F26 CS 449 / 649 Design Activities

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

Jump to:

• D1. Value Proposition
• D2. Personas
• D3. Interview Questions
• D4. Afffinity Diagramming
• D5. Brainstorm, Challenge, and Concretize Features
• D6. Create Design Ideas
• D7. Low-Fidelity Prototyping
• D8. High-Fidelity Prototyping

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.

N* = one assumption per team member.

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.

D4. Affinity Diagramming

During the Week 4 studio, your team will analyze the interview data collected from your pilot interviews by creating an affinity diagram. After the studio, you’ll begin interviewing participants for PO1a and you should incorporate what they tell you into the affinity diagram as well. Overall, your affinity diagram should be developed from 3 - 4 total interviews.

In the design notebook include:

• A photo/screen shot of the affinity diagram that you created.
• 1-2 paragraph description of the key themes and insights extracted from the interviews.

Write a paragraph that compares the assumptions you made from your personas to some of the initial interviews that you conducted so far. What are the similarities and differences?

D5. Brainstorm, Challenge, and Concretize Features

As preparation, you and your team should have brainstormed a feature list. During the studio activity, you will perform different exercises to further challenge and concretize your features. You should narrow down your final feature list to about 4 -5 (roughly one per team member). Each feature should have some motivating POV, Behavioral, and HMW statement. In your writeup you should include:

• How you and your team voted on the smaller feature list.
• A POV, Behavioral, and HMW statement for each feature (ideally one per team member).
• A short write-up (~250 words) of how each statement was informed by the interviews.
• For each feature, a crazy 8 sketch (screenshot, labelled with team member contribution).

Hang on to these images, in the studio, you’ll discuss how you picked one of them to incorporate into flows.

D6. Create Design Ideas

Epics & Stories (Individual work): We will integrate our feature ideation into stories. Each team member of the team chooses one possible feature for your app / service / experience, and creates an epic and stories for that feature. Each member's feature should be distinct. Use the affinity diagrams, POVs, and HMWs from the previous studio to guide you. Then, as a team, discuss and refine the epics and stories. Your design document should include:

• 4 to 5 epics, in total (depending on the number of team members).
• 2 to 3 Stories per Epic.

Storyboards (Individual + Team work): Each team member takes their feature and draws its associated storyboard: e.g., how that feature on your app / service / experience will be used to resolve the protagonist's problems, and what is the final outcome. Then, as a team, discuss, critique, and refine the storyboards. Your design document write-up (between 250 - 400 words) should include details such as:

• Setting: people involved? … environment? … task being accomplished?
• Sequence; what steps are involved? … what leads someone to use the app? … what task is being illustrated?
• Satisfaction: what’s the motivation for the protagonist? … what’s the end result? … how do they user feel? … what needs are you satisfying?
• Screenshots of the storyboards (labelled with team member contribution)

D7. Low-Fidelity Prototyping

Construct UX Flows: Select two features. Choose what you deem to be the most important, most risky, and / or most uncertain flows. After sketching designs for the screens, place all the screen sketches next to each other. Imagine someone working through a common task on the app and draw the flows. Update your design document with:

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

Paper Prototype: Submit a set of screen sketches for a one of the flows (labelled with the contributing team member). The sketch should simulate the intended layout (i.e., appropriately-sized interface elements, such as buttons, textboxes, labels) and actual content (i.e., real text, as opposed to placeholders for text). The sketch should still be low fidelity, i.e., they should look and feel like a sketch, has minimal or no color, no font, no styling, etc.

Low-Fidelity Wireframe: For the other flow, draw low-fidelity wireframes in Figma or use photos of sketches, use Figma "Prototype" animations to simulate interaction. Submit a link to the Figma prototype.

D8. High-Fidelity Prototyping

Details to be provided in Week 10.