Expectations
Introduction
The team project aims to freely design and prototype an interactive mobile application in HTML/CSS/JavaScript. You will work in four iterations (with corresponding milestones). Throughout each iteration, you will follow the user-centered design process. This design process includes analysis, design, implementation and evaluation.
Prototype functionalities will be freely and independently designed by your team, depending on your creativity in brainstorming, the gathered user and usability requirements, as well as your use cases and scenarios. The user will be able to perform interactions, for example: buying, listing, viewing, informing, playing, searching.
Note: The course focuses on interaction prototyping. Even if your required/specified feature is not fully functional, you can simulate it and work on evaluating the corresponding user interface.
General information on the practical course
All the tasks during this project phase will be group exercises (groups of persons). We recommend that every team member practices and contributes to the implementation part of the exercises. Establish interdisciplinary teams for working on your prototype. Find a name four your group.
Each of the four iterations is planned for a duration of 2-3 weeks. Please ensure that you have pushed solutions for all exercises to GitHub at the end of the iteration. Your repository will be https://github.com/interactionprototyping/GROUP, where GROUP is your group's chosen name. Set up a suitable file and folder structure; please indicate in the README.md, where your current version of your prototype can be found.
Document your implementational and methodological progress/process throughout the whole project in a brief, but suitable manner (beginning at the first iteration) on GitHub. This documentation will be taken into account for your final grade and will simplify the final project presentation, as you have already structured your results. By using the history functionality of GitHub, you may furthermore return to earlier versions of your prototype.
Expectations, requirements, and grading
Your final grade will consist of a methodology (50%, documentation and final presentation) and an audit of your prototype (50%, ergonomics and HTML).
The methods part (documentation and final presentation) depicts your correct application of appropriate usability engineering methods. Do not only apply methods that have been presented or mentioned in class, rather read on and involve other methods you know or have read about. There are not “correct” or “incorrect” methods, so document the reasons for selecting or disregarding specific ones (both in your milestone and poster presentations). Document the results and insights they provided.
The maximum credits can be reached based on the following expectations in descending (!) importance:
Methodology
The prototyping process is performed using a very structured approach. The choice of usability and user centered design methods are clearly motivated and correctly applied. More than the given methods were used. Iterations of the process phases are clearly visible.
Results
The selected evaluation outcomes are important and presented in a structured and clear way. The outcome of the evaluation is linked to concrete design improvements of the prototype. The results are discussed using the usability requirements as well as other appropriate criteria. Both evaluation outcomes as well as the implications for your prototype are critically discussed.
Creativity
The developed prototype is innovative and original.
References
The design and methodology choices are supported using literature (i.e. correct sources of the methods that have been applied), appropriate guidelines, design rules, or design patterns.
Tools
Various and multiple modeling/prototyping tools (paper, software) are used. The different provided tools are used appropriately.
The prototyping part (i.e. the code audit) of your grade will consist of the assessed functionality and interactive behavior of your prototype.
The maximum credits can be reached based on the following expectations, also in descending importance:
Usability
The prototype follows (not only the established) usability, readability and clarity rules (heuristics, patterns and guidelines). No usability bugs are present and found in the code audit.
Techniques
There is a very clean HTML structure. CSS is used accurately. The app stays on one page. The prototype relies heavily on JS and jQuery or other JS frameworks. Data is stored in objects. Interface components or APIs are used. Code is structured, reused and commented.
Functionality
Basic established use-cases (e.g., in case of a music app, playing any song in the library, or compiling arbitrary playlists) are functional.
Level of Detail
The created interaction allows a high (horizontal or vertical) capability. More than the tested experimental paths are implemented. "Experiencing" the app is possible in all program sections.