Week 7 To-Do’s

Lecture and reading

Attend the lecture to learn about this week’s topics and obtain extra information from this week’s reading list (short articles/videos to read/watch):

• Affordance, conventions, and design by Don A. Norman
• The Sketch Test: How to Test and Improve Your UX Deliverables and Other Documents by Page Laubheimer
• Signifiers, not Affordances by Don A. Norman.
• How Google Approaches the Process of Ideation by Maya Frai
• Affordances: Clarifying and Evolving a Concept by Joanna McGrenere and Wayne Ho

Carry out Crazy 8 ideation

Do this together in the team meeting. Each person should take a piece of paper and fold it to make 8 rectangular regions (or do it using a digital canvas). Each team member pick 1 feature for the 4-5 chosen features previously, and draw 8 sketches of different possible layout and screen organizations for this feature. All team members should be sketching at the same time. Assign one person to manage the timer. The sketching should take 8 minutes total, 1 minute per sketch. Stop sketching as soon as time is up. Look through each other’s crazy 8 sheets, and put a star next to 2 layouts that you like. As a team, choose one layout for each feature. Discuss why. Your design document should include:

1. Screenshots of the crazy 8 sheets.
2. A brief description of the chosen best layout for each feature.

Draw sketches/wireframes for your application features (Individual)

Individually, decide on the set of pages/screens that are needed to implement your chosen feature, and sketch out the layout and structure of each page. Make sure you annotate the content and controls of each page in detail. As you are designing, think about signifier, affordance, constraints, feedback, discoverability, mapping, consistency of the interface with the conceptual models of the user. Update the design notebook with:

1. A set of screen sketches for a particular feature (labelled with the contributing team member).
2. A brief description of the feature.

Construct user flows based on the sketches (Individual)

After designing the screens, place all the screen sketches next to each other. Imagine a user working through a common task on the app and draw user flows. Update your design document with:

1. A diagram illustrating the user flow between screen sketches for a particular feature (labelled with the contributing team member).
2. A brief description of the user flow. Make sure you provide a clear title or ID for each screen sketch that matches the steps in your user flow: this is important for your readers to understand how the two are connected.

Team meeting and design document

Conduct this week’s activities during the studio time in class. When necessary, continue the team meeting and discussion out of class. Update your design document with the outcomes of this week’s activities. More details are available on the Information page under Deliverable 2a.