In this assignment, you will take your product concept from the “Inspirational Designs” exercise a step further by storyboarding it. The storyboards should flesh out a more detailed interface for your idea and show its usage in the context of performing “real-world” tasks.
A storyboard is a comic strip-like set of drawings about what your interface does and how it is used to accomplish tasks in an actual usage scenario. Draw inspiration from McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” reading as well as from the lectures this week. Your storyboards should be titled “How might we …?”, where you are to fill in a task to be accomplished. For example, your storyboard may be titled “How might we make finding an ice cream shop easier?” You could show a family on summer vacation who is looking for a cold treat. You could then illustrate how they would use your mobile ice cream locator interface to enter their desired flavor of ice cream and get directed to the nearest parlor. You should include sketches showing your interface’s actual presentation and layout, especially if there are tasks that will need to be completed by navigating menus, pressing a sequence of buttons, etc.
Pick one major/key/complex task to be done with your interface. Create three alternative storyboards for accomplishing the task, varying the interface itself, the scenario, or both. Each storyboard should require 5-8 panels, so in total you will have 15-24 panels to turn in. Each storyboard should fit on two 8.5” x 11” sheets of paper and be drawn with a thick pen, like a Sharpie. This exercise should take you about 3 hours.
To complete this assignment, you must submit online:
Your summary will be submitted online as a body of plain text and digital photographs of your storyboard panels.
The submission website can be accessed through the course website with your SUNet login.
To submit the assignment, log in to this website and click the Submit Assignment link in the Current Assignment box. On the submission page you can enter the writeup as well as upload any number of images. Clicking the "Save" button will save the current version of your writeup. Your latest save will automatically be submitted for grading when the assignment is due. You can save as many times as you need until the deadline (11am Thursday).
Submit early! The system is not designed to handle everyone submitting at 10:55am on Thursday! Late assignments will not be accepted!
Please bring your storyboards to class! In studio, we will be using them as the basis for forming final project groups. Studio will run as follows:
1. You will arrive in studio with a hard copy of your storyboard.
2.
Each person will take 60 seconds to present their storyboard’s task and one scenario alternative.
3.
You will then have time to look over all of the storyboards, and vote for the ideas you like best. The 3-4 ideas with the most votes will be made available as final project topic.
4.
You will form groups of either 3 or 4 people only (i.e. no groups of 2 or 5).
5.
As a group, you will pick a project topic out of the 3-4 available ones, and leave studio with both a group and a project idea for the remainder of the quarter.
The assignment was graded out of 50 points. The points were broken down as follows:
Kevin Lai's assignment
Christopher Archibald's assignment
Brandon Heller's assignment