Due Tuesday January 12, in class
“In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”
— Carl Sagan
In this assignment you will be doing two related tasks:
At the end of the assignment, you should have a concrete question you wish to answer, as well as ideas on how your solution will differ from current solutions. You may also have observations of people who would be users of your project. You will then present that on Tuesday.
For this assignment you will spend time exploring products/services similar to, or competing with, your project idea. You may also choose to spend time observing prototypical users. You should decide based upon how well you feel you know the central issue to your project.
On Tuesday, bring a low-fidelity, informative, large visual aid. It should be readable from several feet away (ie: use fonts larger than 12pt). Overly polished visuals will be graded down. Instead, focus on being able to verbally explain your observations and/or discoveries.
“Visual aid” is left intentionally vague. This could be sketches, photo collage, process diagram, etc. Whatever best communicates your insights.
Again, web search is your friend! As your project idea evolves, continue to search for relevant, related work. Update your list of three products from Assignment 1 as needed. Analyze each one in terms of its important design elements, its target audience, and how well it addresses the problem it is designed to solve. What do these examples imply for your design? Select visuals (screenshots, sketches, etc) that will help you explain what you've learned.
For example, if your idea was for a location-aware mobile ice cream shop search interface, you might choose Google mobile search as an inspirational product. You could then discuss how the service integrates the search results with maps, and point out how this would be useful for your own product but that the map would also have to visualize the places where your favorite flavor, Super-Duper Chip, was available.
The purpose of observation is to learn more about the issue or task you're interested in, usually to explore the pain points and potential room for improvement.
Choose a person, time, and activity that will be rich for observations of/around your project idea's issue. Ask that person to participate in this assignment and get permission. Plan to follow them for about an hour, observing her or him during the selected activity. Take photographs, write notes, and save any ideas that occur to you during your observation. They can all serve as parts of your visual aid.
This approach to discovery is called contextual inquiry; it was covered in CS147 and is discussed in this week's reading. Normally it is performed with a small population of 5-10 representative individuals, but you only need to observe 1 person.
After your observation is complete, distill your findings into specific needs. Report your observations, and these needs, on Tuesday.
Tip: One way to do get a little Observation with your Discovery is to read reviews (both amateur and professional) of the website or service.