Good Design, Bad Design

• Group size: Individual
• AI Policy: RED LIGHT: YOU MAY NOT USE AI for this assignment at all. If you violate this policy, you will earn a 0 for this assignment and the evidence will be submitted to the Honor Council.
• Assignment opens: Wednesday, August 27
• Due: Monday, September 1 before class (8:00 AM)
• Estimated Time Spent: 45 - 90 minutes
• Before you start this assignment, make sure that you have already read Learning to See.

Overview

Purpose: In this assignment, your purpose is pretty straightforward: start training yourself to think about the design of things around you. Think carefully about how people interact with the physical or digital world. Is it good? Is it bad?

Sometimes these things are obvious, but other times, it turns out that we’ve adapted our behavior to bad design. For us, clumsy becomes normal. So take the time to look at interactions with a new eye. Are they really good? Are they actually easy to use?

Why this matters (this week and beyond): Developing an eye for design will help you think critically about the choices you make in your own projects in this class. Beyond this class, criticizing and defending design choices will help you make better products/software/experiences for clients and customers.

Assignment

Find 1 example of good design and 1 example of bad design from your favorite website or in your daily life. Take pictures or screenshots.

Create a new slide in this shared slide deck where you show your pictures or screenshots and explain what makes it good (or bad). Think about who uses this design, when they are using it, and why they are using it.

Deliverables

Review the checklist below before submitting your work. Completing all of the checkboxes does not guarantee a grade of 100%! Scroll down to Grading to review the rubric to see how to earn a 100%.

Completed the prerequisite reading Learning to See.

Included exactly 1 good design example and 1 bad design example.

Included clear photos/screenshots for both examples.

Addressed Who is using the design, When/Why are they using it, and What makes it good/bad for both examples.

Added 1 complete slide to the shared Google Slides deck.

Submit a PDF of the current status of the slide deck to Moodle for assignment “HW 1: Good/Bad Design”. This PDF should include your slide and a few other students, but may not include the entire class’ submissions when you submit.

Grading

Grading will be based on this HW 1 variation of the design rubric.