Assignment 2: Story Boards and Personae


Team Assignment


This assignment is to be performed in a team of about 3-5 people (usually the project team).

Goals and Objectives


The general goal is to use storyboards and similar means to demonstrate the overall layout for the interface and the interaction. The objectives for this assignment are:
  • To gain practical experience with the rapid prototyping design process that is often used in the very beginning stages of designing HCI/UCD software.
  • To use storyboards and similar means as a medium with which you can communicate ideas about design.
  • To identify use cases and scenarios that are especially relevant for the selected task or system.
  • To identify user categories and relevant properties associated with the categories, and construct personae that depict the categories.
If appropriate for the topic, you can use a rapid prototyping technique different from storyboarding. If you do this, check it with me first, and also explain it in your project documentation.

Description


Your need to select a task or activity related to the team project, and use the storyboard technique (or an alternative rapid prototyping technique) to illustrate its functionality and interaction. The focus of this assignment is on the interface/interaction design, rather than the underlying implementation issues. This is a mock-up (low to medium fidelity) -- full functionality and even full details are not expected. However, examples of text, artwork, animations, sound, etc., should be present in the appropriate places. The task or activity you select should be essential or typical for the intended user group.
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 interactions 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).
Your storyboard should address at least the following aspects:
  • What is the task, and how does it relate to the project topic?
  • What are the main activities in the task?
  • What assumptions are made about the users? Examples are: user groups, user capabilities (computer literacy, ADA considerations), motivation?
  • What resources are needed to perform the task?
  • What additional resources are available for related tasks?
  • Who are the intended users?
Personae (or personas) are frequently used identify important user groups or categories. A persona is a real or artificial person that acts as a prototype for a particular user category. Looking at San Luis Obispo residents as a whole, Joe Mustang could be a persona standing in for a typical male Cal Poly student. Within the group of Cal Poly students, however, this Joe Mustang may not be particularly useful because the persona does not distinguish between different categories of Cal Poly students. A persona is often identified by a name, a picture, drawing or avatar, and distinguishing characteristics that point out important aspects of a particular user category.
Since the emphasis in this assignment is on a rapid prototyping design, you are not expected to 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. This is not an implementation project, so it does not require any GUI building at this time.
Also, full text for each screen is not necessary, but your storyboard should at least indicate what text will appear, and roughly how your design will look overall. The storyboards themselves can be either electronic or paper-based (e.g., large pieces of cardboard with stuff glued on them).
If you choose to make a paper-based storyboard, be sure to take pictures of it and post those pictures on the team Wiki before the due date. If you choose to develop a computer-based storyboard, you need to make sure that the facilities you need (e.g., computer projector, screens) are available (check with me!) and that your materials are posted on your Wiki before the due date.

Background Information

The results of this assignment lend themselves more to a "poster session" style format than a sequence of presentations. We may also do a mixture of both: Brief initial presentations by the teams, followed by a period where people can walk a

Story Boards

Here are some pointers for additional information:

Personae


Here are some pointers for additional information:

Presentations/Displays


The results of this assignment lend themselves more to a "poster session" style format than a sequence of presentations. We may also do a mixture of both: Brief initial presentations by the teams, followed by a period where people can walk around and look at the storyboards of the other teams. Due to time constraints, most likely the storyboards will be incorporated into the mid-quarter project display.
Each team has to prepare a very brief presentation (about 2-5 min) that serves as an introduction and overview. Every team member is expected to be able to explain the storyboard and provide additional information to anyone who is interested. A core part of your team will stay with your story board while the others can explore the storyboards prepared by the other teams. Your team members will switch in and out to make sure each team member has an opportunity to act as host, but also gets the opportunity to walk around.

Presentation Feedback


Your team is expected to provide feedback on the work of the other teams, and to do a self-evaluation. This will be done via an online questionnaire, both for the mid-quarter display as well as for the final. I am looking for sincere and meaningful feedback, not just meaningless banalities. Please try to express your suggestions in a professional manner, and avoid statements that can be (mis-)interpreted as hurtful or insulting.

Deliverables


  • A storyboard with a minimum of 10 panels to be displayed during the presentation event. It should cover two to three usage scenarios, with a total of about 10-20 activities, and incorporate at least three personae.
  • Materials relating to your storyboard (photographs for paper-based storyboards and digital media for electronically based storyboards) posted on your project repository by the due date listed in the schedule.
  • A brief presentation, posted on your project repository. If you choose not to use presentation software like PowerPoint, post a writeup that covers the contents of your presentation.
  • Feedback forms with a self-evaluation, plus critiques and suggestions for the other teams. This feedback will be collected during the mid-quarter project displays.

Submission and Deadline


The target date for displaying story boards is Thursday of week 6; usually it is the core part of the mid-quarter project review, and the date may have to be coordinated with outside collaborators.
We will mostly use the lab period, but may also use parts of the class period. The accompanying material for the presentation must be available on the respective team Wikis at the time the presentation is given. The teams will have an opportunity to revise their materials in response to feedback collected at the display event. The revised presentation material must be posted on the repository at the end of the day after the presentation. If you’re working on a project with confidentiality constraints (as may be the case with external customers), you should only make “sanitized” material available on public sites. If necessary, you can use alternative repositories for confidential material.

Grading Criteria


The storyboard itself and the accompanying material are 10% of the overall class grade. I will use a form or rubric similar to the ones used in other assignments for grading the storyboards and documentations. This form will also be used for immediate feedback from the other teams, and for a self-evaluation of each team. The grade will be influenced by two aspects of 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 adversely.