CS 419/519, Fall 2017, Dr. Burnett
Term Project (Team)

Project Installment 1: Project formation

Turn in the following:

• What software project you picked (name and brief description of project, about 1 paragraph total)
• What underrepresented population you picked
• A situation/use case your underrepresented population is in that makes clear why they would be using your software (about 1 sentence).
  • Example 1: writing a term paper for class.
  • Example 2: making a transportation decision (car vs. bus vs. walk vs...).
  • Example 3: reading a document.
• What issues make your software a potentially poor fit for this population? (1 to several sentences)
• A situation/use case your mainstreamer is in that makes clear why they would be using your software (about 1 sentence).
  • Example 1: writing a term paper for class.
  • Example 2: making a transportation decision (car vs. bus vs. walk vs...).
  • Example 3: reading a document in poor lighting conditions -- BUT the software is also suitable when reading in good lighting conditions.
• A justification why this is a good/interesting project from the standpoint of there being a reasonable amount of USABILITY work to think about
• Who your team members are (about 3 people/team)

Project Installment 2: Family Planning (mostly just the data part)

This installment focuses on a portion of Family Planning, most of which will be about data.

Group: Turn in the following (just 1 copy of this per group):

• 1. Data What's: Things you need to find out from your data (as in Figure C.3)
• 2. Data Where's: Sources that you hope to read to find those things out (as in Figure C.4)
• 3. Data When's (Action Plan for all things data): A schedule of the data planning/collection/organization parts of Family planning and Conception/gestation. With real dates so that you can make these deadlines.
• 4. The presentation (10 minutes to present, 5 for questions.):
  • Tell us everything you can about your selected population. (It will be nice if you've actually read enough to answer some of the questions you listed in item 1, but the presentation deadline is probably before you've gotten very far on that.) Goal: make us feel like we know your persona and have a feel for them as a person.
  • Before your presentation, you'll need to have read some of those sources (Data Where's) to succeed at your presentation, so jump right into some sources in item 2 as soon as you have a start at that list. In the last slide of the presentation, list sources you've actually read so far. (You'll read the rest of those sources after your presentation.)
  • Turn in: your slides

Project Installment 3: Conception and (Early) Gestation

In this installment, you'll be taking your underserved population through "conception" and the earliest bit of "gestation" (ie, through the book's "Step 4"). You'll also be doing a light version of this for your mainstream population.

Summary: Turn in the following:

• 1, 2: As a team, your hand-in needs to include most of the elements of Figure 4.2, page 22. Use that as your checklist.

1. Conception stuff to turn in for your underserved population (as a team):

• a. “Affinity diagrams” of Fig 4.2: A (potentially unreadable) snapshot of the entire affinity diagram. eg, like Fig 4.7.
• b. A list of the "attributes" you settled on in (a) -- in case I can't read them in your snapshot above. There should be about 5 of them, and all should be somehow pertinent to your population's ability to ultimately gain useful benefits from your software prototype. (So, for example, "curly hair" would not be a pertinent attribute -- unless the software has something to do with helping with a person's hair.)
• c. sort of like “Data sources” of Fig 4.2: (must be readable): A list (or mark-up of the list you turned in before) of all the data sources you actually drew from somehow in your affinity diagram, and what “label” each data source ended up under. (What are “labels”: they are the "attributes", like "Motivations" in Abby, or the pink boxes in Fig 4.8.)
  Example: If you drew 7 factoids from paper X, 3 ending up under “interests” and 4 under “motivations”, then tell me you used paper X and that the labels its stuff ended up under were "interests" & "motivations".
• d. “Persona skeletons” of Fig. 4.2: (must be readable) All of your skeletons. eg, like Fig 4.10 (left). You should have 2-4 skeletons for your underserved population
• e. “Prioritized Persona skeletons” of Fig. 4.2: results of the team’s prioritizing of the skeletons. (Just tell me the priorities that got assigned to the skeletons you turn in above for your population.)

