Good Design, Bad Design

• Group size: Individual
• Assignment opens: Wedneseday, August 28
• Due: Monday, September 2 before class (2:20 PM)
• Before you start this assignment, make sure that you have already read Learning to See.

Overview

In this assignment, your objective 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?

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

1. Add your good and bad design using this slide deck. You will add one slide for your submission.
2. 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 a variation of the design rubric.