Project Phase 2

Activity and Information Design

Objectives:

  • Identify potential activities based on existing practice;
  • Develop an information design to support these activities;
  • Apply scenario generation and claims analysis methods to illustrate these ideas;
  • Develop and refine skills for working in a group.

Overview:

The group projects for this semester involve designing and developing novel notification systems for large screen displays for showing news related content. In the requirements phase, your main goal was to develop a shared understanding (i.e., as a group) of the needs, concerns, and opportunities reflected in your users' current activities. In this phase your main goal will be to synthesize and develop the activities you intend to support with your new software, as well as the information design elements you think you may need to effectively achieve those goals. You will synthesize and present this understanding in a description of the activities and information design work your teams do in the form of scenarios and claims analysis.

What to do:

1.  Summarize phase 1.

Briefly describe your stakeholders, their current situation, and the requirements you gathered from your first phase work.

2.  Synthesize activity scenarios and claims:

Based on the requirements your team gathered in phase one, brainstorm and think about how your software solution should take shape. This involves identifying potential activities your new software will support.

·        We have talked about using metaphors and technology to think about possibilities for system functionality as well as the system's user interface. Choose metaphors that can help you think about aspects of design.

·        At the same time, choose 1-2 information technologies that suggest ideas for activity design. Discuss what the metaphors or technologies suggest for your design problem.

·        Think about possible metaphors and record your group’s discussion about these. Describe this work in a table format (see textbook page 93 for example). We would like to see all of the metaphors you considered, even if you ended up not choosing them for whatever reason. A similar table should be used for the technology options.

·        These metaphors should be apparent in your activity scenarios.

Using your phase 1 reports and the tables as source material, develop 2 (two) activity scenarios, one for each of the actors described as hypothetical stakeholders in phase 1. Remember that notification systems deal with divided attention, multi-tasking situations. This should be apparent in the scenarios you develop.

The point is to write scenarios that illustrate the new activities you have identified for this software. Remember that it is OK (often essential) to include multiple actors in a scenario, but the story is told from one actor's perspective. Remember also that these are activity scenarios, so they should not have any reference to how a screen looks or how a person interacts with the software.

Analyze at least 4 claims for each scenario. As discussed in Chapter 2, a claim may express issues associated with multiple scenarios. This is fine -- again, the point is to document what you think are the most interesting or critical features of the current situation, along with your analysis of these features' upsides and downsides.

3. Synthesize information scenarios and claims:

Taking the design to the next phase, think about the appropriate or necessary information structures, visual layout, and gestalt principles that apply to your solution. These should be captured in your information scenarios, and in your claims analysis.  .

·        Focus on the Gulf of Evaluation as shown in the book on page 111 (and elsewhere).

·        List out any gestalt principles you use, and why.

·        Describe the information structure you will use in your software solution. Identify its type and why you chose that particular structure.

Using your activity scenarios and claims as source material, develop two information scenarios, one for each of the actors described as hypothetical stakeholders. These scenarios should be based on the above elements. Indicate how your actors go through each of those actions in the Gulf of Evaluation in your information scenarios, you can do this with text formatting on the specific scenario elements. Identify the gestalt principles in the scenarios, again through text formatting.  Your information structure should also be clear.

Analyze at least 4 claims for each scenario.

4. Prepare your phase 2 report:

The phase 2 reports should have the following labeled sections. Number all pages that follow the Table of Contents to make the report easier to browse and review.

a)       Cover Sheet: label the phase as "Activity and Information Design", and include group number, team member names and student numbers, and due date

b)       Table of Contents: list page numbers for each required element

c)       Overview: a 1-2 page introduction to this phase, introducing your activities, summarizing the analysis process, and previewing your information design.

d)       Review of phase 1 results (problem scenarios and claims). Don’t just replicate your problem scenarios and claims.

e)       Activity scenarios and claims: at least two scenarios depicting your new activities. Make sure your claims follow your scenario, creating a logical scenario, claims, scenario ordering in your document. Include your metaphor and technology option tables in this section.

f)        Information scenarios and claims: at least two scenarios illustrating your information design. Here the claims analysis becomes crucial in providing your rationale for specific design choices. Again, make sure the claims analysis follows the scenario from whence it came, creating the scenario, claims, scenario ordering. Illustrate the Gulf of Evaluation, any gestalt principles used, and your information structure.

g)       In the end, it should be clear that the metaphors and technology options led to the development of your activity scenarios. Your information scenarios should also build on these tables. Your gestalt principles and information structure should also relate to these choices, with the claims analysis showing the upsides and downsides of the choices you have made. We should have no trouble tracing these elements throughout your process.

h)       Bibliography: cite any sources (printed matter or the Web) you used in preparing your analysis. Make sure you mention any of the cases we have talked about up to this point if you base any of your ideas on what you have seen in them.

You can send these reports to the GTA (ppyla@vt.edu ) by 11:57 pm on Sunday, July 20, 2003.

Scenario writing tips:

Each scenario should have a brief but evocative name. These scenarios should have a realistic feel to them (i.e., they should be believable), but need not be based on actual episodes observed or described to you.  The point is to write scenarios that illustrate the information design decisions you made for this software. Remember that it is OK (often essential) to include multiple actors in a scenario, but the story is told from one actor's perspective.

Claims tips:

Each claim included should have at least one positive consequence and one negative consequence. Use the VSF examples of scenarios and claims in the book and those in the case study library as examples for how to write scenarios and claims. Indicate with underline, font color, or other text formatting the piece of the narrative that gave rise to each claim. You can even “draw” links between the scenario text and the claims.

Grading:

Overview (c):  20%

Review (d): 10%

Activity scenarios and claims (e): scenarios and claims 20%, metaphor table 5%, technology table 5%

Information scenarios and claims (f): scenarios and claims 21%, illustrating gulf of evaluation 3%, gestalt principles 3%, info. structure 3%

General Composition (all letters): 10%