F26 CS 449 / 649 Design Activities

All teams will maintain a design notebook to document their progress in their project.

D1. Value Proposition

Describe your value proposition by answering the following questions. In your value proposition write-up, make sure you are NOT proposing a solution (i.e., not describing app features/functionalities); you are merely describing the problem and the outcomes if the problem is solved.

(1) What will you do? What is the high-level problem that you are trying to solve? To start, collect 10 news articles from trusted/reputable sources related to your chosen problem. Take screenshots of the 10 news headlines, and put them into 1 slide. Include a screenshot of the slide in the design notebook. In your writeup, describe the high-level problem that you are trying to solve, and concrete evidence/statistics from literature (e.g., news articles, reports, academic papers) that illustrate the severity of the problem. Take this opportunity to also describe what motivates you personally to work on this specific project topic. Please include the citations (or urls) to all articles, reports and papers used in your argument. (1 screenshot, 2-3 paragraph)

(2) Why you? What solutions (e.g., other apps, other non-technological solutions) currently exist for addressing the problem? How would your approach (e.g., what you will focus on tackling) be different and novel? (1 paragraph)

(3) Who is it for? Who do you envision will use your solution? Name all the different groups of people you imagine the solution to involve. (1 paragraph)

(4) How will it help? Describe what needs you would be aiming to satisfy and the desired outcomes. (1 paragraph)

Include a screenshot of your value proposition canvas that helped you developed form your value proposition.

D2. Personas

During studio session, you will compare and combine the personas that you drafted individually to create a set of personas that represent who you are designing for. You will define and develop your personas using the following persona template

In the design notebook writeup, first describe how your individual personas are the same or different, which are included in your final consolidated set of personas, and how you decided that this set of personas is comprehensive for your problem.

Next, you will develop an empathy map for your personas.

For each of your final persona, include a screenshot of the revised persona and the aggregated empathy map in the design notebook. Next, describe in aggregate what your set of personas tells you about your problem:

• What do your personas need to do?
• What pain points do they encounter ?
• What do they want to gain?
• What are the common goals of your personas?

Finally, dedicate a paragraph or two in your writeup to describe how this exercise of developing your personas has changed your value proposition. If you wish, feel free to update your value proposition and make note of the changes.

D3. Interview Questions

Using the persona and empathy maps as a guide, decide who you will interview.

In Week 3, you will first draft (in point form) an initial set of interview questions:

• First, for each persona, write down N* assumptions that you are making about each.
• Based on your value proposition, write down additional N* things you might need/want to know about each persona.
• Based on this brainstorming, come up with 3 high-level questions. For each high-level question, come up with at least 2-3 specific interview questions. In total, you should have 3 high-level questions, and 6-9 specific questions. Include the brainstorming notes about your persona and value proposition.

In Week 4, you will refine your initial interview questions, working towards 3-high level questions with 5 specific interview questions for each (15 total). Explain how you avoided "ineffective" questions as explained in the lecture. Organize your interview questions according to structure discussed in lecture in the grand tour phase. Finally, describe your plan of where to find people to interview, your procedure for contacting and interviewing them, and how many people you plan to interview each week. Document all of this in the design notebook.

N* = one assumption per team member.

D4. Affinity Diagramming

Details to be provided in Week 4.

D5. Brainstorm, Challenge, and Concretize Features

Details to be provided in Week 5.

D6. Sketches and Flows

Details to be provided in Week 6.

D7. Paper Prototyping

Details to be provided in Week 8.

D8. High-Fidelity Prototyping

Details to be provided in Week 10.