2. Conception stuff to turn in for your mainstreamers (as a team):

• a. In one paragraph, briefly describe assumptions you want to follow for your mainstreamers. Also give a use case in which a mainstreamer would be using your software (hopefully you can copy it in from your Installment #1 document). Warning: Your mainstreamer cannot be "sort of like" your underserved population, even situationally. For example, if your underserved population is illiterate, your mainstreamer must be fully literate in the language the interface uses; if your underserved population has low vision, your mainstreamer must have good vision, be in suitable lighting, etc.
• b. No data sources: instead, just assumptions you want to use about your mainstreamers for each attribute you came up with in item 1.
• c. Persona skeletons, as in item 1 above. You need at least 2 skeletons for your mainstream population
• d. “Prioritized Persona skeletons” of Fig. 4.2: As in item 1 above, for your mainstreamers.

Project Installment 4: Rest of gestation, concepts, very early prototype

In this installment, you'll flesh out your skeletons into full-blown personas, including foundations for the underserved population one. You'll also turn in a set of concept drawings and the beginnings of a low-fi prototype for developing one (or at most two) selected concepts.

Group: Turn in the following (just 1 copy of this per group):

Project Installment 5: Complete (some parts medium-fi, a snippet or two hi-fi) prototype

In this installment, you'll complete your prototype, at least to a medium-fidelity stage. A few of your screens will need to be high-fidelity,

Turn in the following (just 1 copy of this per group):

• 1. 1-2 use cases for your underserved persona and one for your mainstreamer. Details:
  • a. Use case for your underserved persona: Turn in a sentence or paragraph. eg, "[your underserved persona] is in a car seat in the back seat while her parents are driving, and thinks the car is too hot, so she turns on the air conditioner and adjusts the temperature to something she likes."
  • b. Use case for your mainstreamer: Turn in a sentence or paragraph. eg, "[your mainstream persona] is in the front seat driving, and thinks the car is too cold, perhaps because his daughter in the back seat has just turned on the AC so low that a cold draft is blowing on him. So he [whatever he does with the UI]."
• 2. Your complete prototype. Details:
  • What is a prototype: These are drawings (like in the ScreenTransitionDiagram figure), not source code. Optionally, the drawings can be "executable" via html links or Powerpoint action buttons or etc., but this is not a programming exercise.
  • What format: ScreenTransitionDiagrams (one example is in the ScreenTransitionDiagram figure). These are screens (a new one for every change in screen content or appearance) and arrows connecting the user action to the next screen/update they would see.
  • How many screens: As many as it takes to show the use cases start to finish. I'm guessing 6-10 screens per use case. (Of course, if the two use cases result in identical UI actions and screen appearances, then you'd have 6-10 total for that use case.) If your use case produces only 6, add another use case. In total, you should have 15-20 screens.
  • What to use as an art tool: Anything you want that can be "demo'd". Possibilities include Mockups tool (see main class web page and Canvas site), Powerpoint, Photoshop, your favorite html editor, CogTool, any UI prototyping tool, etc.
  • High-fidelity prototype vs. medium-fidelity: The high-fidelity screens are polished, with the sizes, fonts, colors, etc. you really want (like in the ScreenTransitionDiagram figure). The medium-fidelity ones are not quite as fleshed out (some aspects of a screen polished, some parts still just sketched). At least 20% or 2 screens (whichever is larger) must be high-fidelity; the rest can be medium-fidelity.
• 3. For the design decisions you have made since the last Design Gallery, include a justification based on your personas, the feedback you have received, and/or principles you've learned in class of each of your design decisions in the prototype. Make sure that all of your persona's Attributes are mentioned in how they contributed to your design decisions.
• 4. Also turn in your most up-to-date personas (with the foundation embedded in the underserved persona). These will not be graded this time, but we need them to properly grade items 1-3 above.
• 5. Bring printouts of the prototype and personas to class to spread out over the room for Design Gallery #2.
• A note on your process's dataflow: Last assignment, some teams showed what I think of as "broken dataflow". That is, some of you did not build your latest work on the work leading up to it, and this caused problems. The inclusive design process requires the data/research to inform the skeletons, the skeletons to inform the personas, the personas to inform the concepts, the concepts to inform the prototype. So, for this assignment, be sure that your prototype builds very well on your personas, and that your personas build very well on your data. If your personas aren't good enough for that, then change your personas so that they are good enough. (Remember, inclusive design is (1) iterative and (2) creative -- so you need all minds thinking together, not trying to divide up to work on pieces in isolation.)

Project Final Installment: Complete Project + Presentation Slides

Summary: Turn in the final versions of everything: personas, prototype, justification, and presentation slides

Group: Turn in the following (just 1 copy of this per group):