Lecture Topics in HCI, by Saul Greenberg
Contents for:	All Topics	CPSC 481	SENG 609.05	Industrial Course

Project: Iterative Design of an Interactive Interface

NOTE: This is the old Winter 1997 assignment. It will be changed for Fall 1997.

Handouts

Description

This term project is a major portion of the course. Its main purpose is to give you hands-on experience applying some of the design concepts you have learnt in class. As part of this project, you will learn how to storyboard, learn how to program with a graphical user interface toolkit, and how to write a minimalist user manual.

The project is executed in two parts: design and implementation. You will be working in groups of three. Your group will select a simple but interesting interactive application. You may come up with the application from scratch, or you may decide to remodel an existing application to make it more effective. Design evolution includes paper prototypes, a horizontal prototype, and a moderately robust implementation using the Tcl/Tk interface toolkit.

Deliverables

Deliverables are incremental. Over a period of time, you will hand in an initial paper prototype and design rationale (which is presented in lab time), and screen snapshots of a horizontal prototype and the re-design rationale (also presented in lab time). The final deliverables are the full working system (graded using heuristic evaluation techniques by the course instructor), a minimalist manual, and a short design critique of the final system. For example, one group created a a walk up and use Dinosaur information system (see two snapshots of it: screen one and screen two; and another group created a Home Finder system that allows people to search for homes to buy in the city of Calgary.