CPE/CSC 484-W06 Assignment 2: "Learning Commons" Story Boards

Team Assignment

This assignment is to be performed in a team of about 3-4 people.

Goals and Objectives

• Get practical experience with the rapid prototyping design process for a particular problem and the use of storyboards to help demonstrate the interface and the interaction.

Description

Your task is to select a task or activity related to the themes for this class ("Learning Commons" and "Tablet PCs", and use the storyboard technique to illustrate its functionality and interaction. This task does not necessarily have to concentrate on computer applications, you can also explore the use of space or furniture for group activities, for example. The focus of this assignment is on the interface/interaction design, rather than the underlying implementation issues. This is a mock-up (medium fidelity) - full functionality and even full details are not expected, but examples of text, artwork, animations, sound, etc. should be present in the appropriate places). It is intended to benefit primarily students, but may also consider other groups such as faculty, staff, and members of the public.

The main part of the assignment is the creation of a set of storyboards that give a clear picture of the overall task, and the design of the interqactions it involves. You do not need to make a storyboard for every single interaction detail but there should be enough to show the main features (a minimum of 10 panels in total).

Since the emphasis in this assignment is on a rapid prototyping design, you are not expected to do formally develop user requirements or use data gathering for this assignment. The storyboards can be prepared with any drawing/painting tools you wish to use (manual or computer-based), and may include multimedia objects (text, sound, pictures, icons, animations, video, voice recognition, etc.) or placeholders for such objects.

Full text for each screen is not necessary; however, your storyboard should indicate what text will appear, and roughly how it will look. If you can find or make concrete examples of the pictures/icons, please include them. However, please note that this is not an implementation project, and therefore does not require any GUI building tools at this stage. The storyboards themselves can be either electronic or paper-based (e.g., large pieces of cardboard with stuff glued on them). Note that if you use paper-based ones, you should use a digital camera to make your material available via Blackboard. If you choose to develop a computer-based storyboard, you need to make sure that the facilities you need (e.g. computer projector, screen) are available. We have one extra projector through the HP grant, and we can get more through media services.

The storyboards will be presented on January 31, and possibly kept on display throughout Week 5, probably in the Learning Commons area. I need to coordinate this with the library, and will give you more details later.

Each team will prepare a very brief presentation (about 5 min) that serves as an introduction and overview. Then one or two members of your team will stay with your story board, while the others can explore the story boards prepared by other teams. Make sure to switch roles so that each team member will have an opportunity to act as host, and will be able to look at the work of other teams. As with the first assignment, your team will need to provide some feedback to the other teams.

Your story board should address the following aspects (not necessarily in that order):

• What is the task, and how does it relate to the Learning Commons and/or tablet PCs?
• What are the main activities in that task?
• What assumptions are made about the users? Examples are user groups, user capabilities (computer literacy, ADA considerations), or motivation?
• What resources are needed to perform the task?
• What additional resources are available for related tasks, or more in-depth activities?

All team members are expected to explain the story board and provide additional information to interested parties.

Submission and Deadline

The story boards will be presented on January 31; we will mostly use the lab period, but may also use part or all of the class period. The accompanying material for the presentation must be available on the respective Blackboard discussion group at the time the presentation is given. The teams will have an opportunity to revise their materials in response to feedback given by class mates. Some of this feedback may be given directly during the presentation of the story boards, and additional feedback can be given via the Blackboard discussion forum. The revised presentation material must be posted on Blackboard at the end of the day after the presentation (Wednesday, Feb.1, 23:59).

Grading Criteria

The storyboard itself and the accompanying material are 10% of the overall class grade. I will use a form similar to the one in Assignment 1 for grading the storyboards and documentations. This form will also be used for immediate feedback from the other teams; more detailed feedback will go through Blackboard. The grade will be influenced ((I'm not using a specific formula, however, such as the average of all feedbacks) by two aspects of the feedback: The feedback on a particular team's work, as well as the quality of the feedback given by a team. So if your team only delivers very cursory feedback ("Good job! 10 points") for the other teams, your score will be affected.