Re-design and Extend

Overview

In this design sprint, we will revisit one of the previous design sprints. Which project we revisit will be determined by students voting in a survey. This page will be updated once the votes are in. We will be revisiting Design Sprint #1: Design for Dimensions. This project will involve a few components and will involve several important in-class hack sessions. You will need to use physical prototyping for this assignment.

Although it may seem odd to make a physical prototype of something digital, I encourage you to push the boundaries of your creativity! Here are some examples from Emory’s Hall of Fame that show how you can transform the digital into something physical:

Evaluate

You should begin by evaluating your previous website designs. You are working with new people so the group needs to decide which website and screens you all are going to work with. After you pick the website and screens (homepage/shop page/contact page/etc.), you and your team will need to decide what your evaluation criteria are:

Revisit our lecture resources for evaluation methodologies (cognitive walkthrough, heuristic evaluation, usability study, etc) and decide if one of these is fitting for your evaluation goals. A good framework for thinking about this can be found in Research Contributions in Human-Computer Interaction by Jacob Wobbrock and Julie Kientz.

Your evaluation likely involves testing with people. Feel free to reach out to friends and classmates or other potential users of your target audience. That means you should make yourself available to your classmates to participate in their evaluations. You will likely need them to participate in yours as well. Some of this can be achieved during our hack day. Some of it will likely need to take place outside of class.

By this point in the semester, your group should be able to make informed and carefully rationalized decisions about the task, target user group, number of participants, conditions, and other details of the experimental design. You will need to justify these choices in your blog posts.

When in doubt, run your evaluation ideas by me.

Iterate

Next, reflect deeply on your evaluation results. How can you use what you learned to inform the next iteration of your design? You will want to describe this reflection in your blog post and go on to implement these changes in your design. That means you will have a new prototype that reflects these design changes.

At this point, you should have plenty of feedback about your 3 screens across the 3 dimensions (watch, desktop, large-scale device). We want to consolidate this feedback to design the 3 screens on 1 dimension, the new physical prototype.

Extend

In the final part of this project, you will be expanding on your previous design using a new prototying modality: physical prototyping. You can find some examples here.

How you choose to extend your previous project can take many forms, entirely up to your group. Be sure to clearly state your goals. Depending on which project you are extending, some examples you might consider are re-designing a wearable biosensor to collect additional health data, an accessible data physicalization experience (Fall 2024), integrating tangible objects in a virtual reality art viewer, etc. You should show evidence of iteration in your physical prototying as well. Check out this article on low-fidelity prototyping for guidance.

You should redesign your 3 screens to suit this new physical prototype. If it’s a small screen, you should follow the feedback from your watch Figma design. If it’s a larger screen, you should follow the feedback from your large-scale device. I expect to see at least 3 sketches of your physical prototype ideas (I expect to see 2 or more distinct ideas, with the third sketch fleshing out the idea that you plan to execute), plus some additional sketches or notes describing how you will implement your 3 screens on your chosen physical prototype.

Tools

For this project, you will have access to tools and materials through Studio M (in room B260 in the south basement of Chambers, by Wall). Studio M has 3D printers, laser engravers, VR simulators, vinyl cutters, shirt presses, and various other tools. You also can access the DACE Studio (in the north basement of Chambers, by the flagpole). They have materials ranging from sewing machines, knitting machine, yarn and string, embroidery tools, paints, coloring utensils, paper, canvas, etc. You may also choose to use materials you find at home around the house (cardboard, plastic bottles, old tshirts, etc).

Dr. Williams has a limited budget to help purchase items, if there are additional things you need that can’t be found on campus. She will share a Supply Request Form during class, where you can request materials and justify their use.

Re-evaluate

Now, given your new physical prototype, your group should design and execute a preliminary evaluation of this extension. Refer back to slides and notes on Experience Prototyping, Heuristic Evaluation, Usability Studies, etc. This evaluation will gather preliminary feedback, but it should include well-informed and justified experimental design decisions.

Reiteration of expected outcomes for Design Sprint #4

Like in the previous design sprints, I am not looking for perfect implementations. I would rather see ambitious design plans and representations of extra features, than a design that is boring and “safe.” However, I will be looking for these components in your write-up:

  1. Evaluation of your previous designs.
  2. Reflection on the results of the evaluation and evidence of iterating on ideas for design changes.
  3. Extending three (or more) of your screen designs into a physical prototype. The physical prototype cannot be for something that already exists – meaning, you can’t design a tablet screen for Knotty and Board. Stretch your imagination.
  4. Evaluating the physical prototype.

Deliverables

Checkpoint: Wednesday, November 19

Final Deliverables

Grading: Grading will be based on the design rubric.