requirements and your design ideas matured. You are also advised to work in the same groups as you did for Assignments 1 and 2 - but if for some reason that is not feasible, please email the professor or attend his office hours to discuss alternate arrangements.

Below are some guidelines for the final project:

• Your project must have a substantial user interface. A program that merely plays an MP3 file is not enough; a player that allows the user to browse and organize an MP3 collection would be better.
• The user interface must be interactive. A web site that is merely a static collection of web pages would not be acceptable; an e-commerce web site with product search and a shopping basket would be better.
• Creative, original projects are preferred. There are countless MP3 players and e-commerce shopping baskets out there. If your project falls in a crowded field like that, you should look for a problem in the area that isn't well handled by existing solutions.

It is also understood that all project teams may not have equivalent programming skills. We recommend that you scope your project in such a way that it reflects the skills within your team, and that you choose development tools and platforms that are aligned with those skills. Those teams with less programming in their project will be expected to conduct a more thorough user study. However, without exception, all final prototype submissions must be functional enough to be fully tested - in that they allow the user to complete several important tasks, deal fully with error conditions, and are robust enough to allow some exploratory use.

The submission of the project will occur in stages, culminating in a final presentation and demo on May 6th and 8th. This will ensure that you receive timely feedback on your project, and that you follow the design process that we have been studying in class.