Goal

The goal of the assign­ment is to develop and test a num­ber of of design solu­tions to a com­plex com­mu­ni­ca­tion problem.

Objective

Cre­ate dig­i­tal and/or phys­i­cal mock­ups of pro­posed project arti­facts, test and then report on find­ings and process. Group mem­bers col­lab­o­rate and share workloads.

Background Reading

• Davis, Part One, Chap­ters 1–3
• O’Grady, Ch 2, Research Strate­gies and Tactics
• Course Mate­ri­als to date
• Exer­cise 02.02: Prac­tic­ing Data Dri­ven Design http://point918.com/exercise-02–02-practicing-data-driven-design/
• Exer­cise 03.04: Strat­egy and The­ory in Design http://point918.com/exercise-03–04-strategy-and-theory-in-design/

Assignment

Develop and test solu­tions that address the research find­ings acquired through pre­vi­ous assign­ments or exer­cises. Test­ing will val­i­date or dis­credit solu­tion ideas before a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment of time and energy is ded­i­cated to a poor solu­tion. Find­ing the appro­pri­ate bal­ance between rough mock­ups and fin­ished graph­ics is key to time management.

Part One

Develop and build at least two solu­tions based on the research find­ings acquired through pre­vi­ous assign­ments or exer­cises. Begin with sketches and inter­ac­tive ideas, but quickly advance to work­ing pro­to­types using the appro­pri­ate tech­nol­ogy or mod­els. For instance, Adobe Illus­tra­tor will work for a page based lay­out, but an InDe­sign based final ver­sion would allow for greater effi­ciency pro­duc­tion and refine­ment. Like­wise, Adobe XD would serve as a valu­able tool for test­ing HTML based lay­outs before com­mit­ting to coding.

Part Two

Cre­ate the nec­es­sary fin­ished design arti­facts and files nec­es­sary to ful­fill the solu­tion. Use the cumu­la­tive knowl­edge and method­olo­gies to solve any and all design and con­tent chal­lenges. Inves­ti­gate inter­ac­tive and expe­ri­ence based solu­tions. Give con­sid­er­a­tion to the life­cy­cle of the solu­tion and make accom­mo­da­tions for is con­tin­ued upkeep and main­te­nance. Fac­tor those details into a solu­tion as a sys­tem, not just a sim­ple arti­fact for use.

Part Three

Cre­ate and exe­cute a series of tests and doc­u­ment the find­ings, tak­ing care­ful notes and records of all events. Feel free to use images, videos, inter­views or other means to doc­u­ment. Revise the solu­tion in Part Two as nec­es­sary based on those findings.

Part Four

Pre­pare a fin­ished mockup for pre­sen­ta­tion, using as sim­i­lar a sur­ro­gate for the tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tem as possible.

Next, cre­ate a 500 to 1000 word pro­posal (often referred to as a project research report) that addresses the dis­cov­er­ies of Part One Part through Three. Clearly delin­eated the pri­mary ques­tion need­ing res­o­lu­tion here.

Cre­ate a short pre­sen­ta­tion with your find­ings from Parts One and Two, focus­ing on what was learned from the research. Sup­ple­ment the find­ings with any dia­grams, charts or dynamic media nec­es­sary to clar­ify and visu­al­ize dis­cov­er­ies or data. The pre­sen­ta­tion should be 2–3 min­utes in length and may have up to 5 slides. Pre­sen­ta­tion for­mat is impor­tant, but no lim­i­ta­tions on media, author­ing soft­ware or design. Com­bine all notes and mate­ri­als from Parts One and Two into a sin­gle PDF.

Areas of inves­ti­ga­tion to address:

• Con­duct and Frame Investigations
• Research Capa­bil­i­ties and Skills
• Ana­lyt­i­cal Tools

Technical Specifications

• TBD

Assessment

• The fol­low­ing rubric posted on D2L will deter­mine assign­ment score: Assign­ment Grad­ing and Assign­ment 02.08: Research Dri­ven Solutions

Techniques

Brain­storm­ing, con­cep­tual devel­op­ment, iter­a­tive design, research, test­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary discovery

Supplies

Art­work, com­puter, appro­pri­ate soft­ware, sam­ple con­tain­ers, sam­ple fin­ish­ing supplies