Project: Iterative Interface Design (25%)

Overview.  In this project, you will gain further hands-on experience through the development of  medium fidelity prototypes. You will also learn how to program using a graphical user interface toolkit, and possibly even how to do a heuristic evaluation. Your design can either continue the interface you prototyped in Assignment 1, or you can develop a new design (make sure you clear this with the course instructor first).

A note on organization. You must hand in the all parts of your portfolio including your Assignment 1 work and Part I of your Assignment 3, as this will show me how your design has progressed and evolved over the term. As before, keep your project in a 3-ring binder, beginning with an assignment grading sheet and contribution forms.  Major sections should be separated by index tabs.   Write the names of all your group members on the outside cover of the binder.

What you have to do

• Redesign your existing interface from Assignment 1. To do this, you should review your Assignment 1 prototypes and walkthrough results. You should also apply the design knowledge you have gained in class to your design. You may want to develop a few more paper prototypes here and do further walkthroughs to evaluate your ideas.
• Implement your design as a medium fidelity horizontal prototype. Using the programming IDE that the TA's went over in tutorial, design your primary screens. Most of this will involve widget selection and placement, although you may have to do some more sophisticated coding if your interface has esoteric components (e.g., ActiveX controls).
• Presentation, of the horizontal prototypes will occur in tutorial
• Deliverable: Hand in your portfolio. It should contain:
  • A brief (~two to three pages) redesign rationale that describes the main reasons behind the changes made to your system since Assignment 1.
  • Illustrations of your screens (remember it's a horizontal prototype so it must show screen captures of your whole system).  If you are doing screen captures  in the PC labs then you can use a dedicated commercial program such as SnagIt or a just perform a simple PrintScreen in Windows.

• Redesign your interface. To do this, you should evaluate your interface, selecting from the evaluation techniques you now know e.g., walkthrough, usability studies, heuristic evaluations, and from applying the interface design techniques described in class (representations, information visualization, psychology of everyday things, graphical screen design & the usability heuristics for design)
• Implement a substantial part of the vertical functionality of your interface. 'Substantial part' means that examples of the more interesting features (screens, error messages, handling of unexpected input, defaults, robustness, ...) should be demonstrable. (You may program in 'stubs' for less important tasks you are not implementing in your system at this time (e.g., certain actions may return some kind of 'Under development' message).
• You may also be required to complete a heuristic evaluation of your final interface.  Details will be provided in lecture but whether or not it will be required largely depends upon when we complete this section in class.
• Deliverables, in portfolio: Your final portfolio should contain:
  • Illustrations of your final implementation (completed after Part I of Assignment 3), using new screen snapshots,
  • The results of the heuristic evaluation:
    • List the problems detected, categorized by heuristics. Include a severity rating of the problems noted
    • Summarize the main findings of your heuristic evaluation
  • Final design rationale and discussion (approximately 2 - 3 pages) of the state of your design. Discuss the quality of your system design focusing on the major strengths and weaknesses. What parts of the design works well and what still needs improvement?  Do you really believe that the system would work well for your identified users and tasks?  Be honest in your evaluation!  You will probably receive  a better grade if you are honest in your critique than if you miss things (or worse try to hide them).
• You must  electronically submit¹:
  • All source code and data files pertaining to the final version of your project. This must include a README file containing your full names and any instructions for using the system.  What cases/functions were implemented?  What data should I enter at which times?  To ensure that I don't miss any of your best features of your system you should word your instructions as an exact walkthrough of what I should type and what controls should be set to what values.  Do NOT password protect your system.  I can only mark projects that I can actually run and I do not want to dig through piles of documentation just to mark your assignment!. Everything must run from the installation directory (Hint: use App. Path.  This means that you should use relative rather than absolute paths.  This is important!  I repeat again, I must be able to run your program in order to be able to mark it.  I suggest that you test your code on the machines in the lab at least once a week in order to verify this is this case (and probably more often as the final deadline approaches as your code changes frequently).
• Demonstration. You will demonstrate your running system to the course instructor at the end of the term. A timetable will be posted and you can book time slots.

Grading. Grades are based on the quality, sophistication and creative elements of the evolving design and its implementation, and the professional nature of the written submissions. Remember that you are implementing both a horizontal and vertical medium fidelity prototype --- the balance between the two depends on your design . It should contain enough implementation to show what it would be like to interact with the real thing. Grades are not based on the complexity of underlying application code (hidden back-end code that I talked about at the beginning of the term) that have little to do with the interface (the front-end GUI code).

You are emphatically cautioned against taking on more than your group has time for! A modest carefully implemented project often scores much higher than an ambitious project that is not well done. Start immediately! The best groups start early, plan activities, divide the work logically, and communicate well.